Dr. Octagon

Hip-hop icon Kool Keith's sci-fi gangster creation Dr. Octagon is a time-travelling surgeon from Jupiter who raps about sex, killing patients, gynaecology and spaceships, and stands as one of rap's wackiest, most surreal comic book characters. Kool Keith (real name Keith Riverdale) grew up in the Bronx, New York, and originally made his name as part of the trio Ultramagnetic MCs who released the seminal underground hip-hop album 'Critical Breakdown' in 1988. His oddball pop culture references and love of 1980s B-movies and the creepy soundtracks to films like 'Halloween' and 'Tales of the Crypt' made him one of the pioneers of the 'horrorcore' sub-genre. He first came up with the idea for the character of Dr. Octagon whilst collaborating with DJ KutMasta Kurt in 1996. With the help of producer Dan the Automator and DJ Qbert, they created an absurdist, grotesque, trippy alternative universe on debut album 'Dr. Octagonecologyst', and it became a landmark record that later influenced the likes of Eminem, Missy Elliott and Outkast.

Whereas most of his peers were telling gritty portraits of inner-city street life, Keith took an escapist, surreal approach, invented colourful personas such as Black Elvis and Dr Doom and paraded around wearing superhero capes, before killing off Dr. Octagon on the album 'First Come, First Served' in 1999. He was resurrected though on the album 'The Return of Dr. Octagon' in 2002 and made an appearance with rock trio Yeah Yeah Yeahs on the track 'Buried Alive' in 2013, but it took 22 years before Keith worked again with Dan the Automator and Qbert on 'Moosebumbs: An Exploration Into Modern Day Horriplitation' in 2018. Typically crude, comic and vividly hypnotic, the album wanders through Area 54 alien conspiracies, karma sutra sexual adventures and bizarre, jazz hallucinations against a backdrop of retro-futuristic, boom-bap beats and funk grooves.