Bandsplain - Kool Keith with Meredith Graves

Episode Date: March 18, 2021

Writer, musician, practicing witch, and Kool Keith megafan Meredith Graves brings us an absolute galaxy-brain analysis of the intergalactic rap legend. Follow Meredith Graves on Twitter at @gravesmeredith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's with this band anyway? I don't get it. Can you please explain? Wait, like, Bansplaine? Welcome to Bandsplane. I am your host, Yossi Salek. This is a show where brilliant people join me, a moron, to explain the appeal of cult bands using their big brains, their deep love, and also a bunch of music.

Today's episode is about Cool Keith. If you don't know what Cool Keith sounds like, this is what Cool Keith sounds like. Earth people, New York and California. Earth people. I was born on Jupiter. Today, our guest is writer, esteemed Virgo, practicing which, Meredith Graves.

Welcome to the show, Meredith. Hi. Thank you for having me on your cool show. I'm really excited to talk with you about Cool Keith because to be honest, I'm not like deeply versed on Cool Keith. Keith. I really love one album that I've spent a lot of time with, which is Dr. Octahynecologist. But past that, I mean, I think I'm just really excited to, along with the listeners, like,

get a more deep dive overview into like who this like very enigmatic and honestly like maybe most cultish of all artists is and like what his music has contributed, you know, to the culture. as you will. Do you want to give me and the listeners just like the broad Wikipedia overview of like who cool Keith, well, we're never going to know who cool Keith is really, but you know what I mean. Yeah, but you just took my job because that's all you'd have to say. You know what I mean? Cool Keith. He's a Libra. Honestly, really important information. I thought you'd want me to get that out of the way early. A hundred percent.

And he's superware. It's great. Keith, cool Keith is Keith Thornton. He is a rapper and a producer and an artist and a beatmaker and a visionary and a magician from the Bronx. He is one of history's most prolific rappers. And in my estimation, he's definitely the most diverse in terms of, I guess, surface distribution of weirdness. Right? Like he's just, he's doing it. In the early 80s, he actually, he came up as a dancer. But by 1988, he had formed a band called the Ultramagnan. emcees with some of their guys. They put out a first record that just in the earlier days of rap was incredibly bombastic and awesome. And then they put out a couple more records, after which point he went solo. And in the years since, the man has put out 38 albums under 12 plus pen names. About half of those were collaborations with other people or bands. He started on the side. The other half, again, they were all released under about a dozen different names with kind of unique identities and in collaboration with a huge variety of other artists, you can't pin the man down.

In all that time, he did only one record on a major label, which is pretty cool. And of his like 38 albums, one of the more recent projects he did that I really loved was a collaboration with the Nashville grind band, Thayton, called Space Gortex. So this guy gets around. He is nothing, if not totally diverse. And prolific. Very prolific. He's been called. He's been called, you know, the inventor of about six different genres of music, half of those he appointed himself. He's worked with everyone from MF Doom to prodigy. You know, this guy is, he's everywhere. He's influenced everyone. He is that cult figure that you so correctly pointed to. So that's a bit of an introduction. But like you said, we will never know this guy, right? And he's made a point of that.

Right. We just are scratching the surface. But you know what? I think, at least through his music, we can get a general sense. Meredith, what song do you want to start us off with? I think if we're going to kick this off with something that will introduce people in kind of a beautiful broad-stroke way, we would have to start with Blue Flowers, which is off of his debut solo album, Dr. Octagonicologist. You're listening to a music and talk episode. What's that? It's where full songs and talk segments can.

live together in gorgeous harmony only on Spotify. Do you dream of making your own music and talk show? Well, guess what? You two can create one for free with Anchor, Spotify's podcasting platform. Get started today at anchor.fm slash music and talk. That's anchor.com. slash music and talk. Okay, that was Blue Flowers by Dr. Octagon, one of Quakeiths.

I don't want to say pseudonyms, but, you know, artistic. guises. Yeah, that's a good turn of phrase, I think. I know he's talked about it a lot of different ways. I know he's talked about it as inventing different characters, which is like a really, it's a specifically curious and interesting turn of phrase, I think, because you could say that a lot of ways and all the variations would point to different establishing mindsets. So like, inventing characters is very different from like assuming personas or identities or something, like characters being such a separate thing. Totally.

I don't know. I think it belies the way a lot of people think about his music, but I go hard early. I'm sorry. We've listened to one song. No, I love it. I mean, let's just also be so clear that Dr. Octagon is a space alien who is also a gynecologist. And a murderer. And a murderer.

And a pervert. Yes. And a bunch of stuff. Maybe first and foremost a pervert. Pervert through which all else comes to exist. He's a pervert murderer. He's a pervert doctor. Yeah, like he definitely went to like space med school just to become a space gynecologist because he's a pervert. Yeah, absolutely. And that's why later we had to invent a much like this is the most evil guy that we can conceive of, right?

No pun. He is a gynecologist. Later, we had to invent Dr. Doom to come take him out. And I believe the two of them killed each other like several times in the album sequence, but that's what you got to do. when faced with a malicious space gynecologist, I guess. A malicious space gynecologist. Right. Normal. I have to like shout out Dan the Automator because I think, again, like, this is the one Cool Keith album that I'm like intimately familiar with, sorry, which I probably came to

it through Dan the Automator. I also like spent my early career working in underground hip hop, which is why I'm the way I am. But I just Dr. Octagon is like such, or Dr. Octagon, Octagon. Okay, wait, can we Dr. Octagon? You could say Dr. Octagon. Octagon. That was the original name of the release. Dr. Octagon Ecologist was the retread that. I think DreamWorks put that out, maybe 97, but they shifted the track listing and everything. So I like Dr. Octagonicologist because it's hard to say. It sure is. It's the secondary title of the album, I think. Anyways, that album. I think is like a really like good use of Dan the Automator because I mean, and I think you'll have more to say about this.

