Before officially breaking up at the end of 2012, Das Racist’s recording legacy consisted of two incredible mixtapes and a difficult, divisive studio album. In the time since Relax hit stores in September of 2011, Kool A.D. has released something along the lines of five solo mixtapes and a full-length collaboration with rapper/producer Kass (Peaceful Solutions); the amount of material he’s made even in the year since Das Racist called it quits tops the total output of his previous gig. And that’s in addition to publishing a zine (Joke Book), starting a novel, and serving as the drummer for a hardcore band (Party Animal). But while Victor Vazquez has moved on from Das Racist, the Kool A.D. persona hasn’t really budged at all, essentially the same role that served as a foil to the more aggressive and quintessentially “New York” Heems—just as stoned, brainy, and incensed, but more pacifist and Pacific Coast in demeanor. It’s a style that’s proven to be quite adaptable as he’s staked out a solo career, whether on the left-field R&B of Palm Wine Drinkard or his Bay Area homecoming detailed on the “bus route” trilogy of 51, 19, and 63. Kool A.D.’s Twitter feed-of-consciousness style may be an acquired taste, but it seems to pair well.
Despite being a collection of outtakes from his upcoming proper album Word O.K., Not O.K. features the kind of roster that makes it feel like the biggest event of his post-DR career—in terms of both production and guest rappers, it spans the widest range of relative unknowns and relatively bigger names, including frequent collaborator Amaze 88, Stones Throw mainstay Oh No, and Toro Y Moi, who produces “Fettuccine”. The most notable additions pop up on “CNN,” where Kool A.D. enlists Del Tha Funkee Homosapien and Ladybug Mecca from Digable Planets, rappers who represent the geographic duality within Kool A.D.—Bay Area loopiness with an off-kilter, playfully subversive NYC sensibility. “CNN” serves not as a cosign between the three MC’s involved, but rather a pledge of allegiance: they all had brief, seemingly accidental moments as an alt-type in the commercial spotlight before spending the rest of their career working the margins (with the exception of Del’s appearances in Gorillaz) to the approval of their fans.
Which is a roundabout way of saying that a presumable collection of outtakes can’t be seen as “for the diehards” any more than 51 or Palm Wine Drinkard; it’s all been for the diehards. If you’ve engaged with Kool A.D.’s solo work in any meaningful way, you’ve heard him do pretty much everything he does on Not O.K. Repurposed lyrics from Purple Haze deep cuts? Yup. References to his own lyrics, along with acknowledgements that he is referencing his own lyrics? Those too. The familiarity cuts against even the ostensible “surprising” bits—brainwashing repetition in stoned raps about being stoned (“Exotic”), brainwashing repetition in near-hyphy dance tracks (“Trippy Gurl”), the gutsy intrusion of French MC B.E. Lebeau, “Psychotropical” spending two minutes playing itself backwards, oh, and plenty of subliminal shout outs to Lil B, whether ad-libbing “computer” at random continuously throughout “Insane Computer Raps” or being the first MC to acknowledge the influence of Andy Milonakis rapping like he’s Lil B on “Tiger Style”.
Of course, Kool A.D. is such a singular, shrugging presence that all of the aforementioned ends up being fairly cohesive. Yeah, the, post-modern, topical omnivorousness of his lyrics makes “Twitter rapper” an easy hook for Kool A.D., though it’s no less true: The utter lack of affectation in his rapping means that hearing his rhymes is equivalent to reading them in real time. The Camp Lo quotes are seemingly given the same amount of space and import as a socially trenchant line about being “in Glasgow buying weed from Indian fans of 50 Cent” or a commentary on how his peers “cry over spilled milk and argue about whether leather kilts are hetero.” On “Pass the Milk”, he’s barely rapping at all and it results in his most potent lyrical deconstructions: “I feel like Leonard Cohen/ and I don't even know if I can name a Leonard Cohen track/ is Leonard Cohen wack?/ That’s rhetorical you don’t need to answer that.” He ends his verse claiming “fuck the Beatles, go Yoko,” which gets at the questions of how serious you’re meant to take all of this: is he aligning himself with Yoko Ono because of the racial and gender undertones inherent in her dismissal by casual rock historians? Or is he saying the Beatles suck for the reasons most people do, i.e., just to be a jerk?
By the same token, you’ve heard this all before. This deep in, if Kool A.D. is missing anything crucial from the Das Racist dynamic, it’s a sense of stakes in his music, a hint that he’s headed somewhere or challenging himself. Or maybe he just needs someone rude enough to offer resistance. Though limitless in its reach, Kool A.D. uses his worldliness and wordiness as a reason to deconstruct language and burrow even more deeply into himself. It’s unclear whether he means it as a boast or self-deprecation, but when he lays out a plan to “ouroboros my own lexicon,” it’s a fair description of Not O.K. itself, a fancier, outre way to say the same thing.
