456 Live Presents...
Ultramagnetic MC's live in Manchester
The Ultramagnetic MC's is an American hip hop group based in the Bronx, New York. Originally founded by Kool Keith in 1984, the group currently consists of Keith, Ced Gee, TR Love and Moe Love. The group's work was associated with unorthodox sampling, polysyllabic rhymes, and bizarre lyrical imagery.
The group released their debut single "To Give You Love" in 1985, but it was their 1986 single "Ego Trippin'" that garnered them success. The record is notable for being the first to sample Melvin Bliss' "Synthetic Substitution" drum break sample, which is now one of the most sampled songs of all time. Their debut album Critical Beatdown introduced many new sampling techniques and thus became important to the golden era of sampling. The group went on a hiatus for several years after breaking up in 1990.
They returned on Mercury Records in 1992 with the album Funk Your Head Up, which received mediocre reviews. The group returned the following year with The Four Horsemen, which once again received average reviews, and became their final album for fourteen years. Kool Keith went on to record many solo albums under aliases such as Dr. Octagon and Dr. Dooom. The Ultramagnetic MC's reunited in 2007 for the album The Best Kept Secret.