from the 12” single, Next Plateau Records, 1986Any connoisseur of hip-hop will already be well familiar with one Kool Keith (a.k.a. Dr. Octagon), but many of today’s younger heads don’t understand just how far his legacy traces back, and even those of us who grew up loving this early stuff with Ced-Gee, as the Ultramagnetic MCs, still get our minds blown when one considers that this track was dropped in 1986. Not 1988, not 1987, but fucking ’86!!! You wanna know why the Beasties grew up so much between License and Paul’s Boutique? You wanna know about the steez that hip-hoppers were imitating for over a decade after this release? You’re listening to it right now. This was some next-level shit in the mid ‘80s, and Gee’s decision to loop the full glorious break from Melvin Bliss’ “Synthetic Substitution” literally changed the rap game. Yes, I am stoned and sturdy enough to declare that a single break altered the course of an entire genre of music, a break so fat that it should carry its own warning for those suffering from high blood pressure; not to mention, I think Kool Keith was the first rapper to ever name check a Datsun in his rhymes…word up. Clean copies of this single go for over $50, as this cut remains a gold standard, perhaps the perfect postmodern reduction of everything hip-hop has to offer.
