Hip hop is growing up. Never mind rappers being born after the golden age; New York’s latest hope Joey Bada$$ wasn’t even born when Illmatic came out. There’s been at least one thing holding the strands together from the start, however, and that’s the inexorable march of Kool Keith. Born in the Bronx, he saw hip hop moulded from the very beginning, and as the spiritual leader and most talented rapper in Ultramagnetic MCs, he contributed to the late 80s glut of talent – Eric B & Rakim, Public Enemy, Big Daddy Kane – that helped turn rap from a fad into the all-consuming cultural force it became. It didn’t stop there, though. Keith embraced the off-kilter side of his rapping personality – the ‘crazy’ part – and followed his ideas wherever they went, from superhero fantasy to stomach-churning ‘pornocore’. His personality-driven style gave birth to everyone from Wu-Tang Clan to Outkast, and his general influence can’t really be overstated. Still, he has time to round up the UMC troops now and then, and that’s what he’s planning for the 25th anniversary of Critical Breakdown. We got him on the phone – apparently in a park – to pick his brain.
It’s the 25th anniversary of Critical Beatdown – what’s the main difference in hip hop between now and 1988?
I mean, it’s like… every group had more of a distinctive sound and maybe a distinctive image, whereas everybody now is more of the same thing. All the groups out now are doing the same thing, they’re following the one pattern. There’s no distinctiveness in their style, whereas at that time, you had more groups – you had us, you had KRS, you had Rakim, you had Kool G Rap and Polo, they all had this distinctive style. It was similar but it was distinctive, it wasn’t like everybody was doing the same things.
Why is it like that now?
You know, everything is a trend right now. Before, things was more original. You know, girls going out with girls is like a trend. It’s not like you’re really liking somebody natural, you know, men going out with men is a trend, I wear contact lenses, I put them in my eyes, it’s more like a trend until something else jump off. They might have something new coming, people might start going out with animals, and that becomes a trend. I go home and I put my snake between my legs, that might become a trend, you know, have sex with a snake, masturbate with the snake. So everything is a trend. Like, in the 70s when the Village People came up, that was the original, everything is a trend, music is a trend.
It’s a wave. Anything could be a trend, like wearing a certain pair of sneakers or rocking pink clothes. For somebody that could be a trend. Nobody wants to wear orange, nobody wants to wear green. Wearing the gothic stuff is a trend, it’s not like it’s you’re going to a funeral, it’s a trend, wearing all black and painting your eyebrows black, going out to clubs making yourself look like Dracula and all that. It’s not like you do that natural. Back then those groups was natural, you know, being natural with who they were.
Can you talk a bit about what an average day was like when you were recording the album?
Well we recorded the album in the ghetto, you know? The typical environment of the crack and the drugs, the streets and stuff like that, but we didn’t write about it. We was going through our daily visuals of killing people, robbing people, you know, going home hearing the police sirens and everything else. But we didn’t let the streets distract us. We was in the streets. Some groups rap about the streets, but they don’t be in the streets. Some groups rap a good visual about the streets, but they don’t be in the streets. We was in the streets but we didn’t use those elements.
We were urban kids but we took it to a whole other visual level with the artistry in our music. We could have wrote about, you know, “South Bronx, things is wild, times is hard, I had to come out with my AK, I’m pushing weight on the block”, all these topics, “I’m moving this much bricks and that much bricks”, but we didn’t even do all of that. We was from the streets but we didn’t care. We was just writing all that science stuff, walking past dead bodies and violence in the projects. We still wrote the album like, whatever. We was so street when we wrote that record, but groups that do street records aren’t even on the streets and don’t even live on the streets. They’re riding around saying, you know, “I’m the boss of this, I’m the boss of that”, but you don’t never see them.
Is that something you don’t respect?
When a person don’t really live like that, you know… you listen to people’s lyrics and they be like, they come through this and they be over here and they be over here but you don’t see them never and it’s like, that must be fake.
So if that was an average day for you then, what’s an average day like for you now?
Well I just write songs, you know? It’s funny, I’m writing more songs now that are more like what I was writing when I first started rapping, rather than the sci-fi world I went into. I’m writing the true songs now rather than the fantasy stuff. I’m writing songs about what I see in the streets, my visuals, my contacts with people every day in the hood. I’ve got a song called Pissy Streets, you know, the streets smell like urine, I’m writing that song. So a lot of people really are shocked by that. With the records that I wrote in the past, when they find out I’m in touch so much with reality, it shocks them. People bug out, like, they meet me and Ced, but if they came to New York and see us chilling in the urban surroundings, around people that are definitely in the streets and walking around, it bugs people out.
