black elvis explained

Ever since I bought Dr. Octagon based on a music video I saw on MTV’s AMP (it all comes back to electronic music for me, sadly), I’ve been checking out what Kool Keith has been up to every few years.

While the pickings have been slim lately — Kool Keith Present Thee Undatakers anyone? — there was a time when I’d pick up nearly anything he’d put out. Whether it was Black Elvis, Dr. Dooom, the Spankmaster or a Master of Illusion, I was sold. That’s a lot to keep track of, I admit. Luckily, Hua Hsu is on the job this month with his hip-hop column, in which he explains the appeal:

While their subsequent albums would confirm their legacy, the late ’80s were the Ultramagnetic MCs’ strongest period. And as with any situation involving four very different people eventually walking in four very different directions, there was a lot of material left over, a tease for what might have been. The strongest collection of that material is The Basement Tapes 1984-1990, and it really makes you wonder what exactly was going on in that basement. (As Kool Keith famously told journalist Brian Coleman: “Other groups were just plain weed. We were more like angel dust.”)