Sean’s Night Out: Kool Keith

By SEAN DETORE
MyNorthwest.com

You gotta be nasty to get into Kool Keith’s crew, at least that’s what Denis Deft spit to the crowd last Friday night at Neumos. The line is from a cut called ‘Nasty Girl’, a track found on Kool Keith, Denis Deft’s and Yeti Beats’ new album called Bikini N Thongs which was released this past October. I don’t really know a thing about Kool Keith’s music except for two songs. The first, a song called ‘Livin Astro’. I only know this because I had to you tube the term Black Elvis/Livin’ Astro, (which is actually the name of the record that the aforementioned song comes from) and look for a certain music video that I remember seeing in college while eating lunch in the commons area. The other, a song called ‘Get Off My Elevator’ (a mighty slick song I might add) which is found on the Office Space Soundtrack. Having said that though, you definitely don’t need to be familiar with Keith’s work to enjoy a set by him and his crew.

The show started with Denis Deft warming up the crowd with some hollers and whoops. He busts out a few cuts from Bikini N Thongs, ‘Take You There’, ‘Nasty Girl’ and ‘Real Super Stars’. ‘Nasty Girl’ being particularly great what with a smooth, sexy beat that dripped of sex and sweat mixed with a great call and response effort between Deft and the crowd. Deft shouts, ‘All around the world women are…’ And the crowd responds with, ‘NASTY!’

Finally, Kool Keith bounced onto the stage and that’s when the show really started. The crowd was hyped to see this hip hop visionary take the stage, a schizophrenic master of ceremonies who has gone by a various amount of alias’ over the years including but not limited to Dr. Octagon, Black Elvis and Dr. Dooom. Keith has such a smooth delivery and great flow to his creatively nasty rhymes that when he lays them over the slick, spacey beats it’s easy to enjoy the musical wake left in his trail. Keith and crew busted out songs from his different personas all night long making sure the crowd knew which character he was singing as throughout the entire night by calling out an alias in between any given song. What was great about Keith last Friday is that when a song ended and the beat stopped he would keep rhyming and flowing until he was spent. He’s so good at what he does that it was hard to tell if he was rapping a song from a record or just flowing off the top of his head. The only thing that made it easier to decipher such things actually is when he would name check some familiars around town such as Pita Pit, the Mariners and the city of Seattle itself. This of course got the crowd to cheer and ache for more. Kool Keith owned Neumos Friday night and had the crowd eating out of his hands. Great energy, great vibe and most of all a great talent. The Dr. was in Friday night and the show was most definitely sick.