Kool Keith

Tracking down an artist’s full discography is usually as simple as skipping through the alphabet until you land on their stage name. When it comes to the intergalactically strange Kool Keith, however, the exercise is considerably more involved. The Bronx rapper first appeared as a member of Ultramagnetic MCs—whose 1988 debut album, Critical Beatdown, was a watershed moment for underground rappers and sample-chopping production techniques alike—but, in embarking on a solo career, he fractured his identity in a number of different directions. There was Dr. Octagon, the time-traveling ob-gyn from 1997’s Dr. Octagonecologyst, the masterpiece that serves as Keith’s official solo debut; there’s also Black Elvis, and Dr. Dooom, and Mr. Nogatco, and on and on. The redubbing is always more than superficial: Keith’s famously layered, eccentric, animated writing style teems with characters whose warring agenda and raging ids send them colliding into one another and unsuspecting passersby.