Kool Keith/Dr. Octagon
6:30pm, Stage 4Speaking with Kool Keith is like flipping through his schizophrenic discography. It's highly entertaining, frequently puzzling, and occasionally discomforting. The shape-shifting wordsmith has recorded as Dr. Octagon, Matthew, and Black Elvis, and he most recently resurrected his deranged cannibalistic physician for Dr. Dooom 2 (Traffic Entertainment).
"Just 'cause you're underground doesn't mean you have to eat a bologna sandwich; I stay in five-star hotels!" Keith barks. "I hear a lot of people talking about the streets. What streets are they talking about? There are no streets. I respect someone who says, 'I'm coming out of the Wal-Mart with the shopping cart, and I'm gonna tear you apart!' If you want to talk about Kmart, Motel 6, and the Waffle House, then we might have a record."
Since his pioneering days with the oft-overlooked Ultramagnetic MC's, the Bay Area rapper's accused a long line of spitters of jacking his style.
"The only rapper I respect out there is Puffy," Keith concedes. "He sounds the best to me, and everybody else is straight garbage. I just listen to Puffy, and I throw everybody else's CDs out the window. He's the only one I want to do a record with."
On the cover of his 1997 album, Sex Style (Funky Ass Records), the famously eccentric MC dons a pink thong and raps about a closet full of kinks that would make R. Kelly blush. Ladies might love Cool J, but they lick Kool Keith's hinter regions.
"Women nowadays want to wear sweatpants every day and regular Kmart underwear and think that you're supposed to be sexually attracted to that," Keith asserts. "I mean, go out and try to enhance your lingerie closet. Go buy some nice garments!"