But like he really is able to corral and tighten I think some artists that might be more meandry on their own. Like he provides a really nice framework with his production. Yeah, no, I'm with you. And I definitely like one of the more interesting things I think about Dr. Octagon is its place, not as the Vanguard rap. record that it really clearly is, but also as like a stalwart beacon of 90s trip hop, which is really interesting. I don't think maybe people would necessarily make the frog or leap from Coolkeith to like Portishead or Molaco or bands like that.

But you hear it here with Dan the Automator. And when in 2018 they did moose bumps and they kind of rehashed it, that was a really interesting, you know, check back in that proved to us again, they are killer collaborators. Because the cool thing about, especially what you just posited in terms of, of like framework and constraint. It's really interesting because trip hop sounds languorous in a lot of ways. And so do Keith's raps to people who are used to raps with finite end rhymes. But both Dan the Automator in his precision and Keith in his earlier work with ultramagnetic

MCs proved they can be precise. So that is why Dr. Octagon speaks to me as like this mutual reining in, which is pretty crazy for again, the album being about a serial killing space gynecologist. But it's pretty much like watching the battle between the archivalry. Archangel Michael and Satan, right? It's very Catholic in that way. It's the pretty much on the track. She said it's pretty much like watching the Archangel Michael and Satan.

And you know what? This is your mind. You invited me just a reminder. I well, this is exactly what I wanted. I'm also not to erase Cutmaster Kurt's contribution who also produced and DJ Hubert who did all the scratching. And Pusshead who did the art. Oh yes. There's DJ Kuber, yes, absolutely remarkable, but I could do a whole other episode on Cutmaster Kurt just based off the tracks he historically made with Keith on so many records.

We have a lot of him to talk about. I mean, icons all around. So Blue Flowers is a really good introduction to Cool Keith for all of the reasons that we've just talked about. You know, it shows his like really very singular rhyming style. his his sort of like interest and dedication to like genres that were not typically at the time aligned with, you know, classic hip hop. Of course, his affinity for creating these insane characters. Where like for someone who wants to get deeper in, like what's another cool Keith musical output that you think would be a good next step? Well, I feel like the coolest thing about dude's music is that depending on your, like, narrative or your end goal, you could approach the task of getting someone interested in his music in a lot of different ways. And so Blue Flowers, you know, it is a big hit. It was a big hit when it came out. And when I look at core aspects of that song in terms of like, what are the constituent elements of this song that I would want to drag into, like dragging someone along for the ride.

I think Blue Flowers is cool because it's one of the lowest octagon songs on that record, right? There's not a lot of space murder in that particular song compared to the rest of the album, right? If I wanted to show people the same thing, because the last thing you'd want anyone thinking about Cool Keith was that these all are him or all of them or any of them are fixed. I would bump them to Black Elvis Lost in Space, which is about four records and two years later where he's playing a completely different character. And then within that album, he cycles through a couple more. So a track on Black Elvis Lost in Space that's kind of, to me, the blue flowers of that album is the girls don't like the job, which is also just like blue flowers doesn't necessarily give the greatest hint of how funny he is. But the girls don't like the job is one of the funniest songs ever written. So that's what I would play next.

The Girls Don't Like the Job off of Black Elvis Lost in Space, which is, again, amazing. to me because here it's kind of hard to play that song without the context of the rest of the album. But we are in space already as this character who's doing all this different stuff. And then suddenly there's this song. And it's like, I already thought Black Elvis was somebody. When did he become the manager of the Bank of Space? And then he's- I needed to ask.

I was like, is the rest of the album capitalism cosplay as well? Or this is just all of a sudden Black Elvis gets, you know, know, into the managerial class. It's a complicated piece of metaphiction in exactly that way. And plus, this boss is giving out record deals, buying basketball teams. Sure. And Baldwin Hills. In Baldwin Hills.

He's doing major financial transactions. And that is where this song, I believe, actually points to the character of Black Elvis is kind of a vanguard profit because, like, okay, cyberpunk theory is about cool, Keith. here we go. Now we're getting into the sandwich meat of the Deliazzi. When we talk about cyberpunk and predictive world modeling, people like to talk about William Gibson, the author, and him predicating Microsoft, just as a word that was included in one of his books, which, of course, he wasn't a technologist. He was writing all these sci-fi stories on a typewriter, but he coined the word Microsoft years before it became a company, right?

In this song, it's many other things that he does. And it's not even the most special thing about this line. The assonance is. But when he says, Bank of America with my fine secretary Erica, he's predicting a technology that exists now. That's Bank of America's app. And this song was written in 1999. Erica? Yeah. Is their app?

Erica is the virtual assistant at Bank of America. And he said that in 1999, right? So there we have some cyberpunk provenance. But really what that song gives you. I'm dead. I'm dead. It's so weird, right? This is the kind of stuff I usually have to keep to myself.

And now it's between, you know, you and me and this will be a big, no, I'm not. The 12 people that listen to this. I was going to say, no one's going to hear this. So I'll tell you, this is what keeps me up at night. That and the fact that, you know, I have some other songs on here that are like ultramagnetic era, but you can hear the same things, right? There are parts of this song that sound like playing paradiddles on a practice pad for a drummer. Terry, you've been late a lot and I hate a lot of the same black pants you're wearing dancing.

