Reflections on Kool Keith's 'Matthew'

            We are nearing on fifteen years since this landmark album was released by the greatest poet in the history of the English language. Although, in true chameleon style, Keith’s image was suddenly harder, in line with the times, the meditations he developed in verse form were as untimely as Nietzsche’s reflections amid academic impotence and rampant German Nationalism. Moreover, the musical substance of most of these tracks signifies a potential new genre of music, something the people of this country (and the world) are in desperate need of right now, whether they know it or not, and something which, if history has any say in the matter, can only be developed by the African American community.

            Well then! A brief sketch, by way of background. Keith grew up in the Bronx, at the inception of Hip-Hop, the last American art form, whose roots were imported from Jamaica by Kool Herc, but whose initial musical form drew from popular records of the day, incorporating funk, soul, rock, jazz and other genres in a truly American, truly democratic innovation. Apparently Keith’s early involvement in the hip-hop culture consisted primarily of breakdancing, a skill he must have excelled at, ultimately performing on television as a youth in front of Ronald Reagan. But Keith’s initial foray into the rap market would be with Bronx-based Ultramagnetic MC’s, one of the most talented groups of that time and space, along with Boogie Down Productions and Eric B & Rakim. With the timbre of puberty still in his voice, Keith dropped lyrics that were already leagues ahead of most other rappers.

                 They use a simple back-and-forth, the same old rhythm

                 that a baby can pick up, and join right with ‘em

                 but their rhymes are pathetic, they think they copacetic,

                 using nursery terms, at least not poetic

                 on an educated base, intelligent, wise;

                 as the record just turn, you learn, plus burn

                 by the flame of the lyrics, which cooks the human brain

                 providing overheating knowledge, by means causing pain

                                                              -‘Ego Trippin’, 1986

            Keith rose to stardom briefly in the 90’s under the Dr. Octagon moniker, and then, as Kool Keith, with Sex Style and Black Elvis/Lost in Space; all three albums landed videos on MTV, showcasing Keith’s bizarre personas which somewhat shadowed his lyrical deftness. Much of his greatest work, including Sex Style, has been in collaboration with producer Kutmasta Kurt; on Lost in Space Keith produces his own music, playing guitar, bass and keyboards with a deep funk influence. The music is going in a new direction, stylistically; it is both funky and psychedelic and would serve as a blueprint for Outkast when ‘Andre 3000’ (a name derived from a song on the Dr. Octagon album) proceeded to plagiarize just one of Keith’s many personalities. It had been almost three decades since the influence of LSD was so prominent in the work of a major artist, and by bringing the sounds of black reality along for the trip, rather than just “sitting in an English garden, waiting for the sun,”  Keith did indeed seem to be on to something new. Keith was a huge Zapp fan and even got Roger Troutman to sing on ‘Master of the Game’ before his tragic and untimely death. It is a shame this development was not taken further, as commercial rap music was already being used to portray certain stereotypes of black culture, and was at the time becoming sickeningly materialistic, contributing to a total collapse of the music industry at the beginning of the millennium. Keith, however, is not one to be bound by fashions, even if they be fashions of his own devise. He was ready almost instantaneously to move on, in a radical departure from anything that had been heard in the history of commercially recorded music.

            Kool Keith was under tremendous internal pressure to create this record, dealing with the recordings being leaked as he made them. This, along with the standard ignorance of how to handle an artist of this caliber by his record-label, led to a great deal of frustration, which may have influenced the final results (listen to the hidden track White Label Test Press.) In any case, the album itself is incredibly aggressive, opening with the intro, “F-U M.F.”, an easily decipherable acronym directed plainly at other rappers in the industry who inevitably could never stack up to Keith. This flows seamlessly into the street-hard “27 Shots,” in which Keith’s anger, now seething, will not be satiated except by his ingenious lyrics.

            After a brief skit (“Errand Boy”,) the album, with all its musical and lyrical ingenuity, begins in earnest. The track “Operation Extortion” features a haunting keyboard melody that sounds like a synthesized approximation of somebody plucking the higher strings of a piano with their teeth. Underneath is a hard drum beat, harder than anything he’d done aside from Sex Style. “Baddest M.C.”, an epithet that honestly can’t be denied, has Keith displaying the validity of his claim over a funky, futuristic beat with lines like:

Other rappers standin around, jealous lookin broke
Need to be in double dutch, jumpin rope

…..

Fascinatin with the quickness
I make models come to public housing and visit
That's how technical I get exquisite
Bangin on pipes
Lookin at cops walkin up the stairs with flashlights
Most MC's wearin leg-warmers and tights

….

Jump around you gonna need a napkin and a tissue

When I gross up the max you count the issue
Buy The Source cover for twelve months
And send other rappers over to pose
And take pictures for some potato chips and Cap'n Crunch
That's how I take suckers out to lunch
Forget the internet, the website, that's no way to step right
I ain't sittin by no computer, I'm goin to Bermuda

                                                -genius.com

            …and then, my personal favorite, “Extravagant Traveller.” The synth-bass-line comes on, in what I can only describe as “percussively staccato”; it is a futuristic update on the tribal rhythms brought here from Africa, the way rhythm can speak, not merely keeping tempo but actually communicating, telling a story, interweaving with the programmed drums and Keith’s casual, laid-back flow so perfectly that I am at a loss to describe, so go do yourself a favor and listen to it!

