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Dusted Features
Every Friday, Dusted Magazine publishes a series of music-related lists determined by our favorite artists. This week: Hip hop eccentric Kool Keith and flamboyant punk Seth Bogart.
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Listed: Kool Keith + Hunx
Kool Keith
As a founding member of Ultramagnetic MCs, Kool Keith (Keith Matthew Thornton) and crew dropped the seminal new school album Critical Beatdown in 1988. The album helped redefined the genre’s sound, pushing new sampling techniques and beats that showcased Keith’s lyrical prowess. In the mid 1990s, under the name Dr. Octagon, Keith collaborated with Dan the Automator, Kutmasta Kurt and DJ Qbert to come up with the cult classic Dr. Octagonecologyst (it’s still hard to believe it was picked up and distributed by DreamWorks). From there, Keith conjured up the exceptionally raunchy Sex Style and Spankmaster, the high concept Black Elvis/Lost In Space and various other madcap endeavors.
1. Slave – Stone Jam
This album really influenced me growing up. Slave, as a group, really influenced me to start making my own records, so I always mention them with everything I do, whenever anybody asks me about my influences. They’re just an exceptional funk group with their afros. This album was all about the bass guitars, but Slave had a bunch of great albums – they’re really underrated.
2. Parliament Funkadelic – One Nation Under A Groove
They were introducing funk and costumes and being different. Parliament gave everyone a chance to be different and to express themselves. Way before the Village existed, and way before SoHo, there was Funkadelic being that influence. Cindy Lauper with the long socks, the bride of Funkenstein, the glasses and the long boots – it was all Parliament Funkadelic.
3. James Brown – Black CaesarThis is the best movie soundtrack ever made. The music just fit the movie so well, that whole ‘come to New York City’ vibe. This soundtrack matched every part of the movie, step for step along the way, in a way that no other movie soundtrack has.
4. Curtis Mayfield – Super Fly
This one is another dope movie soundtrack. This was a pimp record, but it was exceptional. The music was like jheri curls and straight hair, strictly. It had its own signature to it; nobody could duplicate an album like this.
5. Ultramagnetic MC’s – Critical Beatdown
This was the album where I first introduced myself to the world. It was just a classic album, with all the golden age stuff from around that time. Well produced – everything about it just helped raise the bar.
6. Run DMC – Raising Hell
This album was rap taking over rock. Run DMC came in and they were so hard they made rock groups sit down. They got respected, and the rock lane was penetrated. Rock had to take a back seat after this album came out.
7. Brothers Johnson – Blam
Two brothers that play guitar with Quincy Jones production. The production on there was just so different – it was three-dimensional. It felt like sounds were coming from everywhere. I don’t have any favorite songs from this one; I love the whole album.
8. Kool Keith - Dr. Octagon
That’s when I took hip-hop to another level of change. It changed the whole industry – it threw a monkey wrench into the industry, as far as the underground scene, the backpackers...everybody that thought they were lyrical before that album came out. That album came out and stunned the critics.
9. Kool Keith – Spank Master
The beats on here, the whole vibe was just very Detroit on this album and that’s what makes it one of my favorites.
10. Master P – Ice Cream Man
This album is different, but it’s just a cool album to sit back and listen to. It’s an important album too, because this was right around the beginning of what became a big time for the South, when they were on the rise and developing into what they are now in terms of their impact on a national scale. "Bout It, Bout It" was probably my favorite off that album.
Hunx
The Bay Area’s Seth Bogart makes glitter-punk and alt-doo wop in Gravy Train and Hunx and His Punx, respectively. On Bogart’s first solo album, this year’s Hairdresser Blues (Hardly Art), he relied less on personality and more on personal stories, including a song about the late Jay Reatard. Dusted’s Tobias Carroll wrote in his review of Hairdresser Blues, “These aren’t songs simply notable for their attitude or irreverence — they’re a fine collection of songs, period.” In this week’s installment of Listed, Bogart espouses his love for Janet Jackson and “plant music,” along with more expected selections.
1. Jacno - Rectangle
GREAT music for bugs to lift weights, get buff, suntan and dance to.
2. Plantasia - Music To Make Your Plants Happy
And this is great music for your plants to do all that stuff to. Really nothing better than rolling a joint (or taking pills?) and listening to Plantastia in the bathtub.
3. Veronica Falls - Veronica Falls
Honestly I can’t remember the last time I fell so in love with a record. I can’t get over this. I’ve listened to it 56,789 times.
4. Cleaners from Venus - Midnight Cleaners and Under Wartime Conditions
"I would not be with you unless I wanted to be" is such a basic lyric but I find it so romantic. t’s powerful, it’s direct and it says a lot. Sometimes I cry listening to CFV. Really beautiful music.
5. Dolly Mixture - Demonstration Tapes
"Your eyebrows may be the best thing in town…”
6. Janet Jackson - Control
If you don’t like this, you are an asshole.
7. The Wipers - Is This Real?
I bought this album in my late teens cuz of the Bratmobile lyric "I don’t wanna sit around and talk about the Wipers.” Thanks, Bratmobile. You really turned me on to something special.
8. The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground & Nico, White Light/White Heat, The Velvet Underground and Loaded
Sometimes I wonder, you know, is this gonna just sound good til the world ends? I mean, these recordings happened so long ago and they still sound so incredible.
9. Britney Spears - Blackout, Circus and Femme Fatale
My favorite pop star is really on a winning streak.
10. Grass Widow - Interlogic
Probably the only band I can think of right now that would still sound amazing if you took away their instruments and they were only allowed to sing. There’s some weird magic going on with them.
By Dusted Magazine
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