Like, I haven't heard rhymes like that since I was forced to study them in my undergraduate linguistics programs. that kind of like we have Shakespeare rivaled here in terms of the use of different rhyme schemes and that kind of like a flexibility with language and ability to kind of shake up the grammar I think is one of the reasons that people look at him and call him like a surrealist rapper or something like that but really I see him I mean unless we're willing to call James Joyce a surrealist or David Mamet you know like I don't see it that way very much but you know this is a really standout song I think if you're looking at a period, say, between 1989, ultramagnetic MCs and 1999 Coolkeith Solo, you can see that his music has progressed, but the core skills that he had at the beginning are there and they're sharper. And this is a really funny example. Also, like, there's a meme going around right now, a very popular meme where people ask about something that lives in your head rent-free, right? And if it were asked of me, like, what's a song lyric that lives in your head rent-free? I'm the new boss of this company, girl, and I want you to fax yourself to China, okay? Do this now. Lives in my head rent-free.

It has, since I was 13 years old. And I work in an office now, which is a very dangerous. That's something I nearly constantly need to suppress in corporate settings, explaining to people that I need them to fax themselves to China. Do this now. Do this now, please. Do this now. You know what lives in my head rent-free is this like one hat that Rory Gilmore wore when she went golfing with her grandfather. That's pretty much all.

This is not connected, but it made me think of how that literally never, it's like roster-colored. It just never leaves in my head. That's an amazing line. I have a master's in business administration. Fun fact about me. I'm complicated. And yet this song is reflective of I'm on the same level of understanding of capitalism and work as this cool Keith song. And I'm honestly too dumb to really conceive of it past this.

So I feel really seen by this song. Yeah. I really, it's a very self-reflective piece of literature. By low, sell high. Okay, well you brought up maybe like four paragraphs of us talking ago. ultramagnetic emcees. And I think there's a good way to talk about this because this album, as you pointed out, is the only record, Black Elvis is the only record that was on a major of Cool Kleeves.

But ultramagnetic emcees, which was his first real project, was also on a major. So he started out as a major label rapper. Can you talk a little bit about ultramagnetic emcees and, like, his place in that? Yeah, absolutely. Ultramagnetic is very, very cool. In the great, like, earlier days of rap music coming out of a bunch of different genres and kind of being developed, a lot of which Keith has talked about in terms of like what happened here in New York and breakdancing culture, that social scene and the overlap of breakdancing, DJing and early days of rap was when Keith became active here in New York. He started to sync up with other people like Set G. They came together and they started a group called the Ultramagnetic MC. and in 1980 critical beatdown came out and that was their first big hit record and after that they did a couple more in that gap between you know 88 and 96 when dr octagon came out but right around that time it was a really revolutionary album critical beatdown was because it had taken what had come before a lot of the stuff keith was doing as a rapper even then is present even on the first ultramal. Magnetic MC's album. So it kind of hit in a bunch of different ways from my, I was one years old

I'm living in upstate New York. What am I talking about? Right? But from my passionate listening and understanding of things, the way that I kind of get it is, and you can get this. You know, you don't have to even know anything. You can listen to the record if you listen to Cool Kee's music and you can hear it. Exactly what you hear in girls don't like the job with that da da da da da da da da da da. But with that specific sound that repeats itself, not just the cadence of the words, but the words all having that assonance, that similar sonic quality, you start to hear that on the first ultramagnetic MC's record right away, and you immediately start to understand why not only ultramagnetic hit, but Keith plucked and like self-selected out of the group. Because of course, you're absolutely

correct. They were a major label artist. And then after that, Keith initially got a record deal to like go off to Hollywood and do a bunch of other stuff and like try to make that debut, which ended up, dot, dot, dot, being Dr. Octagon with Dan the Automator in a different sense. But Is there a song off that first ultramagnetic emcees that you feel like really kind of like foretold cool Keith in general? Like, okay, like he's standing out here and like this is like you can see like you were saying like that blueprint that DNA is already there. Yeah, I think ego tripping, which is probably the biggest single off that record, is actually cool because it's like a big Keith first in the first place. you can see why both, this is, Ego Trippin is a good example of why both ultramagnetic and Keith alone, like really hit when this record came out. You can also hear in this song specifically because of how, like, you can hear where rap had gotten to at that point in terms of beats and, you know, energy and cadence.

But then you can also hear how Keith is ahead of it the whole time. So when I listen to, you know, Ego Trippin, I hear a little bit of rapture, you know, you don't just hear early. but you also hear New York in this song a lot. So I think it's cool. Yeah. Yeah, I think it speaks to both the group and Keith as a solo artist in pretty concrete and cool terms. Okay, let's hear Ego Trippin off of Critical Beat Down, Ultramagnetic MCs. That is Ego Trippin by the Ultramagnetic MCs off the 1988 album Critical Beat Down.

Um, I'm sorry. that song slaps so hard. I remember it. I forgot how good it is. That's really, really fun. And like I said, I really like it as, you know, it's less playful enjambment kind of like concept smashing. But the first few lines Keith has are like calling other people nursery rhyme rappers and basically being like, why are none of you more intelligent over the bass lines? Like, it makes sense.

And you still hear that attitude, especially if you think of like that opener. to Black Elvis when it's, this is the intro. Why are you rappers so crappy? Like, it's still there. And it's here on this first ultramagnetic record. He's like nursery rhymes so easy a baby could pick them up. Like, I'm wounded. Wound me, Keith Turbo.

Yeah. Drag them. Drag them to hell. I, like, would be remits if I didn't mention that cool Keith shares not only like, a, I think a place in rap history, but also a trajectory with another iconic character taking on incredibly talented rapping weirdo called MF Doom. Yeah. You know, a bit of the same same with KMD, being on a major, breaking out, you know, starting

to take on persona. It's very aligned. I mean, they're very different artists. but I find it interesting that they followed a similar path. Yeah, and wow. Like, I knew this would come up. I made the playlist, but I still wasn't prepared. Rest in peace, Doom.

I am lingering. I know. I'm heartbroken on Doom. Another, like, hugely important artist in my life and my trajectory, like, amazing. And their relationship is really cool, which is one of the reasons I wanted to highlight it here. For exactly the reasons you said, right, They're both peers and mutual influences.

