Send "Dr. Dooom " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Rapreviews |
 New Keith Thornton releases come with little to no warning. One day you're thinking you haven't heard anything from that crazy motherfucker in a minute, the next he's got two to three new projects all available at once. New Keith Thornton releases also come with little to no rhyme or reason. A hip-hop legend like Kool Keith/Rhythm X/Dr. Octagon doesn't need to explain himself to anybody, but it stands to reason he couldn't do so even if he tried. It's been argued that his ever-changing and seemingly mentally unbalanced approach to hip-hop is a gimmick to sell records, and yet there are two fallacies to this line of thinking. The first problem is that it's not a very marketable gimmick, as even Keith's best produced and/or most successful albums do not move huge units. Keith has a very devoted cult following and gets praise from the right people as an artist, but try finding a single Keith song you can play on radio or MTV when he talks about perverted sex with zoo animals or pretends to be a doctor performing unnecessary anal surgery. Keith wouldn't have it any other way, and that's the second problem with the idea that his insane rap career is one big gimmick - HE LIVES THE GIMMICK. That's not to say he does all the things he raps about (except for photographing nude models - that I can picture), but simply that he's gotten so used to saying and doing whatever he wants and still getting paid for it that he lives life with no filters whatsoever. That's precisely what makes him so fascinating and yet so perplexing as an artist. Whenever Keith has an idea, no matter how crazy it is, he'll just go ahead and do it knowing somebody somewhere will buy it. It's unfortunate that they're not all good ideas but if you're a fan of Keith Thornton's you learn to live with it. "Dr. Dooom" was one of Keith's more ingenious and well-received ideas, conceived as a response to the fact his Dr. Octagon persona had become a room with no doors and no windows he couldn't escape from. The only way to escape this persona prison was to create an even more bugged persona and have him "kill" Dr. Octagon. Thus liberated Keith could never be forced by some over-enthusiastic record label executive to create a more marketable "sequel" to Dr. Octagon - he could simply proclaim Dr. Octagon to be dead both figuratively and literally. As ingenious as this plan (and the album hatched from it) was, it didn't stop several attempts to resurrect Dr. Octagon from the grave in order to cash in... including at least one from Keith himself. Without openly admitting it as such it was pretty clear from reversing the title to "Nogatco Rd." what Keith had in mind. Much less clear is whether or not Keith really approved of "The Return of Dr. Octagon" or not. It seems that either way Keith has been unable to shake that zombie ever since it came back to life, so it became time for Dr. Dooom to return and slay his nemesis again. Just remember Keith, you have to destroy the head. Dr. Octagon will rise from the grave again unless you take the head completely off. No doubt he's figured that out judging by the macabre R.I.P. Dr. Octagon hailing the release of "Dr. Dooom 2." The video is more gruesome than the audio, a rarity for Mr. Thornton, and yet much like a campy horror flick it's not hard to watch because it's so far over the top. Keith flows and the blood flows and the pain of being tormented by Dr. Octagon's evil is made abundantly clear:...full text |
| Popmatters |
| Kool Keith, aka Dr. Dooom, aka Dr. Octagon, aka Black Elvis, aka “whatever-he-decides-to-call-himself-next”, is one of hip-hop’s most creative and unstable acts. Since gracing the mic in the 1980s, he has made it his mission to instill his odd view on life into each and every bar he spits. And he continued that streak into the 1990s when he made the phenomenal Dr. Octagon record Dr. Octagonecologyst. Of course, he did not let up when the millennium hit. But to say his output has remained stellar would be a lie. His recent efforts have been mostly hit or miss, just not on par with his previous efforts. But he keeps plugging away, never letting up. On top of that, Keith has collaborated with fellow musical crazies, like Mike Patton on his Peeping Tom project. To call Keith “weird” would be an understatement. Recently, I was having a discussion about hip-hop with a guy in his late 20s. We touched upon various topics and emcees before finally getting to Keith. The guy, who is heavily involved in the hip-hop scene in my state, said he was at a Keith show a few years back when something appropriately strange took place. Well, technically it was after the concert. Keith had hit it off with a local 20-something female, who went back with the rapper to his hotel room. It can only be assumed that she was thinking this was a night when she would get lucky with an emcee whose history cements him as one of the best to ever do it. But when they got to the room, she was in for one hell of a surprise. Rather than reach for some liquor or make a move for the bed, he went for a duffel bag sitting on the floor. Upon opening it, he picked up some women’s shoes out of the bag, looked at her, and asked the young lady to try them on....full text |
| Dustedmagazine |
| On Dr. Dooom 2, Kool Keith kills Dr. Octagon again. And again. And again. He’s drowned. Stabbed. Stoned. Electrocuted. The plug of his respirator pulled. He also uses the time to ponder dilemmas like, “Since when do rappers wear shoes?”, manage a professional sports franchise with MC Serch, fill fish tanks with Patrón, unleash a diss track against Simon Cowell, bathe with raccoons and visit Octagon’s grave. The record’s terminal mission aside, Keith’s latest exploit is one more chance to befuddle insipid rappers and flex his uncalculated argot. He boasts toting a “Louis V pad” and he’s using it to jot down anything that comes to mind. As with everything Keith-related, he’s on point when he’s leaving them nonplussed with wild tangents and non sequiturs. Like this classic detour after the graphic description of his alter ego’s demise: “A Yoo-Hoo and donuts / I had 200,000 people going so nuts.” He also doubts Kareem’s current ability on the blocks and has esophaguses shipped from China. All this lowbrow flippancy occasionally produces brilliance; in reference to bullshit critics he drops, “They destroyed the goodness like somebody pissing in the snow.”...full text |
Dr. Dooom lyrics
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