Ultramagnetic MC's |
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Wed. December 17.1997 11:25 PM EST |
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Ultramagnetic MC's Still Breaking The RulesHip-hop pioneers back again with 14-track B-sides compilation of remixed and remodeled favorites. by Addicted To Noise Senior Writer Gil Kaufman |
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The idea of the album came after Ced Gee and Kool Keith reunited for a one-off live gig July 11 at New York City's Tramps. |
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Unless you were sweating late into the night in underground New York hip-hop clubs in the late-1980s, chances are you've never heard of Ced Gee or his Ultramagnetic MC's. "We were the first to go ahead and break the rules," said 34-year-old
Along with rapper Kool Keith (a.k.a. Keith Thornton, or as hip-hoppers know him, Dr. Octagon), Moe Love (Maurice Smith) and T.R. Love (Trevor Randolph), the group produced one legendary album, 1988's Critical Beatdown, as well as a trio of now-classic singles ("Ego Trippin'," "Mentally Mad" and "Chorus Line"), all three of which are remixed and remodeled for 1997 on the recently released 14-track compilation, The B-Sides Companion. "We wanted to let people know it was more than just old songs," Gee said of the tracks he's remixed with his unique, off-kilter style, overlaid with rapper Keith's sex-heavy, odd-cadence delivery raps. "Basically, we wanted to show people that if you know what you're doing, you can re-create samples right there with the same records and, in some cases, make them even better." The idea to re-group for the album came about when Gee said he found some unreleased songs ("Kool Keith Model Android #406" and "I'm On"), which resulted in the crew reuniting for a one-off live gig on July 11 at New York City's Tramps. That gig is represented by the spare, sludgy beats of the "Live at Tramps" (RealAudio excerpt) track, during which Keith's frantic stutter-stop style strains to keep up with the beat as he freestyles stream-of-consciousness lyrics about his microphone prowess mixed with snippets from Keith's Dr. Octagon album. "I tried to set up the Tramps gig as a good-will gesture," said Aaron Fuchs, who convinced the club to book the show and who's also the owner of New York-based Tough City Records, which has released a three-volume series of Ultramagnetic basement tape albums. "There were bad feelings with Keith about the albums and I wanted to get them a real quality gig. I thought it would be a good club for them, and from what I understand, it was one of the best pay days of their career." Steve Weitzman, the talent buyer for Tramps, said the successful summertime show surprised him both for how good the crew sounded and the diverse audience they drew. "It was a really good turn-out," Weitzman said about the near-capacity gig in the 800-person venue. "It was packed with their fanatic fans from way back and lots of downtown white kids, Asian kids, hip-hoppers, black, white, it was a really mixed crowd." After the show, Gee told him it was one of his favorite Ultramagnetic gigs of all time, Weitzman said. Gee isn't about to argue. "That show felt so good that we said, 'let's go back and work on 'Ego Trippin',' '' Gee said. "We just put so much into recreating these songs." Although the changes to "Ego Trippin' " and "Watch Me Now" '97 remixes on B-Side Companion are barely discernible, "Break North" is reworked with a more ominous, slowed-down beat and electronic squeal, and the previously unreleased "Kool Keith Android #406" lives up to its name with robot-like scratching and mathematically charged cartoon-superhero lyrics. It's not hard to sense the Ultramagnetics' influence on just about any rap tune on the radio, Gee said, especially their refusal to adhere to hip-hop traditions. "Just rap on a whole now, if you listen to rappers, they're not scared to rap in different cadences," he explained. "Before we tried that, though, everybody rapped according to certain rules. Now there's all different styles and that's cool. We were the first to go ahead and break the rules." One of the DJs who said he was inspired by the Ultramagnetics' off-kilter style is 27-year-old Frank Quattlebaum (a.k.a. Rasta Q-Tip), a hip-hop buyer at Amoeba Records in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district. "They definitely opened my mind to different kinds of hip-hop lyrics and just being all-out about whatever you want to say," said Quattlebaum, whose been DJing since age 13. Quattlebaum pointed to Gee's and Keith's off-the-beat rhyming, use of unusual metaphors and three-bar choruses as changing the format of how rap music was created, giving groups such as the Freestyle Fellowship, the Pharcyde, as well as the Hieroglyphics crew inspiration for their inventive styles. "The album's good, even though it's not that different. But I think the songs definitely stand up," he said of the new release. "The things they did, people just weren't doing then and they're not doing now." [Thurs., Dec. 18, 1997, 9 a.m. PST] |
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