Reviews of My Kaleidoscope by Myka 9
Reviews are in, and heads are raving about Myka 9’s new book My Kaleidoscope.
THE WIRE MAGAZINE
“Given how much rap lyrics lose when pinned to the page, a rap monograph can be a risky proposition. But My Kaleidoscope, which sets over 60 of Myka 9’s lyrical compositions next to an extensive oral and photographic history, is an object lesson in getting it absolutely right. It helps, of course, that the one-time Microphone Mike might just be the single artist most deserving of this treatment in the history of the music.
“A strong claim, perhaps, but I doubt your favorite rapper would disagree. A founding member of Freestyle Fellowship and a keystone of the West Coast underground, Myka is widely credited with any number of formal innovations in rap, including inventing the now ubiquitous chopping style of double and triple time rapping. His presence spans periods on both coasts at key points, and though he has never had a hit record under his name, his influence has been felt everywhere, whether directly or indirectly.
“The book’s oral history section is endlessly captivating, detailing everything from his early ghostwriting work on NWA and the Posse, to being courted by Dre for Death Row and Eazy-E for Ruthless, not to mention freestyling on the fly with Tupac, Biggie, Busta, and cheerfully leaving a trail of blown minds in the process.
“Beyond rap, he has improvised with Horace Tapscott, hung with Don Cherry and The Last Poets, and used to chop it up with Billy Higgins. Nobody has ever mastered the art of improvised freestyle rhyme quite like Myka 9, and nobody has ever approached his originality or facility with meter, cadence and flow. His contemporaries don’t even mention rappers when talking about his skillset: typical references are Charlie Parker and John Coltrane.
“The background is fascinating, but My Kaleidoscope is mostly a book of lyrics. Song lyrics often look forlorn as text, but a further revelation here is that Myka’s raps read beautifully as written poetry — emotionally rich and personal, spiced equally with occult metaphysical concerns and intimate ground level observations, and always with a spectacular grasp of the flexibility of word as sound.
“The complexity of the rhymes makes it impossible to infer the performed flow, but Myka’s are so intricate that even if you know the songs it’s often hard to remember quite how it all fits together on the page. But none of that matters: songs like “First Things Last” or “Coup De Theatre” read as poetry without loss. Remarkably, many of the songs here are coherently metered as texts that can stand separate from the performed versions.
“ “What came in the beginning, the hen or the egg?”, he asks on “First Things Last”. “Tell you it must be the rooster because he came from the head”, comes the answer, a nicely oblique blues boast about the status and improvisational skill of the early bird, followed quickly by the self-deprecating observation that “nobody was listening to a thing he said”. Oh, but they were, and My Kaleidoscope makes it clear that few writers of any kind can do what Myka 9 has been doing for over three decades. So if you slept, rise and shine.”
— Francis Gooding, The Wire Magazine 463 (@francis_gooding / @thewiremagazine)
SCRATCHED VINYL
Myka 9 is a legend of the Los Angeles underground, with a career spanning over thirty years. He’s been part of scenes like The Good Life and Project Blowed, and he’s been in groundbreaking groups like Freestyle Fellowship and Haiku d’Etat, as well as maintaining a long and fruitful solo career. Now he gets to add one more feather in his cap as Parker Pubs Press releases his book, My Kaleidoscope.
My Kaleidoscope can be broken down into three sections. The first section contains lyrics to selected works over the years. While some of these lyrics might have been available here and there, this is the first time to get them all in print and presented as poetry. In reading this section, you really get to appreciate on a technical level how good of a lyricist he is, and just how many different linguistic tools he has at his disposal. When listening to the music, sometimes it can be easy to miss just how much is going on just with the language, because Myka 9 does so much with the melody and rhythm of his delivery on the mic as well. Just having these lyrics in this form is worth the price of admission. The second section is full of photos, which capture a range of moments from throughout his career. It’s not extensive, and it doesn’t feel like the focus of the book, but it does make for a nice moment in the middle of the book to focus on the visuals before diving into the third section. The third and final section is where you get the oral history of Myka 9’s career. It’s well edited and well rounded, and even the most die-hard Myka 9 fan is sure to come across a few pieces of his career that they were unaware of. Personally, I didn’t know about his time in New York in the early ’90s and his lost albums with Capitol, or the time he got locked up and two other famous emcees just happened to be in the same block as him. There is also great attention paid to the development of his different skill sets and his influence over the years. This is nice to have in print, because Myka 9 didn’t step to the mic fully formed, and his career has been so long and winding and he’s worked with so many different cats.