Doom is one of those people to me who you can hear like immediately deriving from Keith and then coming up side by side the whole time. And you can also catch that if you pay attention to the names, right? Because we have more recent collaborations with the two of them. We have a good few of them. I think we have some on the Laurent's record and we have, you know, singles like superhero. But way, way, way back, as far back as collaboration tapes, we had Keith with Victor Vaughn. And so there are some Victor Vaughn verses in some of the early collaborations tapes too. It's so cool to me when those two are together on a track.

And this is why I love superhero too, because, I mean, what better title. You really are putting two superheroes on the track. It's literally Doom and like Dr. Doom or Black Elvis or Dr. Octagon. When you put them up together, it's not that their tandem strangeness cancels each other out. It's just like it's like watching two gods on stage. It's like WrestleMania, including the things. fact where you know the battle is an act and the two like love each other like brothers and they're going up to help each other do the best job in this battle and so seeing keith and doom on a track like that's

like apex heaven like ascended for me personally but but it's it is that special thing i mean the surface level yeah they could both be comic book characters that's really fabulous but when you put the two of them up together as collaborators as co-authors of their reality it never results in anything other than something completely special. So I have to deep dive pretty regularly into what the options are because of the ped names. But this more recent song that they had done together, I think 2016 they did superhero, I want to say. It's really beautiful because you hear now this far along in both of their independent careers really where they've both pioneered this style, been informed by each other, and advanced within it, because they both

do some really hot, weird shit on this track. It's really cool. MF Doom and Cool Keith doing superhero, which came out just a few years ago, not that long ago. Yeah, I think MFGM is probably the only other rapper or even artist that I would put in the same, I don't even want to say category, but like on the same level, in the same occupying a similar. then diagram universe as Cool Keith that can hold his own against or with Cool Keith. I guess it's not adversarial. Yeah, it's really, really crazy. You can kind of think of this in, you know, biblical or mythological terms, right?

It's such a huge space that they take up. But there's no room for anyone else in it, right? It's like you transcend all the different planetary spheres and you get to the outermost one. And it's just this giant open outer space space. But even though the two characters don't really sync up proper, they don't necessarily, like MF Doom, Dr. Doom, it's not the same thing necessarily. You can kind of imagine them in that Masters of the Universe context where they're constantly battling. But the constantness of it all is the energetic center that keeps the whole universe going. It's the dark and light, good and evil. I mean, on paper, both can be kind of just like malice, malice, you know, like big gods. But it's it. It's the clash of the Titans, you know? There's so much space, but they're so huge and they're the only people on one another's level. Yeah, it kind of really feels that way.

Damn, that's a really good way to describe it. Well, on that note, Meredith, what do you think is a song that really showcases this sort of interplay or coexistence of MF Doom and Cool Keith? Well, it's funny because they did pick a Doctor Doom song here, but not for like that precise reason. And I think Apartment 223 is actually really spot on for this because it's got it's got the kind of beat that I also want to hear, you know, Doom over. But it's also got that it's got that ballast. It's got that villainous edge. It's got that delivery, both that cadence as well as that, yeah, that like masterful villainous quality that really establishes both Dr. Doom as the character he is and Keith as like a wildly serious rapper, you know. So here's your super villain, you know, here's this track.

That was apartment 2-23 off of First Come First Served, which was under the alias, Dr. Doom, Three-O's. Yes, right before Black Elvis, 1999. And I love this. I love this song so much for so many reasons. It's so great. It's so great. I think there's, I mean, again, I'm not to like keep talking. about horrorcore. I just find it really interesting because I think, you know, here you're hearing Keith

talk about vampires and monsters, but then also, which like that part of it did, like, I feel like horror core went in a bunch of different directions, but he's also, you know, using one of the hallmarks of horror core, which is like really intense, violent images, like really horrific. like what I stayed in my mind from that song was a drill in someone's ass, for example. And that's really another enduring hallmark of horrorcore. Yeah. It's a thing that got odd future in trouble when they first came out. It's like people were losing their minds over like this really cartoonishly violent imagery in their rap songs.

Yeah. People get butt heard about horror. People get butt heard about extremity wherever it shows up, right? And that's, I'm also a huge horror fan. And we can talk about like the extreme ends of horror film history, right? We can talk about cannibal Holocaust. We can talk about the new French extremity and movies like L'Enterreux. We can talk blood, guts, go, violence, human centipede, whatever direction you want to go in all day long, right?

It's a different thing entirely when you remove the visual aspect. If you can get the heby-jeebies off apartment 223, which you do, even if it's that, again, parodital language, if you're, as entranced by those spoken and vocal rhythms as you are when you're nodding your head, you start to realize you're talking about I'm going to cut up your body parts. I'm going to put them under your bed. I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that, right? Cannibalism. And most importantly, ritual magic in that song. That's the song that introduces Dr. Doom as a ceremonial magician. He talks about I got my robes. I've got my candles. And then all the violence actually comes after that. Yeah. Kind of cool. Kind of cool. An important distinction.