Our reality is so real that it’s natural. People expect one thing, and that came from when I worked with a lot of people, when I worked with [Dan the] Automator and [Kutmasta] Kurt, that’s a whole other world. But when they come to New York and they see the reality of everything, it’s like a shock value to people. They’re like, “you’re not joking, you’re really part of the environment”. They gotta see it themselves. They’re like “oh, you really do know people who live in a pissy elevator” and shit like that. “Oh you really go visit people in an abandoned building, you really can stand on this corner with weird looking dudes and everybody look like they mad about some shit.”
With the amount of different styles you pioneered, do you ever hear a record these days and think, “I hear myself in that, that’s something I innovated”?
Yeah, I hear records, like Outkast and stuff like that, there’s a whole lot of people making records like that. A lot of underground stuff, the Soundbombing stuff [Company Flow, RA the Rugged Man, Mos Def, etc], all that era of the backpack movement. A lot of different people.
Do they ever reach out to you, just to say they respect you?
Not really. I think they’re arrogant, really. But I don’t look for that in the streets any more. I don’t like that image, I don’t like that feedback, that legend thing. I’m so current. I went on to do other stuff like Dr Octagon, and I consider myself part of a movement. But I don’t live off that certain timezone that certain rappers live off. I don’t like that ‘old school’, I don’t even say that to myself. Old school comes quick. I got tired of the world old school, because old school could mean Rappin’ Duke is old school, or Blondie is old school, somebody else is old school, then they’ll go to Kool Herc, Bambaata, and they’ll keep moving forward. A group from the 80s is old school, 90s people is old school, then they’ll go current, someone who came out in the 2000s like Kwame is old school now.
It’s never ending for that old school bullshit. In a minute they’re gonna be calling artists that’s out now old school. You don’t hear rock bands really doing that. Nobody calls Radiohead old school. Poison have been out for years, but you don’t ever hear nobody say Poison is old school. You never hear, like, “yo, Sting, he’s old school”. Rock bands have everlasting time for some reason. In the rock world I don’t know what they did. Everybody kills me with that one. I remember one time, I was considered new school to the era of the golden age. But now it’s like the third new school is not even new any more. After the golden age went by, they considered Das EFX old school, and that was new. So I don’t really understand it, it’s pathetic. In a minute the girls are gonna be saying the generation after that is old school. There’s no ending or proper recap to it. Rock bands don’t do that. They’ll be saying Maxwell is a old school singer, R. Kelly is old school. I don’t get it.
There’s too much old school. It don’t exist. When you put it together it don’t even match, because you got brand new dudes that have their album out, and they look like old ass men with grey beards and everything. And then you got people who look after themselves, like Ced, he looks twenty years old. And me, I don’t look old. We be current, clothing-wise, and then you got the guys who look like Steve Harvey or something and people say that’s new. So what is old school and what is new? You got a brand new group out and they’ve got beards and they be rapping, and they got diamonds and chains on but they look like they could be somebody’s father and they’re talking about moving bricks, moving weight? But they just rapping for what people wanna hear right now and they say that’s new school? In the videos, they look old. They look like some old artist. The whole mindframe is kinda messed up with the demographics. It’s a poison demographics, it don’t make sense.
Old school for me is too far back, that’s just a handful of people. Some people, they get stuck and they hate anybody who’s current. I don’t hate anybody. I know the current rappers, I know who’s back in time, I know who’s now, I know who’s then, I know people from the future. I go buy a CD, I buy people from Boston’s CD, I buy Houston rappers, I buy Baltimore rappers, I buy Texas rappers, I bought Master P, all that stuff, I buy Memphis rappers, New Orleans, I don’t care. I listen to all that stuff. E-40. I’ve a wide demographic for my listening.
The thing about New York is, I think New York is too segregated with the different regions. They think, “we gonna stick to what we did, because we’re the ones that originated it”. New York is really mad because New York got too innovative. The same drums that Def Jam came out with, that Beastie Boys and LL [Cool J] and them used to use, the South is using them drums for their trap music. The same drums Run DMC used, the 808s, the 707s and all that stuff. They’re mad because the South still use the samples New York had used. New York went into the eclectic samples and had less bass in the music, and they lost the battle and left the sound. They thought, “these are baby sounds that everybody used to use, we’re too good for that now. We graduated from using these blocks, these little sounds, that’s kindergarten sounds.” The South said, “we’re gonna use all these sounds that New York threw away to the side and we’re gonna make all these big giant hit records.” And that’s what’s going on to this day. New York want to separate the music and say those sounds came from somewhere down South. No, those sounds came from New York. Those drums that everybody’s using down in the southern regions, down in Houston, down in Atlanta, they came from New York. I used them myself.
