Hip Hop Thursday: Octagon's Terestrial Beginings

Posted over 2 years ago

Kool Keith, Hip Hop's answer to Yuri Gagarin was of this planet once. In fact he resided in what one might even consider the fertile crescent of Hip Hop civilization, The Boogie Down. 1988's Critical Beatdown hits as hard as any of P.E.'s early works, but manages to take Hip Hop out of the stratosphere. One can only imagine Kool Keith suited up with the other moonwalker's in 2001: A Space Odyssey discovering the second monolith. And some may say K.K. did, because his abstract word play and "aliens scrambled my brain" word play touches on themes of psychiatry to outer space - definitely not your ordinary hip hop salute circa 1988 (think "My Adidas" or "The Boomin System").Critical Beatdown stands as one of those essential hip hop albums that is both ahead of its time and hard to find.I'll post a full track later.

Comments (9)

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Marco1019 says *Critical Beatdown* is a true classic. _Give The Drummer Some_, _Watch Me Now_, _Ego Trippin'_, and so much more.

Permalink posted 05/03/2007
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Rawkkiddoh says man this is the first mention of these guys that I have seen, and I have to agree with Marco's choices

Permalink posted 05/03/2007
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contrabandwidth says I think Kool Keith is a trail blazer in Hip Hop. He's one of the first (to my knowledge) to rap about nonsense and abstract ideas. And in other firsts, aparently UMC's were the first group to use the sampler as an instrument (I'm assuming they mean live). Some of it's silly and childish ("space doo doo") but at the same time it has a kind of free form creativeness that most by the books hip hop lacks. To me it's nice to see hip hop embrace a weird perspective rather the the stereo typical macho bullshit. Me personally, I'm more weird than macho - so I guess I can relate.

Permalink posted 05/03/2007
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Rawkkiddoh says I remember the first time I heard them, and I was like what the hell. They grew on me though, and I still listen to them today

Permalink posted 05/03/2007
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mktackabery says No arguments here.
- PLAY
- QUEUE
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contrabandwidth says Thanks for the post, how do you post a whole song like that in the comments?

Permalink posted 05/03/2007
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mktackabery says 1. open a separate window 2. upload an mp3 3. cut the tag out of the new post and paste it into the comment. :)

Permalink posted 05/03/2007
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contrabandwidth says Thanks, your reward is this:
- PLAY
- QUEUE
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mktackabery says nice! thanks!!! :)

Permalink posted 05/03/2007