You would think I came with drums and a band I move in right after ya, sign your shit like Metallica These guys really think they stars on the block Who can stop the UG controllers from droppin bombs on the block? The flow is hard to jock, with the formula
“I’ma take these ward, Ultramagnetic release the vinylĪnd competitor’s limo drivers come to the Bronz from ConnecticutĪ legacy that was born, since KRS and Scott LaRock Oddly enough it’s Keith who seems to have the easiest time reverting back to the ways of old, managing to recapture the magic of his pioneering rap flow in brief spurts on songs like the Moe Luv space-funk bomb “Mechanism Nice (Born Twice)”: There’s one problem here – no matter how much Ced Gee, Moe Luv and Kool Keith (original member TR Love is notably absent) want to recreate 1987, it’s no secret that they’ve all changed drastically over the last 20+ years. The album’s title is a clear reference to Ultra’s iconic underground status in the 1980’s, where 12″ single after 12″ single set the rap world on fire while they remained largely invisible to mainstream culture as a whole. Nevertheless after several aborted attempts like a “B-Side Companion” in 1997 and a “Make it Rain” single in 2001, Ultramagnetic finally put their differences aside and got together in the studio to record “The Best Kept Secret,” which hit the streets in early 2007. Thoughts of an Ultramagnetic reunion seemed unfathomable, as there was just no way you could reintegrate a larger than life ego like Keith’s into the confines of a group, where in theory ALL members are supposed to shine – not just the craziest. Keith was anything BUT secretive, seeming doggedly determined to take listeners on a voyeuristic ride through his uncensored mind, leading the observer to wonder whether Keith was a madman or just crazy like a fox. By now you’re familiar with the results, which ranged from incomprehensibly brilliant toself-indulgent and disturbed. Keith seemed to keep his wilder impulses in check during Ultramagnetic’s 10 year run from 1984-1994, but as the group dissolved and went their seperate ways Keith chose to obsess over every bizarre fantasy in his mind on wax. When Keith chooses to break through our ionosphere and rocket his raps towards human ears, his genius often gets lost in translation between verbally diarrhetic torrents of doo doo. In a career that has spanned three decades since, Kool Keith has gone beyond being the vanguard of a new era to being an auteur of the odd, existing in an era of his own creation in a dimension far beyond the understanding of mortal men. & Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, N.W.A, Ice-T, De La Soul and the Geto Boys among MANY others, but it took a few artists who were willing to break the ice first and show that the only limits to a beat and a rhyme were the infinite power of your own imaginaton, all while “Travelling at the Speed of Thought.” These days we look back and fondly remember records by Eric B. While the mainstream stayed stuck on Fresh Prince and the Fat Boys, underground artists from East to West reinvented what rap music was and could be, and a new generation of MC’s ushered in rap’s golden era. You could even in fairness argue that 1986’s “Ego Trippin'” was the start of the new schoolmovement, with Kool Keith and Ced Gee openly taking potshots at “Peter Piper” rappers with their “childish rhymes.” There was nothing SECRET about what they advocated – it was time for rap to go to the Next Plateau and evolve beyond the familiar but unimaginative rhyme stylings of Kurtis Blow, Busy Bee and the Sugarhill Gang. Back in the 1980’s when Ultramagnetic MC’s first started dropping singles to DJ’s and radio stations on the East coast, their chopped up sampling techniques and futuristic rhymes signalled a changing of the guard in rap.