            Another skit follows, the hilarious “Recoupment”, in which Keith, portraying a record-label executive, lets some would-be rappers know that, although his company had spent a lot of money marketing and promoting them, and had “rented a lot of anorexic girls to grab you guys and make you look very macho,” they were unable to pay the group, and suggested they keep their jobs at 7-11. Obviously this is how Keith felt about most rappers in the business, whether they were making money or not. The skit segues into “I Don’t Believe You”, in which Keith develops the theme of a broke-ass wannabe rapper employed by the convenience store chain and idly boasting of his numerous exploits, which range from “you got mad guns” to “you got your kids a gift”, all of which are met by Keith’s response, the track’s title, “I don’t believe you.” This song is also noteworthy lyrically in that Keith exploits a novel poetic device, rather than adhering to the standard “AABB” rhyme scheme that most rap confines itself to. Of course, when Keith rhymes, he is often using cross-rhymes, or sustaining a sonance, then seemingly dropping it, only to bring it back at the end of a complicated clause. But in this case, Keith displays his true avant-garde poeticism in a hymn of contempt for all who would feign greatness without honing their skills or possessing any substance of which to speak.

            Side One closes with “Lived in the Projects,” another diatribe against the false claims of weak rappers, so prevalent at the time. Along with the impulse to fake riches and wealth, there was a strong trend to exaggerate or invent stories of poverty and violence, to make the rapper’s image appear more authentic. In fact, Keith actually grew up in the projects, and took offence to the ridiculous posturing of soft, middle-class rhymers who attempted to project a more hard-core image to their middle-class audience on MTV, and garner undeserved credibility on the streets.

            Next up is “Keith N Bumpy,” which features a relaxed beat, counterpoised by aggressively violent and threatening lyrics on Keith’s part, and the refrain, “Ya’ll do your shit in the studio, we bring our shit to your face.” Bumpy Knuckles jumps on for the second verse, and although the cadence of his flow keeps the groove moving forward, with eerie synth basslines creeping occasionally underneath, as usual Keith’s generous spirit in allowing his friends and colleagues to share the mic leads to some of the weakest lyrics on the whole album. There are a few great rappers who have added depth and brilliance to Keith’s songs when they joined him, namely Motion Man and Sir Menelik. Some, like Jacky Jasper, have even spun off as satellites of Keith and attempted to develop a career of their own by attacking Keith’s brilliance and biting the hand that taught them how to eat.

            “Shoes N Suits” is another beat of paranoid, conspiratorial ambience that shows a development from what Keith was doing on the title tracks of his Black Elvis and Dr. Dooom records. Amidst tales of violence and FBI probes, Keith’s proverbial court defendant keeps it real:

          
    Narrator of a true story; to write something fake would bore me.

    I baby-sit three kids, you guys acts like ya’ll never saw me.

and further shows his development as a poet, beyond the early-day toasting of “my name is Jay and I’m here to say” by rhyming ‘bore me’ and ‘saw me’.

            One of the most unique beats is that of “Diamonds.” If “Extravagant Traveller” was percussively staccato, “Diamonds” is perhaps the funkiest legato of any riff I’ve ever heard. Although Keith sought for hip-hop to move beyond the musical confines (and cultural regurgitation) of old jazz loops, his musical innovation, on this album specifically, can truly be seen as a development of jazz; and although he forsakes the sound of a big-band or its modern equivalent of heavily orchestrated rap tracks, and, on this album as he achieves his maturity and apotheosis, extemporaneous expression (“I don’t rap freestyle no more, stopped smoking angel dust,”) both characteristic of jazz music, he nonetheless has taken modalism, which Miles Davis incorporated from the inspiration of watching an African dance performance into the fabric of the most successful jazz of the middle-twentieth-century, to its logical conclusion; on “Extravagant Traveller,” for example, stripping the minor blues scale to its bare minimum in a sub-modal riff focusing on the root, octave, and fifth-descending-to-diminished-fifth (like Black Sabbath on their eponymous song.) The beat on “Diamonds,” specifically, suggests the sound of the vibraphone. How Keith achieved the timbres on these tunes, presumably through commercial-use analog oscillators, remains a mystery to me.

            “Sweet Unique Pete” features Black Silver, whose verse, while not breathtaking, especially in contrast to Keith’s timeless rhymes on this album, is much better than Bumpy’s lyrics on the earlier track. The beat itself keeps up the dark, funky mood that permeates this record overall, and has Keith dropping contemptuous taunts to any would-be challenger, such as:

            My temperature’s 1003, look at these 
            big-head kids on labels tryin’ to MC…

            ….I saw you on the Greyhound bus station floor,

            Layin’ down with a do-rag on like a circus clown.

           

            The final skit of the album segues into “Backstage Passes,” with an aura of mystery in the beat that emphasizes Keith’s own mystique to star-struck fans, in this case an amateur female journalist who wants to get in bed with Keith so she can have something to share with her lame friends. The song deals with the absurdity of fame in general, in a much more real way than perhaps any rock star (and this is what Keith is) hitherto.

            The album’s outro, “Mad Man Departure,” is perhaps the hardest, most vitriolic track of all time. The musical devices and theme persist in their assault on the rap industry, and Keith lets ‘em know that,

                 You been rappin’ for 20,000 years and you ain’t

                 got your fuckin’ deal yet…the fuck, don’t take

                 your problems out on me…

                 motherfucker I’ll pull your face off your body,               
                 show you what the fuck you look like,

                ‘cause you keep it real, too real, motherfuckin’ broke,

                 2001, nobody was sayin’ that shit when I was payin’

                 for them fuckin’ hot wings…
                 hope you burn your fuckin’ lips.

It has been exactly 14 years since I was rockin’ this cassette tape on my Walkman on the wildest New Year’s Eve of my life…I sincerely hope I can steer at least one new fan onto this, perhaps the highest achievement of Western musical poetry to have been ever produced.

12/31/14

@dGabeEvau