Ultramagnetic MC’s Critical Beatdown: A 25th Anniversary Retrospective

They have one of the most unforgettable names in Hip-Hop and have made some of the most notable and important songs in the 34-year history of recorded Rap music. They are called Ultramagnetic MC’s and 25 years ago they released one of Rap’s greatest and most influential albums, Critical Beatdown.

Ced Gee was well known in The Bronx going back to the old Mastermind Productions days when Ced’s older brother Pat used to work with KRS One’s original crew The Celebrity Three.  They at first used an SP 12 but things changed when Ced Gee’s mom bought him an SP 1200, and he soon mastered that machine and used it to produce numerous classics for what would be one of Hip-Hop’s seminal albums.

What we tend to forget are Ced Gee’s contributions to two of the greatest Rap albums ever in Boogie Down Productions’ Criminal Minded and Eric B. & Rakim’s Paid In Full. Since both of these albums dropped before the SP1200 was even released in the summer of 1987,  Ced instead used the SP 12 his brother employed when he made beats for these LPs.

The Ultramagnetic MC’s wanted to take the feel of the old school but elaborate on the concentration on lyrics, vocabulary, patterns, cadences and flow that Grandmaster Caz, Treacherous Three, T La Rock and later MCs introduced to the landscape of Rap. When the group landed a deal with Next Plateau Records in 1986 they knew they were onto something when their initial single “Ego Trippin'” became one of the hottest songs in all of Rap, rivaling even “Eric B. For President/My Melody” and MC Shan’s “The Bridge” for popularity in New York. As Ced Gee became more and more in demand and Ultramagnetic acquired a label situation, the original Mastermind Productions set up soon was converted to what was called the Ultra Lab. It was here that the next two singles “Funky/Mentally Mad” and “Traveling At The Speed Of Thought/MC Ultra (Part II)”  were constructed and later released to a rabid fanbase to overwhelming response in 1987.

Ultramagnetic MC’s was comprised of Kool Keith, Ced Gee and DJ Moe Love, then later TR Love. Kool Keith and Ced Gee went to high school together and became B-Boys down with New York City Breakers and the Brooklyn based People’s Choice Crew which Moe Luv was also in. After seeing many of their neighborhood friends and associates form crews and gain success in Rap (Cold Crush Brothers, Dana Dane, Just-Ice, KRS One, etc.) they decided it was time to throw their hats in the ring and record demos. The combination of Kool Keith’s abstract lyricism and off the wall metaphor and the power and conviction of Ced Gee’s futuristic delivery over the latter’s SP1200 beats made for classic material time and time again. The Rap world had no choice but to notice Ultra as they performed regularly at Latin Quarter, Union Square, The Rooftop and any other venue where Rap was welcome and flourished during the late 80’s in New York City.

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Photo: Next Plateau

Other groups in New York began to take notice of the sound and overall sonic aesthetic Ultramagnetic MC’s were putting forth in their recordings and either took cues from them or it spurned them to become more detailed in their own production. Ced Gee was in the middle of a circle of  DJ’s, producers & studio engineers that would forever change the way Rap sounded in New York during the late 80’s. Amongst them was Marley Marl, DJ Mark The 45 King, Kurtis Mantronik, Ivan “DJ Doc” Rodriguez, the members of  The Bomb Squad and Paul C. The Bomb Squad have always cited the production on the early Ultramagnetic MC’s singles as being highly influential on the sonic aesthetic they crafted on It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back.

Keith, Ced, Moe and Trevor shifted the brunt of their recording, mixing and production from the Ultra Lab to Paul C and CJ Moore’s Studio 1212 when they began recording the rest of the album which would become Critical Beatdown. Over the course of what took about a month Ced Gee made beats using the records provided for him by Moe Love and TR Love while taking direction and constructive criticism from Paul C in the studio in regards to recording. “Ced Gee (Delta Force One)” and “Kool Keith Housing Things” were produced and recorded in the Ultra Lab. While Ultramagnetic were seen as individuals that were divergent from the rest of the Rap world there were a lot of well known Hip-Hop luminaries involved in their careers and the creation of this album.

Red Alert was responsible for making the connection that brought Ultramagnetic MC’s to Eddie O’Loughlin’s Next Plateau Records, which at the time was a burgeoning Rap label home to acts like Red Alert, Hurby Luv Bug (as Hurby’s Machine) Black, Rock & Ron, Kings Of Pressure,  Salt N’ Pepa and Antoinette. Critical Beatdown was also executive produced by Andre Harrell of Uptown/MCA and at the time Ultra was recording at Studio 1212 acts like CJ Moore’s Black By Demand, The Heartbeat Brothers, Mikey D & The L.A. Posse and Super Lover Cee & Casanova Rud were making notable recordings. Paul C even contributed here and there during the production process, including producing the classic “Give The Drummer Some”. Ced Gee, Marley Marl, DJ Mark The 45 King & Paul C were among the wave of producers that revived the interest in James Brown by sampling his back catalog to craft beats that resonated with fans worldwide.

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Critical Beatdown was released in the Fall of 1988, one of the greatest years in Rap music history with numerous classic albums bookending it. To put Critical Beatdown into its proper context, it was released weeks after Marley Marl’s In Control Vol. 1, Eazy-E’s Eazy-Duz-It and Ice T’s Power and weeks before Def Jam dropped Slick Rick’s The Great Adventures Of Slick Rick. Although Public Enemy’s It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back was released 6 months prior to Critical Beatdown and they sound like companion pieces to each other. It Takes A Nation Of Millions was crafted in the summer of 1987 and also punctuated by Hank Shocklee employing the newly released SP 1200 and heavily inspired by the influential 1987 singles Ultra released.

The singles “Watch Me Now”/“Feelin’ It” and “Ease Back“/”Kool Keith Housing Things” both got significant burn as Critical Beatdown made its rounds blasting out of radios, Sony Walkmans and the stereo systems of assorted vehicles (especially jeeps). Kool Keith and Ced Gee’s bizarre reference, crazy rhyme cadences, surreal lyrics and futuristic production captured the attentions of many Rap fans and heavily influenced others. Even to this day when you listen to Ghostface Killah and Raekwon’s non sequitur bars or refer back to Keith Murray inventing new vocabulary words, you can trace it all to the sciences cooked up by Ced Gee and Kool Keith in the Ultra Lab and Studio 1212.

While Critical Beatdown is hailed as an unadulterated classic Rap album and widely regarded as one of the most influential Rap albums of all times both in terms of production and lyricism it didn’t do very well commercially. Ultramagnetic MC’s released seven double sided singles on Next Plateau between 1986 and 1989, all thirteen songs contained on them are considered classic compositions (“Traveling At The Speed Of Thought” was released twice two years apart with “A Chorus Line” as the later B side because Next Plateau made Ultramagnetic shoot a video for it). Even though Kool Keith and Ced Gee failed to move a serious amount of units with their debut LP they gave the Rap world another project that further cemented what the overall aesthetic was for classic Rap albums while selling a gang of SP 1200’s for E-mu Systems.

Here’s to Critical Beatdown, a genre defining classic album that 25 years after it was released still sounds as great as it did when it was first released in 2013. The goal when creating art is to make it timeless so someone will feel compelled to write retrospectives about it in the decades following it’s release. Hopefully more Rap albums released in 2013 will keep this goal in mind rather than just trying to move units. It’s far more important to first move the listener.

One.