Ultramagnetic MC's – Critical Beatdown

Haven´t heard it in many years, don´t know why. This still sounds great, the beats, the rhymes, the in places pretty daring sampling, the scratching, overall a time capsule of that era for sure. Ced Gee still isn´t a good MC, but within the crew and placed in that content, he works ok, the real star is of course Kool Keith, who rhymed not as wild, bizarre and let loose like he did later, especially when he started his solo career, but he quotes Rakim and who loves Hip Hop and doesn´t know this classic should rush to cope a copy.

Doesn't get any better. Just before sampling became a restricted practice the Ultramagnetics perfected the art and produced an unrivaled masterpiece. The fact that the album is so raw is what makes it perfect. Kool Keith is hip hop royalty and this demonstrates why.

Perfection! To me one of a handful of timeless, brilliant, era defining albums

Critical Beatdown ..... UK Jungle Teknow owes a debt.....................
Kool Keith Housing Things 3:15

Critical Beatdown is by far one of the best Hip Hop albums of its era and should go down as one of the all-time greats. backed by innovative production techniques it is very easy to see why Kool Keith during his tenure was hyped as the lynchpin of the group and here was pivoted for later success, with his excellently executed unique and quotable wordplay throughout. (it is explained when Liam Howlett finally tracked down Kool Keith to do the track "Fat Of Land" he asked Keith to rhyme exactly in the same style as this album, with Keith walking away with a £40K pay cut for his troubles) with every track been simply grand the standout tracks like "give the drummer some" "Ego Trippin'" and "Kool Keith Housing Things" set very heavy benchmarks to be topped in the hip hop world and showed also the band weren't also afraid to take competitive shots at other Hip Hop leaders at the time such Run-DMC, Rakim and Big Daddy Kane. although TR Love at the time did nothing much on this album and showed he was a capable rapper on the follow-up, Producer and secondary rhymer on the album Ced Gee closes both sides of the album, which compliments Keith very well, which is best heard backed by his stellar use of Bob James on the closing track "Ced Gee (Delta Force One)".

For the best experience of this album, I do recommend picking up the Remastered edition, as that adds the original Ego Trippin' without the edited verses and the single only cuts of Funky which was re-done for the album as a remix for the album and A Chorus Line, which was sampled by numerous dance acts of the 90s. Although The ultra mags were hyped for success from this one album, various disputes would plague them on the follow-up album Funk Ya Head (best chronicled in this overview here:https://thequietus.com/articles/08259-ultramagnetic-mcs-funk-your-head-up) and just as they were finding their way with Keith veering off into weirder and harder territory with his writing style and cadence, the band called it quits after their jazzy boom-bap album The Four Horsemen. They still do a tour and release the odd release here and there, but nothing came close to this at the time. As Kool Keith quotes when relating to playing this album on a beatbox "it is worth your alkaline (batteries)"

it dont get much better