Well, really important, really important, especially because in recent years, you know, Keith has done some interviews where he's talked about or two journalists who want to ask him about the personas, who want to ask about the characters and who want to try to figure out the polarity between Cool Keith, between whichever the character is and, you know, this idea of who is what? Is this an identity? Is it a project? People are trying to parse it out, right? And one of my favorite ways that Keith explained this, he didn't relate it directly. directly back to Dr. Doom, but it makes sense if you know this album, if you think about it. He has countered those questions by comparing himself, not to other musicians, but to Stephen King. Right? Cool Keith puts himself in the same bucket as Stephen King. And this album now, like, that's a recent thing, pretty much like just insofar as I read it in a more recent interview,

and this album's from 1999, right? But if you go back here and you think, how is this guy so prolific? This album came out the same year as Black Elvis. It came out a year and a half after Dr. Octagon, this, that, and the other thing, you know, if you have that Stephen King, John Grisham, V.C. Andrews kind of mindset, you can pop. Vampires, space, incest, honest to God, it shows up on sex style the next album that comes out, right? Like, you take all those extreme themes. And there's no need to actually, for a critic or a journalist, to stand in the middle and triangulate anything. You can just get lost in it like you would a novel. And if people were to approach Keith's music that way, that's a pretty interesting inroad. So I really enjoy the Stephen King analogy. Plus it's his.

so it feels just as good as like all the other analogies he uses in his music. To the point about magic and the point about magic like witchcraft, magic like the occult and the ceremonial tradition, there is a long and storied history of theater and performance and stage magic, what we now kind of separate out into like one thing we'd call special effects and another thing we would call like magic magic, like rabbits out of hats kind of stuff. That wasn't distinguished between in like not that long ago, like several hundred years ago. in the courts of England and the early United States and stuff. Like, if you pulled off a convincing enough illusion, even on the theatrical stage,

this was a hallmark of the career of John D., who was Queen Elizabeth's court astrologer in the late 1500s, right? His early career was in college. He almost was hung for making a very good visual effect for his community theater, right? I see that in Tyler the creator. I see both the horror core and the occult in the lyrics, yeah, but in the depictions, too. So there's this really good, creepy feeling through line in the music of people who we could designate as being horror core about like the illusions they create on the surface of our culture and how culpable we find them thus, whether it's, you know, trying to distinguish between Black Elvis Doctor, Doom, Doctor, Octagon, this, that or the other thing, or parsing out whether what we saw in the video was real, you know, while knowing a little bit that it's not, but it is, you know. These are really interesting questions. And there are questions that Keith raises thematically that I think point to,

actionable things that other musicians have done in the decades that have passed since. I kind of wish I wasn't here because everything you're saying is so brilliant. And then I just pop in with like a dumb like non sequitur or like a, oh cool. But maybe that's what makes this podcast what it is. No, and that's why you probably have a thriving social life with a lot of healthy relationships. And I have a lot of cool Keith records and books about Renaissance black magic. Oh my God, that's really sweet of you. It's really sweet of you to think that I have like any social life and I don't just watch criminal minds alone in my apartment every single night. Speaking of horror core. A lot to unpack here. My arm hair is still standing up from the like Stephen King V.C. Andrews comparison because like really clicked for me. Like I mean, for those of you listening, haven't spent time with V.C. Andrews. Could not relate. Clearly you were not a child. who grew up and found their sexuality through flowers in the attic and are forever scarred and need to talk about it in therapy for the next 22 years.

But V.C. Andrews, like, what a world builder. Wow, that fucking, that comparison really hit for me. I'll take that a step further, too, because this is something I think about a lot of the time in terms of Keith. And, like, I didn't think VC Andrews, of all things, would come out of my mouth. I could have said something probably that might have made me sound like a few IQ points higher. than a Ruta Bega. But like, when it comes to that shit, think about the criticism that's been leveraged at VC Andrews and people like that, right? Think about the criticism if you want to go back to Cannibal Holocaust, right? Cannibal Holocaust came out. People were terrified that movie was real. And allegedly there was some big hunt for the filmmakers to try to like arrest them or something like that. V.C. Andrews, people automatically look at VC Andrews. They're like, that's disgusting.

Right. Well, that's fiction, right? This is the other thing that I love about Cool Keith. And it's really interesting for the next song that I had on the playlist anyway. Cool Keith V.C. Andrews, another person that I really like to tie into this bizarre mental loop that'll lose me whatever friends I have left is George Batai, right? Okay. Agony of Aros. Batai's theories, along with people like Emil Chioran, who I'm probably pronouncing his name wrong, you know, mean guys. They loved to philosophize through extremity in the agony of Aros. what Batai is doing in talking about like why we have the ecstasis of the Christ, like the

hallucinatory dying Christ and the blood and the gore and the Catholicness of it. The idea that extremity is a leveraging tool. Extremity is its own storyline. V.C. Andrews, incest, bah, you know, people freaking out. Cool Keith. You know, ah, this is so great. Why would you do this? Like, people like V.C. Andrews.

People like George Batai. People like Cool Keith. they just pick up on a different part of what everyone else is doing. They pick up on thematics and they push them to different extremes. And they're very uncomfortable extremes, but they're incredibly important for the advancement of thought. So I actually kind of like where that's all going, especially because next I was going to say we should listen to sex style.

We have to listen to sex style. I have never felt dumber in my life. But I think you, I just want to say before we get to sex style, which I think we'll just drive your point even more home, your 46 points that we rolled into one. Sorry. It's fiction. And I think that's a really important distinction where it's like actually most rap music is fiction. And I think, you know, I hope I don't get dragged to hell for saying this. But the difference is like artists like cool Keith and MF Doom and, you know, later the people under the stairs were odd futures. You know, I'm sure I'm missing a lot of people here. But they took artistic liberties because it's fiction.

They had fun with it. they went to all these like really outlandish places whereas the fiction of like contemporary rap music is being passed off as reality and might you know also be fine you know that's what i don't have any value judgment on it like it's good music but it's just the difference between like you're saying extremism in this fiction and like auto fiction if you if you'll allow me yeah there's there's something really specific that Keith has actually said about this that I think is super, super interesting, especially as it pertains again to like beat my drum, that I just keep beating and beating and beaten, which again, we're going to listen to sex style, so I'll just let that one slide.

It's magic. It's literally the occult. Keith has said before when it comes to this early stuff, when it comes to what other people pinpoint as characters or fictions or whatever, especially in contrast to the performative authenticity, there is really no good language for this. the portrayals of life, the depictions of life in what I would think of maybe as like one-to-one music, where by singing this song in first person, it's presumed by myself, the audience, the listener, that I'm speaking about myself, right?

