Kookei’s freshness has worn off in this latest album.
If rap is the new punk, then Kookei is following this trend: a few of the tracks here are under two minutes, and only two are over three. But Uptheviolence may be his longest yet and the first one where he abandons a verse-hook structure, something he excelled at on his first three tapes. And it is hardly an achievement to celebrate. The level of violence on the new songs goes up but the quality of the music is down.
The first two of his albums pissed off a lot of people (among listeners and rappers). Rumor has it somebody set his family house on fire. Kookei made enemies by dissing people left and right, but also by the way he did it. The Detroit MC’s whispering flow threw outrageous stuff over un-Michigan-like production, and bad mixing gave it a rough sonic texture. The disses worked because they also were carefully structured and memorable.
Sadly, the same can’t be said about Uptheviolence. The beats are generic Detroit production (except maybe the first track), and Kookei doesn’t even making a stab at a good hook on any of them. This is just one 44-minute-long mediocre track, lacking in focus and structure. Half the songs could be skipped. The rest is a pile of lines, ranging from great to awful, with the top level of ignorance. There are plenty of quotable bits, bordering on being gross and funny as hell: “If it ain’t no more tight pussy in the city I’m gonna hit a dyke \ Unkie says gas prices too high he finna need a bike” (“Pair of Dice”).
Kookei is among the top three the most ignorant rap artists today, the other two being Bandgang Javar and Rio da Yung OG. Yet since the first tape he aspired to be something more than a street peddler of jokes. Maybe it’s time to tone down the violence and get a stab back at a verse-hook structure. It worked perfectly. Now it doesn’t.
Since mid-2021, Michigan rap has produced a steady stream of staleness. While established names continued to work as usual (many without surprises), no new artists merited discussion or even listening. Then, out of the blue, Kookei’s Mr. Incredible came out, and it is just that, incredible.
Kookei, a 22-year-old artist from the west side of Detroit, released a few tracks four years ago. He dropped out of sight until late last year when he re-appeared with a fresh flow, a morbid sense of humor and an ear for a good production. Early in 2022, he dropped his first album Psychopath which, in retrospect, seems like a practice tape. Kookei was already searching for the right mix of elements—the street dealings lyrics, the calling out other rappers, the catchy one-liners and his own whispering delivery. Yet Psychopath lacked clarity and was too long. It had a lot of filler.
Mr. Incredible is a tight 25-minute affair with nothing but hilarious jokes, hooks that stay in your head for days and nice wordplay. Kookei’s sense of humor is somewhere between Rio da Yung OG and DaBoii but it’d be unfair to say that he’s copying them. New fans are already tearing his verses for quotable lines, like the ones on “Chris Brown”: “Keep Kookei out yo mouth for yo ass end up like Dolph” or “All you heard was PSHHHSHHHBBBBHHHSH \ I ain’t even talk.” And this is just a small sample. His hooks are not less catchy: “I ain’t really trying to conversate if it ain’t bout Frito Lay” (“Toknight”).
Some internet listeners expressed skepticism about Kookei’s music. They were divided into two opposing camps: one said that Kookei was ‘capping’ on his tracks, demanding a complete authenticity. If he said he was making headshots in his music, he had to prove it. Otherwise, it is even shameful to listen to this kind of music. Listeners from another camp said that he was “too real.” Reckless talk on the tracks might (and already had) put his close ones in danger. Both camps asked for a full mimesis: an artist should only make music out of what he experienced first-hand.
But this is exactly what Kookei did not do. He broke with the usual street rap recipe and aimed for an unusual craftiness. He stuck to a classic verse-hook-verse structure, paid attention to production and inserted some well-written jokes, and as a result, distinguished himself from rappers who remain “too real” to write real songs. Kookei sounds especially relentless on the tracks produced by Sav, arguably the best producer out of Michigan right now, along with Wayne 616. Kookei’s whisper and Sav’s drums blend so perfectly, it’s hard not to pronounce them the best duo in Michigan. We don’t want to end up like Dolph but we sure will be talking about Kookei in the future.
