Kool Keith - "Cheesecake"

Kool Keith has been doing the laziest fucking hooks in human history for decades now. It still works, too.

When Lil' B dropped "Ellen Degeneres," a million broken haters crawled towards the sun, lamenting how lazy his hooks were. Half of them owned Dr. Octagon on vinyl. Keith fathered that whole style -- minimal effort, maximum results. Sure, "THEY DOGS DRINK MY PISS" surpasses anything Kodak Black could give you today, but my point remains.

Kool Keith was on social media before Bruce Sterling realized that was possible. If you take nothing else away from this, know that much.

Can you imagine being in the room when Columbia records was handed Black Elvis/Lost in Space? Those poor bastards were still trying to figure out if they could make more money off Slayer than The Afghan Whigs. This is back when Destiny's Child was starting to blow up, back when their Epitaph imprint was still making Offspring money. Just a bunch of terrified children.

I'm probably only trying to justify -- to romanticize -- what Kool Keith "meant" by his crap-tastic catalog. Strip away the, uh, concepts, and we're only left with another rapper full of ideas but too smart to do all that work. Kool Keith nailed the perfect persona early and coasted ever since. Year after year after year.

...and is that even an insult? This is a big part of why he's The Godfather to this day. Shit, one of my favorite Keith personas never even happened: Ricky the Fly Wine Taster, which got scooped by some bitch "producer" from The Netherlands with the same ethics as Com Truise.

My favorite Keith album remains Masters of Illusion. Motion Man brought out the best of him back when he still had the energy to give it.

So is it weird that the "Lao Tzu in hip-hop" conscious crew at Mello Music Group are putting out videos that are 70% strippers in 2017? Frankly, no. And that's a stupid question. The Kali Yuga devours us all, it's just not evenly distributed yet. Keith will keep perfecting this same recipe until he dies. That probably means he's got fifty to one hundred great tracks left in him. That has to happen somewhere.

Was this song good? Was this video good? Again, fuck no. But what truly matters is that Keith keeps racking up points under the same name he's been giving Critical Beatdowns with since 1988. No matter how much work you put into your bars, no matter how many songs you release between here and the grave: few of you will ever match up. Die slow.