A gospelized, autobiographical collage of raps, beats, modern jazz and songs, featuring the in-demand drummer alongside an expansive roster of collaborators bringing together artists from his hometown of Houston (vocalists Corey King, Lisa E. Harris, Fat Tony, Jawwaad Taylor), those he became close to over several years living in LA (Sam Gendel, Zeroh, Mic Holden, Josh Johnson, fellow International Anthem artist Carlos Niño), and other creative partners from his life-long journey in sound (Chassol, Svet, Kenneth Whalum).
‘Rooted in his faith, Jamire opens the album with Hands Up, a devotional hymn cut against the stark reality of the modern world that sounds like an apocalyptic middle-grounding of Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly and Merry Clayton’s Gimme Shelter. Whether in the rousing, spiritual Just Hold On or the fluid verses of Fat Tony on Safe Travels, the music exists in the tension between higher realms and social realities — what Jamire calls the “duality of a personal thing and what I’m seeing in my community, in the Black community, as a Black man.” ‘

‘One of the greatest rappers ever to rock a mic, the legendary Ultramagnetic MC touches down in London for a one-away collaboration with We Are The Horsemen, featuring the one and only Kaidi Tatham.
‘From his days in the seminal 1980s Bronx unit Ultramagnetic MCs, through his pioneering development of new conceptual characters and styles in the 1990s (Big Willie Smith, Dr. Octagon, Dr. Dooom, Black Elvis), to his continuous run of radically independent recordings in the 2000s and beyond, Kool Keith defines rap longevity and artistic originality. No one else in hip hop has a comparable record of continuous reinvention, conceptual boldness, and stylistic panache.
‘And after four decades in rap, Keith is still one of the hardest working rappers in the game, perpetually seeking new sounds to spit on and new collaborators from across the musical spectrum. Fresh off the acclaim for his new Black Elvis 2 release, London Is The Place finds Keith riding the Horsemen’s atmospheric, break-toughened riddim and reaching back in time to drop kaleidoscopic, stream-of-consciousness impressions of the Ultramagnetics infamous 1989 tour, before flashing forward to the present in order to namecheck London city, Honest Jons, Nubiya Garcia, and master keyboardist and broken beat pioneer Kaidi Tatham, who contributes trademark jazz keys and bruk steez to the AA side remix. The 12” is closed out by a third version, the Horsemen’s own Kool Jazz Mix, bringing see-sawing organ stabs and a neck-snapping Ultras-sampling hook.
‘Kool Keith, Kaidi Tatham, and We Are The Horsemen, taking it higher and overcoming the pressure with ‘music so progressive’, to quote Keith himself!’
A limited edition.

On vinyl at last, this was originally issued in 2006 in two volumes, as a CDr and a CD respectively, in tiny, numbered runs; now impossible to find, and the stuff of legend.
Kool Keith at his most rawly unhinged, vivid, and strange.

The Compton rapper nailing it on his major-label debut — brilliant story-telling, intimate and natural, but ruminative and densely rhymed — with blaxploitation-style settings by Dre, Pharrell, Just Blaze and co.

Infectious, party-hearty, yes yes y’all rapping, from deep in the early-80s.
Peter Brown’s in-house Land Of Hits Orchestra gives up the instrumental, on the flip.