People got so into finding this record from space that nobody had and using the sample, that they gave the weapons they used to somebody else. It’s like the United States when they gave their fucking weapons away. That’s what happened.
You’re obviously concerned with not being bracketed in or perceived as just ‘old school’, so why do you go back and do Ultramagnetic tours? Do you still enjoy doing that music?
Well I don’t consider Ultramagnetic old school. I consider them current, basically, because they was ahead of their time. We was never old, we was ahead of our time. Time has maybe caught up a little bit to them, but they’re still ahead of their time. People can’t really beat that group around the board. They can’t beat them dressing, they can’t beat them with making current music, they can’t beat them with looking young, nobody’s fat or out of shape.
When you’re old school people wanna see you with a grey beard, you looked messed up, you pawned all your jewellery. Now you’re old, you’re rolling with the wheelchair so people will call you a legend. People can say “I remember you was the greatest, you were classic”. Nobody wants to hear that stuff. Fans of that group should appreciate them just for them. They shouldn’t be mad at all these new people out, they should just be happy that Ultramagnetic still exists and they’re still who they are. Nobody has to give them an honourable award or something. People don’t have to go up to them and say “you deserve your props, you don’t get the recognition”. They don’t even care about that stuff.
Ced don’t even go to a lot of events. A lot of old school people from that era, that golden age, they’re mad. They’re mad at something I don’t know about. You can’t be mad at your nephew because he made rap something else from what it evolved from with you. People added more to it and made it different. Guys made rap faster, guys made rap slower, guys changed rap styles. All these dudes that put something into the effort of the art, they shouldn’t be mad. They made rap grow. They should be happy. It could be ending like jazz. It could be like [jazz bassist] Ron Carter and them. It could be like Miles Davis. Nobody likes that no more.
With rap, little babies wanna repeat a song, little kids wanna start they rap group. Your nephew or your son wants to rap. Why are they mad? NBA don’t say nothing about that. They got older ball players playing with the young dudes. They draft more people, they keep it going. Rap is like basketball. If you still can play, you stay inside the league with the new dudes. Tim Duncan is considered like myself, he’s still with the San Antonio Spurs, he’s still busting people’s ass. And then you got a new guy who comes in the league, and he’s good. So there’s no limit to these people. He’s still around.
Would you be able to give me a memory of Tim Dog, who passed away recently?
Tim is a good person. Tim is a good person. One thing I like about Tim, you got a lot of fucked up people around that talk about Tim, but he’s a great person. You got people like [gossip blogger] Jacky Jasper who’ll say something bad about, and a lot of people who are just jealous of him, but if he do have money, he’ll go all out, by all means necessary to put his project out. He’s not a leech. He definitely puts all of his money into his music. I’m quite sure that anything that he had discussed with anybody in the future – and I haven’t seen Tim in a long time – but if he ever did any type of business with people, it was always about his music or what he’s trying to get done, or whatever endeavours that he’s trying to get off the ground. But everyone else is always seeing a one-sided picture.
But he was always into putting his music on. He had belief. You got other people out there that will be scamming people and move to California, and be scamming people and blackmailing them on a blog or something like that, using people’s lifestyles, or using a tactic or something like that. Moving other places and hiding. You got a lot of people like that, that are really doing what people think he’s doing. But I don’t really see no… last time I saw him, he brought me to Atlanta. We did music. He flew a lot of people out to Atlanta to work on projects. He put up a lot of money for that. He even gave me money to finish the project and stuff. I don’t know his business like that. Me and him is just cool when it comes to making music. He’s not a fake person to me, you know?
Any private type of business he was discussing was about his music. Now, you have other people out there, way worse criminals, who are killing people, touching kids on they bodies, you got people who are holding people inside their houses for like a decade. You got people cheating people on the streets. But they’re not worried about those people. They’re worried about someone who’s trying to do music. He was always trying to do music and stuff like that. That’s before he passed away. Whatever.
Choice Cuts present Ultramagnetic MCs at the Sugar Club on Friday 12th July. Book tickets here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xD4hq_UxUS4
