says Liz Armstrong, in the Chicago Reader:
"MC Cat Genius pads and slinks around onstage in white gloves and a cat mask--he dresses up as his beloved pet, Piccolo--and meows and raps in a cartoonish nasal squeak. His partner, Obelisk, throws down on the mike too when shit gets super nutty, but mostly he's in charge of the canned Fancy Feast--loose, messy tracks that scramble hip-hop beats with sunny, rollicking organ and samples from songs you'd rather forget existed (the Fat Boys' "Protect Yourself/My Nuts," Michael Jackson's "Will You Be There"). Typical lyric content: pancakes, Zubaz pants, butts. Typical stage antics: autographing sample-size bags of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and tossing them to the crowd. In other words, this is armpit-fart humor at its finest."
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OBELISK & MC Cat Genius are two rappers of different species and occupations, joined together to ignite a show-plode-ing dance fever, be the venue a movie theater, an ice cream parlor, an art gallery, a warehouse loading dock, or a dive bar. Forerunners in the American midwest edutain-hop circuit, these two consummate entertainers unite highbrow and lowbrow as easily as they unite thought-provoking raps with innovatively terrible mashups and presets, or as handsomely as they unite collaborators from Europe, Japan, and the USA.
With such great features as:
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a back catalog of CDs packaged in defaced carved-out random books, snack- and grass-filled pillows, and spatula-burnt clamshell cases with condiment packets and activity placemats
a stunning multimedia live show incorporating coloring contests, scary stories, great jokes, bizarre mashed-up backing track re-visions, dumb backing videos, stompin' dance moves, and (of course!) surprises,
good manners,
CONSIDERING OBELISK & MC CAT GENIUS, ACADEMICALLY
by Channing Kennedy
CEO, Cat Jams Label
Piccolo Braden, better known as MC Cat Genius, is a six-year-old puffy black and white cat. As the celebrity inventor behind the Perfect Pancake Maker and other lifestyle accessories typifying the idiom of 'genius unencumbered by usefulness', he enjoys a playboy's devil-may-care lifestyle, with interests ranging from cruising in his drill machine to rolling on his back. His lyrics and attitude seem in step with typical rap braggadocio, until a line or song about, for example, seducing an owlfinch, raises the possibility that any similarities are a carefully executed, poorly constructed ruse, like a fat fifth-grader discussing the fictional video games he has played. Piccolo's sister Blanche owns Columbia, Missouri's Cat Jams Label ( MySpace ), a CDR/web/avant-format microlabel with a focus on rule-based and outsider music; Cat Jams has released the bulk of his and OBELISK's proper releases.
MC Cat Genius made his musical debut when he and his owner Channing Kennedy (then working as Animal Family) entered Japanese avant-pop elder statesman Cornelius ' Point album remix contest. Out of hundreds of entries from around the world, Cornelius hand-picked thirteen tracks, including "MC Cat Genius' BomBassTic Re-bomb", to comprise 2003's PM by Humans ( article , review ), which saw distribution in Asia, Europe, and the United States. Channing and Piccolo also received a handsome monetary royalty settlement. As a meta-remix tribute to a meta-musician, borrowing its concept from the Charlie Kaufman movie Adaptation, and which featured a cat who said 'fuck' in a funny voice, "Re-bomb" neatly established MC Cat Genius' juxtaposition of high- and low-concept devices as an internal criticism of popular music forms.
OBELISK, a commercial airline pilot, signed to Cat Jams in 2005. His debut CD of instrumental hiphop tracks, Hot Beats / Cool Treats , simultaneously eschewed both rockist technical instrumental skill and anti-establishment copyright-infringement sampling, instead opting for slick-sounding owner-orphaned presets, neither original nor stolen. By forfeiting both ends of the integrity spectrum, OBELISK sought to remind that entertainment value and a hot-ass xylophone riff could still supersede music politics. Hot Beats / Cool Treats included two vocal tracks, "Aviators" (featuring vocals rearranged by Sonore 's DJ Chienloup ) and a cover of the Fat Boys' "My Nuts" (his first collaboration with MC Cat Genius). The CD itself came in a run of 50 garage-saled random textbooks, defaced with grade-school caliber grafitti and collage, with the CD itself in an ejector case hot-glued into a carved-out cranny on the inside back cover. To ensure that the packaging would have to be at least partially interacted with / destroyed for the product to be fully experienced, and to further dissolve the demarcation between creator and observer, two unlabeled pages in each book were glued together around a mini-CDR of remixes by Digiki , James Harvey , the Marriage , the Diet Soda Supertsars , and a poorly-received live rework by Tape Store during his last-place performance at his junior high's Battle of the Bands.
Since first performing together at a benefit show to replace a dog statue stolen from an ice cream parlor in early 2005, OBELISK and MC Cat Genius have found in each other a rapping compatriot with sympathetic goals and complementary strengths. OBELISK's winningly conversational delivery provides a counterpoint to Cat Genius' complex rhymes, and a mutual enthusiasm for incredible dance moves and natty outfits makes for a presence as unmissable on the stage as it is on the studio. While hiphop might at first seem an arbitrary or aesthetic decision for these two, its musique-concrete nature and self-digesting treatment of its own anachronisms make it the only idiom that could frame what these two have to say, without being trite or, worse yet, unentertaining.
Thanks for your time.
Channing Kennedy
CEO, Cat Jams Label
January 2007
MC Cat Genius, "Manteau de Ville"
from Cagesan 's album I Love Machine
dir. Gregg Lewis , 2006
OBELISK, "Tomato Saber"
from the album Hot Beats / Cool Treats
dirs. Stephen Howard and Stephen Howard's mom, 2004 & 2005
Digiki feat MC Cat Genius, Sarbochron, and Channing Kennedy, "Pancaked (OBELISK Remix)"
from the single Pancaked
dir. Ted Cianciosi , 2005
Dritt Drittel, "Pancaked2 (5MCs&1GUITARHYTHMIX)"
from the single Pancaked
dir. Shunsuke Kuroki , 2005