Totally. Keith, in doing this, didn't necessarily, as he's explained, feel like he was creating fiction. He oftentimes felt like he was, in his own words, writing himself into things. He said before, I wrote myself to Hollywood. I wrote myself to a million dollars. I wrote myself to a major label deal. Some of these other guys in their songs, they say terrible things have happened to them.

So then terrible things have had to happen for them in order for them to be validated and take off, right? I wrote myself, he said something like 100% of what I've got was by virtue of my writing. He manifested it in very contemporary language. But he has said that very specifically in terms of not why he does fiction, but whether or not what he does is fiction. It might actually be projective magic.

And that's from the man's own mind. So that's pretty cool, too, I think. I have to give props right now to producer Dylan, who has popped in to say that this is all reminding her of some Ursula K. Le Guin quotes. And here is one. I'll read it. And then I think we'll listen to sex style. Science fiction is not predictive. It is descriptive.

Predictions are uttered by profits free of charge. By clairvoyance, who usually charge a fee and are therefore more honored in their day than profits. and by futurologists, Dr. Gynaecologist, salaried, prediction is the business of profits, clairvoyance, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist business is lying. Solid.

I feel like that's a beautiful way for us to get into a song that is called Sex Style. Let's do it. I love that song. Wow-y, wow-wow, wow, wow. Right, wow, wow, wow. Wow. So much there. That was sex style. That was sex style off of sex style. Um, okay, wow, wow. So much there. It's so good. So I think we can firmly say that Cool Keith as pervert, that is part of every persona. Kind of yeah. I think it's pervert again in that batai sense of like a perverter of culture. Right. You know, like he perverts everything. kind of, but the fact, this is like true perversion. This is like, desaad. This is like,

I want to see my enemies copulate with police dogs. But I love that song. I love that song as like a hallmark of who Keith is an artist, as a person, especially as a lyricist, but like as a cultural force who deals in extremity, sex style is a great example. I mean, I have the first line of Catullis 16 tattooed across my throat. I really, really enjoy using, I used to be in a band whose name couldn't get printed in the New York Times. Like, I'm actually really into this idea of seeing how vulgar you can be before something breaks. Because it's language and it's fiction in that way, like we said. If I could say, I want to see you screw a German Shepherd until I'm purple, right?

And it actually wouldn't have a ton of tangible impact on my surroundings necessarily. Like, words do hurt. but in a way this is not that right so it's cool to see words alone words alone can make people this mad which i get when the words are like i'm going to rip your legs off and have sex with your boyfriend yeah it's terrible it's interesting it's not erotic it's not at all not what's yeah it's not erotic at all. It's for a fact. Yes. And that's why I like Catullus when I think about it. It's like, right? Catullus and this like ancient Greek poetic forum where he writes all of these poems and half of them are about him being the like sugar daddy to his bisexual sex worker girlfriend, lesbian. He writes all these odes to her where he describes things she's going to do to him and other people and this, that and the other thing. And then he'll write some that are like, I hate this public. like official, and this is in like fourth century or whatever, a historian can correct me there, but Catullus would write, you know, this dude drinks pee, and it was very much like cool Keith,

right? And then he writes this one poem that I think usually gets listed as Carmen 16, but a lot of people think of it as Catullus 16. And it's so vulgar, it's so disgusting. The first, it's a poem, he's dragging his friends, right? He writes this poem and it's, you know, my Latin is rough, but it effectively translates to, it's a callout poem to his friends. who are calling him soft for writing poems. And it starts with in ancient Latin, hey buddy, hey buddy number one and buddy number two, I will ass and skull fuck you if you don't stop saying bad things about me.

Like, if you think I'm a sissy for writing love poems, I will bend you over and screw you and I will make fun of you. And what's more? And then this is what actually happens in the poem. He says, if you're dumb enough to believe that I would do those things to you, just because I wrote them down in a poem, you're definitely dumb enough to believe that I'm a sissy for writing love poems in the first place.

And Cattulles almost was arrested and killed by the government of a city for writing this poem until he took it to court and explained it. And this is basically the ancient history precursor to the argument of separating the art from the artist, right? But I think of that when I hear sex style. If you start a poem with I will ask and skull fuck you, you, my friend and you my friend, because you said bad things about the poems I wrote about my girl. there's like a actually weird time traveling through line there too. Like, if you don't like my raps, you can drink my dogs pee. Like, there's something in there and it's ancient. It's not crass.

It's not erotic. It's creative. It's fecened in its like grossness. And it makes me really happy to think that like back in ancient Greece, there may have been a cool keith. First of all, go off Catalyst. Go off Catalyst. Catalyst core. We can we can now start referring to cool people as.

Catala's core. You heard it here first. I am, this, this show is free, everybody. I just don't even know. And you are getting a degree right now. I am getting a degree. My feeble mind can barely hold this all in. How much do you think the fans of Cool Keith, who are not you, are not, I don't want to say able to see these, because it's not about ability, but like, who love the music because of these reasons. Like, I know why you love Cool Keith, because his music speaks to, like, literally every one of your interests, but you're a very singular person. I'm curious what you think, because, you know, as every artist we talk about on here, he has, like, a fiercely loyal and devoted fan base. How much of that fan base do you think likes Cool Keith for the reasons that

we're now talking about. Well, that's a really interesting, I'm glad you pose the question in that way, because it kind of gives me an opportunity to give an answer. I'm not sure if it's the direct answer, but what I think is that everyone who likes Cool Keith kind of likes him in this way, but again, like superimposed onto their reality. It's a lens that we can all superimpose in some way. So whether you're interested in Cool Keith as a figure from like the heart of the early days of rap, whether you're interested in him as the pioneer of horror core as a collaborator who has, has regularly appeared under different names and in guises of other bands completely with people like IceT. If you're curious about the pioneering work he did with Dan the Automator, if you're more into that end of the spectrum of electronic music, if you're interested in Marvel comics, I mean, I've said before,

Kookeith is basically to me the easiest way to explain him is he's the Allen Moore of rap. And so, like, if you're into comic books, okay, you can get in there too. You know, if you're into Doom, if you come out of backpack or rap land, like you can get there. You know, you can get there backwards through Wootang. You can get there through ghost face. you can get there through Rizzo. You can get there any one of your, like, I have special, special interests. I know, right?