My Kaleidoscope is a must have for any diehard fan of underground hip hop. There are a lot of artists who have come and gone over the years, but few have left as large of a footprint as Myka 9. It’s nice to have his career documented in a book like this.
Rating: 9/10
DAD BOD RAP POD
“It’s really dope to see the collected works that have been edited by Myka himself. There were some curveballs and surprises for me reading through these lyrics of things I thought I knew for years. It’s really nice to have this all in one place. There are some really entertaining interviews in there and some great context on his career. Myka 9’s a hell of a rapper, he deserved to be treated like a prestige product like this book does. It’s just cool to have, it really looks good on the bookshelf. I’m happy that more people will stumble on this and go and seek out his works. I’m sure an unfathomable amount of work went into it by many different people. We want to thank Parker Pubs Press for sharing it with us and Myka 9 for the decades of incendiary lyricism. It’s very cool to see the flowers being given, it just seems long overdue.” — Nate LeBlanc
“I’m just glad Myka is getting his shine. We can all tell that he’s a virtuoso. To read about his influence a whole generation later is so well-deserved. Myka always had clear diction, which at the very least gave you a little context despite the fact he was rapping at warp speed. But to read it laid out just breathes a whole new life to his creativity and what he was doing. I also really like how the book was organized. I’m always a fan of long-form oral histories. Overall, I highly recommend it. It’s a great addition to this body of knowledge.”—David Ma
“This book really demystifies a lot of the stuff he’s saying. Here’s some great documentation about really one of the best dudes to ever rap, at a pure skill level. Shout out to Parker Pubs Press for putting that together. I’m glad that when the earth is rubble in the next hundred years, the aliens can sift through it and pick up the Myka 9 book and know who the rap god was.”—Demone Carter
from Dad Bod Rap Pod ep. #230 (11:00 timepoint) (@dadbodrappod)
SAUL WILLIAMS
MC HOMELESS
“I can’t put this book down. Myka 9 has to be one of the top twenty most influential rappers of all time, yet he’s been mostly ignored for the last 25 years by mainstream music publications. First time I met Myka, I nervously handed him a copy of my first album, and he proceeded to look at the cover and freestyle about it — a moment I’ll never forget. The editors have done a service to the world, hip hop, and culture in general by compiling this book.” — MC Homeless (@rustbelthammer)
UGSMAG
“Myka 9 is one of those artists who is likely your favourite rapper’s favourite rapper. He has infinite respect and acclaim within the underground hip hop scene, but you have to question, why isn’t he a huge household name to all hip hop fans? From detailing shitty major label deals, to lost albums, and other raw deals, this biography does a good job answering that question and more. The first half of the book features a curated selection of accurately transcribed lyrics, which are fascinating to read along to the music. The second half is a great oral history from Myka and his collaborators. As a longtime Myka 9 fan and someone who’s even designed several album covers for him, I still learned a ton of things from this book. From Myka’s moving to NYC, freestyling with Pac and Biggie, going to jail; there is an endless supply of great stories here. A super fun read all around. Parker Pubs are doing an excellent job spotlighting our indie rap heroes.” — 319 Heads (ugsmag.com)
Parker Pubs has edited & published Myka 9’s My Kaleidoscope and 2Mex’s Word Murder. Rhymes & hip hop history for the underground heads.
