Basehead

Featuring a scratching DJ and spoken-sung vocals by group leader Michael Ivey, Basehead defied simple categorization. Ivey mumbled or sleepily crooned his wryly ironic lyrics over quirky, quietly rockish arrangements in a hip-hop/college rock hybrid critics termed "slacker rap," while comparing Ivey to Lou Reed, Tom Waits, and Sly Stone.

A middle-class black kid who grew up learning guitar, Ivey formed high school bands with fellow Pittsburgh native Brian Hendrix, then complained about the lack of guitar parts in their keyboard-dominated R&B covers. While studying film at Howard University, Ivey (who made his directing debut with the video “Do You Wanna Fuck [or What]?” from Not in Kansas Anymore) recorded Play With Toys almost exclusively himself. The album signaled its offbeat genre crossing by opening with Ivey, as “Jethro and the Graham Crackers,” performing a hillbilly version of James Brown’s “Sex Machine” to the sound of audience catcalls.

The tiny West Coast label Emigre released 3,000 copies of Play With Toys to considerable college-radio play and rave reviews. Ivey recruited friends from Howard for a 1991 tour with “alternative rap” acts Me Phi Me, Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, and Divine Styler. The Basehead band also played on three tracks of the Kansas album, which backed Ivey’s deadpan takes on racial and sexual politics with a somewhat harder sound. In 1996 Basehead released Faith. Guitarist Keith Lofton, working as Lazy K, released a solo effort, Life in One Day (Mutant Sound System), the next year.

from The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001)