You don't have to be me. I hope no one is. It's an uncomfortable person to exist as. But like, everyone gets there this way. You can comb the catalogs for something that will connect with you. I said this a little earlier, but it just becomes clearer and clearer that this artist was literally sent from whatever celestial place that you believe in directly for you to meet all of your needs and interests. But take me back to like your entry point. Like how did you find Cool Keith?

What was the first record and, you know, song that you were like, wow, wow, what the fuck? I heard ultramagnetic emcees on tapes when I was a kid and I heard them on the radio. And so I grew, I'm 33 and I'm white as fax paper. And somehow I lucked into even living in the annals of very Amish upstate New York. I had like an arrested development tape when I was five. and I got that Blondie was rapping on Rapture, and it wasn't, like, at all far out for me to have Native Tongues albums or stuff from the Project Bload or, like, none of this was,

I grew up liking music. And so it was like, I always knew ultra-magnetic MCs, right? But when I really, like, when it clicked with Cool Keith, was like pretty shortly after Black Elvis, which if you think about when that album came out, there's this two through your pocket from, like, 1999 to, like, Bush Invasion of Iraq, where everything was like system of a down. And it ruled. But in that gap of music right there, there was also like Eminem and the

tail, the long tail of the boy band era. TRL was really becoming a thing. This is 1999. We have MySpace now, right? Or Friendster or something. So I hear Black Elvis because the videos are on MTV and I don't put it together. I'm literally 12 or 13 years old. And I didn't put it together that it was Cool Keith from the Ultramagnetic MCs. But I knew that Lost in Space didn't sound like anything else. and I got really into Cool Keith around that record. And I have one sibling. I don't talk about my family much, but I got one sibling who's great

and who is enough years younger than me that a couple of times in our lives I've gotten like a fraction of a second to be the kind of cooler sibling, right? And like in one of those gaps was right there before he's like out of larval phase. And so I'm listening to MF Doom and all this rap music and stuff

and he's getting really into it more on like the radio side of things. But my kid brother is also as much of a nerd as I am. So we grew up reading comic books and, I mean like bone, like weird comic books, like graphic novel, whatever we could get our hand. I mean, not weird from where we sit now, but in the early to mid-90s we were definitely considered like really weird kids. Cool, Keith was perfect, right? That was an extension of Forbidden Planet and like all the stuff we like.

So Black Elvis era was when it really like. coalesced for me, I think. So this is the song, yeah, that my kid brother and I bonded over that stuck with us for years. It is Clifton off of Black Elvis Lost in Space. Can I dedicate it to Cadillac Clifton, Santiago, if he's listening? That was Clifton off Black Elvis, Lost in Space. One thing we do do here on Bandsplain is we gather. the thoughts and feelings of some mega fans.

And we did talk to a bunch of Cool Keith mega fans. Do you want to hear what they had to say? Oh, I would love to. Let's hear some more of my people. Let me count the ways why I love Cool Keith. He is a true freak, a true weirdo, a true artist. Cool Keith is dope to me because he is like a real artist in every sense of the word. He's a great rapper.

I mean, that goes without saying. He's so funny. His lyrics are so interesting. If you're an artist, like you should never be confined by trends. and you should never be confined by reality because if you want to be confined by reality, then, you know, what's the fucking point of being an artist?

Cool Keith is the original rap weirdo who does personas, Dr. Octagon, we've got Dr. Doom, we've got Black Elvis. You know, I just think a sex style when he's talking about, like, keeping it real and all that shit. And it's like his bugged out, like, avant-garde sort of MC role-play shit

was way more genuine than, like, people stuck on gangster rap and bullshit and dressing the same and talking the same and sounding the same. I've had the pleasure of meeting him twice, and the first time was like, I don't know, I think like seven, eight years ago at a show backstage,

I met a festival we were both playing. And I was trying to cool my nerves. And I walked into what I thought was like a secret backstage room. And it was just him, chilling in like a crazy outfit with a crazy hat on. And I knew he was playing. So I was like totally freaked out. Like, oh my God, I totally just blew it. Walked in on this like legend, like the main attraction, you know.

And he was like, hey. And he was like so nice. And he was like, what's good? And he like just made me feel so much more calm. I just like appreciate his music on one level and him as a character on another level. him as a human being, like a sweet, kind, generous soul on like a whole different level. So, like, he's it for me. Cool Keith is fucking dope. Keep it real. Represent what? My nuts. He's a freak. He's an artist. He's the original king of rap weirdo. He's got the best disses. He's

just the best. I love him. That is the most, I love it. It's so wholesome. I hope that I hope that you hear in this like more erudite or I say erudite when I'm trying to do the exact opposite. That's how normal people think about Cool Keith in like fewer words than. I've wasted here. But every single you hear, the same words over and over again. The man is a freak. He's so kind. And also he's a true artist, which I think was mentioned a bunch of times and we've talked

about earlier and like no shade to I'm not going to name anyone. But you know what I mean that are like, oh, this, you know, this person's an artist. And I'm like, yeah, I guess so. Like technically, but like, cool Keith is an artist in the like most classic sense of the world. And we have a really good story. So this is probably, I think, 2014 and managing a fish and chips restaurant that's attached to a venue. Cool Keith is set to play that night, you know, maybe an hour before a show starts,

the production manager runs into the kitchen. And she's like, Ian, can you make me some chicken for Cool Keith? and all we made was fish and chips, but I'm like, it's cool Keith, like, fuck yeah, I'll make him some chicken. So I walk over the store, get some chicken wings, some stuff to make a sauce, fry them up, make a little buffalo sauce, you know, Frank's Red Hot sauce, melted butter. I put a little sombal, like the stuff with the green top.

