Pre Down South, Pre Chicago, Pre West Coast · Jan 21, 01:36 AM

I told myself that I’m not putting any stupid videos on this website but everyone who knows me knows how much I love Kool Keith and that I dream that I’m a singer.

I write songs, they’re poems. I make concept albums, they’re stories. There are beats and rhythms, moods and feelings. But I can’t sing like Phil C. can’t dance.

Dave and I snuck backstage at a Kool Keith show at Maritime Hall about nine years ago and I guess I expected something different but what I saw wasn’t disappointing. No booze or drugs, just chubby white girls of all sorts hanging over dudes. Some had goth styles, some had braces and plastic bracelets. If this was my show and Dave and I walked backstage I don’t know if I’d have been as cool to us as these guys were. Keith and Dave talked about collecting old movie posters and I ate broccoli and carrot sticks and roamed around. We had waited around until pretty much everyone cleared out of the main stage area, walked around back, and opened the lucky door.

A couple years later Peter and Jimmy and I went to see Kool Keith at the Metro. Jimmy got kicked out before the show though so it was only Peter and me catching fried chicken and porno magazines Keith threw from stage. Keith came out with black cowboy boots, a red cape and the plastic Elvis wig on his head. After the show I asked him if he’d think about doing a song with KRS-ONE. (I’m not on any list. I’m a kid, just a fan, who wandered around until I found Keith. I really wanted to have a Kool Keith/KRS song to listen to and get hyped to.) When I bring it up he says, “I don’t see Chris no more. He moved to Jersey.” He signed the picture I had with me of us at the last show I’d seen him.

Five years ago, I was walking down La Brea towards Sunset, headphones on, listening to PJ Harvey, on my way to work at 8:00 in the morning. I was bummed. No car in Los Angeles, forty minute walk to work, early in the morning, and I know I’m about to bus tables for eight hours. I look up and my voice cracks as a guy walks by me and I say, “Keith.”

It’s Kool Keith. He stops and he’s as cool as it gets, telling me about leaving New York, hanging out all over Los Angeles with Tupac, that he was getting bored of Hollywood. He was on his way to a coffee shop on Hollywood Blvd. to “look at girls all dressed up for work.” He asked me if I wanted to come with him and this is one of those things, like not buying a pair of Purple Label cashmere sweatpants at Loehman’s, that I totally blew. I got his phone number so I could interview him and I don’t remember if I called and never heard back from him and then didn’t want to call back because I thought I was a bother, or if I lost the number and never called, but either way, I don’t have the number. I’m not worried though. I got someone else’s number when I was working in Los Angeles who told me to look him up when I moved to NYC. I lost his number, but ran into him on the street, got the number again and got my first dog walking/house sitting job in NYC.

I’ve had years to think about questions I’d ask Kool Keith and ideas for a documentary on him. In the meantime, I continue to walk everywhere. I’ll let you know next time I run into him.

— Albin

Comment

1. If you have the time, check out Kool Keith’s personal album. It’s Keith’s take on R&B.

   — Jerry Nge · Jan 21, 06:23 PM · #

2. Have you seen the KHM video for Sally? If not, go to blip.tv. It’s beautiful. Can I borrow the personal album?

   — albin · Jan 22, 01:22 AM · #

3. they’re all just about perfect.

   — joey-joe · Jan 22, 03:41 PM · #

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