Ultramagnetic MC's: Critical Beatdown [Bonus Tracks] : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

The 1988 debut album by the Bronx's Ultramagnetic MC's was the first full-length showcase for wack-job Kool Keith. "I swarm around with a thousand bees/Absorb earth and the honey from trees," Keith rhymes on "Break North," as producer Ced Gee laces the block-rocking beat with what sounds like a diced Steve Miller sample. Although Kool Keith had yet to go interstellar mentally, his wraparound cadences were already in effect -- as was his penchant for odd disses ("I'm like a heat ray cooking up your brain/I like it well done"). Critical Beatdown remains the quintessential release from the late-Eighties "fast rap" era, providing the source material for the Prodigy's contentious "Smack My Bitch Up" and the break-beat blueprint for Fatboy Slim. Buffed out with original twelve-inch mixes and new interviews with Keith and Ced, this edition honors an album that now feels both dated and definitively def.