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Kool Keith
 Dr. Octagon, or as he's more commonly known, Kool Keith (real name Keith Matthew Thornton), occupies a strange, very individual spot in hip-hop from which he produces almost yearly albums under a near-ridiculous range of aliases. Aside from the more recognised Kool Keith and Dr. Octagon monikers, he's gone by names like Dr. Dooom, Black Elvis, Jimmy Steele and Matthew. Initially lauded for his abstract vocal work as a part of the old-school crew Ultramagnetic MCs, Keith has gone on to collaborate extensively and become one of the most prolific, if occasionally inconsistent, artists in hip-hop.
Initially untalkative and a bit vague, Thornton's answers are worrying for somebody attempting to get an article out of them. When asked about his initial ideas regarding hip-hop in his early days and how the genre's changed now, he simply answered that "it's changed, it's progressed," but later went on to say that "I listen to a lot of Kool Keith stuff. It's pretty much all I listen to now, I don't really need to listen to anyone else, you know - I'm my own competition. I'm too futuristic, I'm always ahead because I'm so futuristic." Certainly, lots of people would agree. The first Dr. Octagon album, 'Dr. Octagonecologyst' recieved massive critical acclaim, as did 'Black Elvis/Lost in Space'. For all the inventive, genre pushing music Thornton does release (he's credited with inventing the acid-rap and horrorcore genres, which speak for themselves), his enormous output is somewhat unreliable in quality, with some of his records not registering even the tiniest blip on many radars. For someone with eight releases in 2006 and 2007, though, it's fairly understandable.
"I'm writing all the time, I'm writing on the plane, flying, I'll write for five hours on my flight. I like to write... Sometimes I don't even know what I'm doing with it, but I write. Not everything I write gets recorded." Thornton pauses for a while and I'm about to ask him if he's still there when he starts talking again. "Yeah. I mean different towns, when I'm on the road, certain places... I record in different cities, get a different feel, I think I made some tracks in Australia one time."
It's difficult to understand just how closely Thornton's music and personality are linked merely from listening to his records. Of course you hear his work and think to yourself that 'he must be nuts', but it doesn't really register until you're talking to him and his voice drawls and trails off, then snaps back all high-pitched and decisive. Or until he mentions not listening to any modern music and then going on to describe in detail one of the latest Snoop tracks, and saying he likes it.
"I've just seen a video with Snoop Dogg and it was very good, he had a vocoder and was using it with a Planet Rock kind of beat. I'm happy to see a person like him take something I used to do, and people used to say I was weird."
With the kind of experimental style Kool Keith's known for, people are always going to be very divided in their opinions and either passionately supportive or harshly derisive. Thornton doesn't think people know him well enough to be able to make accurate judgements like that, though, and it seems that it wouldn't bother him too much if they did, anyway.
"White people don't really know me, they don't know my culture, they don't know I'm from the Bronx, walking around to the strip club. They just hear a record and assume, they don't know. Like you got different people in the world, you got boxers, arm-wrestlers, wrestlers, rappers, baseball players. Some people go home to different lives. You've got some rappers that live in the suburbs, then you've got rappers who grew up in the grime and they still go around there to shoot pool and play cards. I don't think the people of the world see the real true pieces of the person. I think I'm more street than the average person."
"People aren't seeing the real reality. People are seeing the propaganda of the appearance, the reflection of the individual on the TV screen. They're not living my reality, I think my reality is a lot more real than the average person's. I'm an urban person, I walk around New York. John Lennon walked around New York."
Ben Ford-Smith
Kool Keith plays as part of the Big Day Out at Wayville Showgrounds on Fri 1 Feb
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