If you're from Buffalo, chill out, it's just how I do it. Cool Keith liked it. Yes, I fry them up, and then I, I, grab a side of Hidden Valley Ranch and take it down to the green room, give it to cool Keith. You know, he starts munching on him. He's like, cool, thanks, man. So, you know, I get off work and openers played.

He's getting ready to go on. And apparently the production manager goes to get him, and he's like, oh, you know, well, where's my porno? And apparently she didn't read his writer because on his writer, it specifically says chicken and porno, just flat. So she runs down to the corner store, like the 76 or shell or whatever, and grabs a porno bag, runs back, gives it to him. He looks through it for like two, three minutes, and then he's like, cool, goes on stage,

crushes it, it's awesome, probably about like halfway through in between songs. from like backstage his buddies bring out like 20 domino's pizzas and just start handing full pizzas out into the audience and Cool Keith's like you know cool Keith loves you cool Keith wants you be fed he wants to take care of you wants to make sure you're eating so yeah hands out the pizzas and then go straight into girl let me touch you that's amazing chicken and porno right I mean this story just like has everything. It's, it has like the dedication that lives inside the cool Keith fan, the fan worship that's like, I know we don't serve or make chicken at this establishment, but I will go to the store and prepare you chicken. No questions asked. None whatsoever. And it's also got,

it's a great, well, the porno mag on the wall, I think Chekhov said you always put a porno mag on the wall in the first, you know, scene. So you can, you can hand it off. in the third act, right? But if you think about that, that's a whirlwind, right? But what you have there in that chicken and porno, in our philosophical chicken and porno here, what you have is the story about Axel Rose or whoever it is in the mythology, only accepting green M&Ms. Totally. That is an artist with a backbone. I think it was Van Halen. Because no one reads the rider, right? Totally. No one reads the writer. I have actually, I've been in this, and I'm not trying to say, I know for sure whether this was a test or just a sincere love of chicken and porno.

Frankly, I assume it's both, right? But you read the writer. And if you have the cool fans, they'll be like, okay, I got the chicken. How dare you forget the porno? And if you can get both of these rare artifacts to the boss, then you get that desired third move of, we love you. We want you to be happy, have some pizza, right? If you hit those first two points, it's artist gets the respective, hey, the venue read my thing.

And now I'm going to put on a killer show. So, like, kudos to that kid. That's like, that's how all rock and roll operates. I feel like is some kid dashing out the back door to grab chicken when your restaurant only makes fish. But like, damn, I truly love that story. That's like a story in which everything turned out perfectly. How delightful. It was beautiful.

Shout out producer Dylan's friend, Ian Butterworth. Meredith, thank you so much. This has, I couldn't have predicted or also picked a better and more galaxy-brained guest to come. on here and literally tie fourth century erotic poets to Mr. Coolkeith. And I am in awe and humbled to be in your presence. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I hope if even one person out there revisits the man's catalog or falls in love with one of the characters or is inspired to start writing just because they realize they don't have to put words in a specific order anymore. Like, I hope this works. I hope you listen to Cool Keith, whoever's out there listening to this. I really hope you listen to it and that

it makes you happy. I don't know what kind of mutant could listen to this conversation and not have their curiosity piqued at the very least. Well, Meredith, what song do you want to leave people with those on their Cool Keith already on their Cool Keith journey or those that are just about to embark on it? Oh my God. I'm so excited about this because I think, and it's also very cool. because I could be wrong, but I'm going to be wrong loud. I'm pretty sure if the math I did on my fingers while I was washing my hair this morning actually was correct. This is actually the 25th year anniversary of Dr. Octagon is this year. It is.

This is the 25th anniversary. And so I decided to end with a track from that that also features one of my most favorite Keith World side characters. In addition to Clifton Santiago, who is Mr. Gerbic with the lilac afro. Mr. Gerbic is the manager of Dr. Octagon. So Dr. Gerbik is a half-shark alligator half-man, which three halves, but we got a lot to deal with. So I'll end here. One and a half, one and a half. One and a half, happy 25th anniversary to Dr. Octagon this year.

Happy anniversary, Dr. Octagon. Thank you all for joining us. Let's listen to Half-Shark Alligator Half-Man of Dr. Octagon Ecologist. If you liked what you heard today, subscribe to more episodes of Bansplaine only on Spotify. Huge thank you to Meredith Graves for guiding us through the truly magical world of Cool Keith. Find her on social media at Graves Meredith. Thank you to our Cool Keith fans who provided their voices for this episode. Emily Panic, Ben Solomon, Rahil Jamilafard, and our fried chicken deliverer, Ian Butterworth.

Bansplaine is a Spotify original series produced in partnership with Spoke Media. This episode was produced and edited by Cody Hoffmuckle, with help from Sherita Lens Solis, Dylan Rupert, Carson McCain, and Hebron Mendoz. Mixing and sound design by Will Short. Our executive producers for spoke media are Alia Tavacoleon, Keith Reynolds, and Janiel Kastner. Our executive producers for Spotify are Liz Gately, Gina Delvac, and me, Yossi Salek. Our catchy and gorgeous theme song was composed by Bethany Costantino and Jennifer Claven, and graciously recorded by Carlos de la Garza. Special thanks to Felipe Guillermo, Leah Edwards, David McDonough, Dana Meyerson,

and, as always, the framed drawing of Dave Matthews I Got on Deepop, who spirit guides this entire show.