Tag: Analog Brothers

New Audio: Kool Keith Teams Up with Marc Live and Ice-T on Swaggering “The Formula”

Kool Keith has a long-held reputation for being one of hip-hop’s most eccentric and unusual characters, as well as one of the genre’s most prolific artists, recording and releasing 33 albums as a solo artist and through a number of different collaborations, including the legendary Ultramagnetic MCs.

The Bronx-born emcee’s 34th album, Black Elvis 2 is the long-awaited sequel to 1999’s Black Elvis/Lost in Space. The album is slated for a June 16, 2023 release through Mello Music Group and features guest spots from Marc Live, Raaddrr Van, Dynamite, Agallah and Ice-T. Sonically, the album reportedly sees the legendary and eccentric Bronx-born emcee taking his information-age rhymes to a whole new label with a sound that’s equal parts street shit hip-hop and outer space.

Black Elvis 2′s latest single “The Formula” is a partial Analog Brothers reunion featuring Marc Live, a.k.a. Marc Moog and Ice T, a.k.a. Ice Oscillator alongside Kool Keith, a.k.a. Black Elvis and Keith Kong. Marc Live’s eerie street boom-bap meets outer space production built around shimmering and atmospheric synths and skittering boom bap beats that’s roomy enough for each emcee to spit swaggering bars full of pop culture references and mayhem with each emcee seemingly pushing each other. But by far, it’s probably the hardest and most menacing you’ve heard Ice-T in quite some time.

Although he’s known as a co-founder of renowned, old school hip-hop act, Ultramagnetic MCs and for a lengthy  solo career, in which he has taken up a number of aliases and personas while perfecting and expanding upon an imitable flow full of surrealistic and fantastic tangents, grim and nightmarishly violent imagery and pop cultural references — namely comic books and cartoons, Kool Keith  may arguably be one of hip-hop’s most uncompromisingly weird and challenging artists. And interestingly enough 2016 may have also been one of the biggest years for The Bronx-based emcee, as the long-lost full-length effort Pimp to Eat from his collaborative project Analog Brothers with Ice-T, Pimp Rex, Marc Live and Black Silver was released earlier this year, along with his latest solo effort Future Magnetic, which had the incredibly prolific emcee collaborating with Ras KassAtmosphere’s Slug, MF Doom and Dirt Nasty.

In fact, last year, I wrote about “World Wide Lamper,” a single consisted of a menacingly sparse and hypnotic production featuring winkling synths and subtle yet propulsive drum programming paired with Kool Keith, B.A.R.S. Murre and Dirt Nasty trading braggadocio-filled bars full of insane punchlines that make references to pop culture, the profane, the grisly violent and the surreal. That single was quickly  “Super Hero,”a single that pairs a production consisting of wobbling and undulating synths, stuttering drum programming and looped chiming cymbals around a wildly infectious hook with two renowned emcees trading verses full of super-heroes, villains and anti-heroes maneuvering through a comic book-styled universe.

L’Orange an up-and-coming, Nashville, TN-based producer, who collaborated with Mr. Lif on his The Life & Death Of Scenery, released a free EP Koala and is about to go our on tour with Wax Tailor, and in his free time, the up-and-coming producer remixed Kool Keith’s and MF Doom’s “Super Hero.” And with the L’Orange remix, the Tennessean producer pairs two of hip-hop’s most acclaimed emcees ridiculous rhyme schemes with classic, super hero/comic book dialogue and a production featuring twinkling keys, some old-timey clang and clatter, a distorted old school-leaning blues vocal sample, and tweeter and woofer rattling 808-like beats  – while retaining the song’s hook. And in some way, the L’Orange remix manages to boldly and mischievously evoke film noirs, with an insane yet impeccably done ballroom caper — and you can probably picture the heroes (or shall I say, anti-heroes, in this case) narrowly yet confidently escaping capture.

 

 

 

New Video: Mello Music Re-Releases Another Single from a Rare Early 200os Collaborative Effort Featuring Ice-T, Kool Keith and Others

. The third and latest single “More Freaks” features a collective of emcees rhyming about pimping, hustling, being a bigger badass than anyone else, complete with ridiculous pop culture references, surreal imagery and punch lines that are both hilarious and morally bankrupt over a sample that features a looped horn sample and enormous, old school-leaning boom bap drum programming reminiscent of a sleazier version of Mary J. Blige’s “Real Lov

New Video: Rare and Trippy Hip-Hop All-Star Collaboration Meshes R&B, Soul, Synth Pop and West Coast Hip-Hop 15 years Before Their Time

Earlier this month, I wrote about Analog Brothers, a brief collaborative project featuring  Ice-T, Pimp Rex, Kool Keith, Marc Live and Black Silver that recorded an extremely rare album Pimp to Eat back in 2000; in fact, the album is […]

 

As the story goes, back in 2000 Ice-T, Pimp Rex, Kool Keith, Marc Live and Black Silver teamed up for a project that they dubbed Analog Brothers, and they recorded an extremely rare album together Pimp to Eat; in fact, the album is so rare to me at least, that I didn’t know it existed — and I bet that you didn’t know it did either. According to Ice-T, the original masters of Pimp To Eat were delayed when Kool Keith’s vocals were stolen during the melee that followed the Indiana Pacers vs. Los Angeles Lakers NBA Finals game on June 19, 2000. Of course, no one actually knows if that’s some insanely true and legendary story or if it’s something someone just made up.

In any case, Mello Music Group will be re-releasing Pimp to Eat on June 10, and the re-release’s first single “We Sleep Days” feat. Jacky Jasper possesses a acid-tinged and futuristic production that paris shimmering and oscillating synths and stuttering boom-bap beats with some of the most talented emcees out there trading fiery bars about pimping, hustling and drug dealing. Sonically, the song sounds as though it evokes a hip-hop alternate universe in which Outkast and Too Short managed to collaborate together.