"Blue Flowers"

Dr. Octagon
(Bulk/DreamWorks, 1996)

Former Ultramagnetic MC "Kool Keith" Thornton's collaboration with Dan "The Automator" Nakamura and DJ Q-Bert was already an underground hit when DreamWorks re-released Dr. Octagon; and as the bad doctor, Keith provided the perfect antidote to the dreary "real-ness" of gangsta and the everyday perversions of playas. Keith described Dr. Octagon as a "psycho black-and-white-TV doctor from 1965 visiting the future, which is now," and creating surgical and sexual mayhem. Or as he says over the slow beats and Transylvanian string arrangement of "Blue Flowers": "Dr. Octagon: paramedic fetus of the east with priests from the church of the operating room."

-- Jon Garelick