Steve 'Flash' JuonFifty years from now, if books are still being printed let alone read, there will be a great one on the life and times of Keith Thornton. Ideally it would be a “coffee table” book with full color pages, filled with interviews and concert photos, plus a full discography with accompanying album covers. By full I do mean FULL. Every album he released with the Ultramagnetic M.C.’s. Every solo album he made as Kool Keith. Every alter ego and different name he used for a release. It would be a monumental undertaking but rewarding to the author and reader alike. It’s like the classic question people were asked about why they chose to climb Mount Everest — “because it’s there.” Mere existence invites the challenge.
Today I learned about another of Keith’s projects I had yet to discover. Using the pseudonym Lonnie Parachute he worked with a producer named your best friend jippy — or just jippy for short. Their collaboration resulted in an album also called “Lonnie Parachute” in October of 2023. I now divide my life and my music into pre- and post-pandemic eras, because a lot of musicians learned how to collaborate without ever having to come face to face. For a rapper whose own output swings from introverted to wildly extroverted, Kool Keith benefited more from this change than most. He was naturally built to take beats produced remotely, craft a persona to fit them, and apply his half-rapping half-spoken word stream of verbiage to them.
“You know when you go outside…
… and then come back inside
It’s total darkness, and then you go to sleep
And then about 2 o’clock in the morning…
You look out the window, and look up in the sky
And you seem something un, unidentified
An object! A real bad object”
jippy understands Keith’s proclivities well, letting him use the outro of “Koolin’ Out” as the foreword for the next track “Aeriel Phenomena.” Many modern albums lack sequential formatting — meaning you can skip around them at random without losing any of the experience — while “Lonnie Parachute” invites you to experience it in order from front to back. This is particularly commendable when Keith is involved because he’s so creative and eclectic he can lose the plot just trying to get all of his thoughts out. I don’t mean any insult when I say this but he really needs an editor at times to keep him focused and turn out the best results.
“They prey on negative news
Everything promoted demonic down the public throat
Talent hidden so nobody can’t quote
The genocide of music
Made to express and give out confusion
They like creating a false image on computer”
Keith’s flow is as rambling and stream-of-consciousness as its ever been on songs like “Invisible Crooks,” but there’s a narrative thread you can pull, one which finds him railing against the corruption of the music industry. I’m happy to take Keith as he is whether he can find a point or not, but when he does it adds a pleasant coherence to the experience. jippy enhances the vibe with tracks that have a subtle, sample driven, layered groove. It’s the antithesis of post-pandemic rap which became driven by royalty free production techniques; this makes it both a throwback and post-modern at the same time.
Keith’s persona on this project draws heavily from the legend of D.B. Cooper, and samples of news reports fill in that identity, but to make a long story short he was an airplane hijacker who procured a large some of money and jumped out of a plane with a parachute on his back. He was never found and his real identity remains a mystery unsolved. The FBI gave up trying to solve the case in 2016 which has only increased the notoriety of Cooper’s name, but notably neither Keith or jippy lean into it harder than necessary. Keith could have used an alias like “Dan Cooper” or “Mr. Cooper” but didn’t. The vibes for this short but thought out project are pleasant — neither heavy handed nor too light to the touch. Kool Keith is well known for abstractions that can be hard to follow but “Lonnie Parachute” is so easy to get into it might be an ideal place for newcomers to his work to start.