DOSEONE
With his nerdy black specs, curly brown shag, and nasal voice, Doseone seems harmless enough. But make no mistake, the guy's more than a little bizarre. Nothing's sacred to this 23-year-old rapper/poet, who works dead-baby jokes, love paeans to his tabby cat, Purple, and personal ads for house-hold appliances into his rhymes (which don't really rhyme, but more on that later). "I had really hippie parents," Dose says. "So I experienced everything from watching the Davey and Goliath religious cartoon to Monty Python. Now that I've learned more words, it's only gotten worse."
Two years ago Dose, whose real name is Adam Kidd Drucker, was a barbed-tongue battle rapper and self-described "freestyle kid - all wigger attitude," roaming the streets of Cincinnati. But he soon got bored with hip-hop's rigid rules of style and content. After meeting like-minded rapper Sole and producer Jel, Dose followed them to Berkeley, California, where they founded Anticon, an experimental hip-hop label that is also home to DJ Mayonnaise and rapper/producers the Sebutones. In June, Dose released 'Circle' (on Mush Records), an eclectic collection of poetry scored by jazz-influenced producer Boom Bip, and appeared on the Anticon compilation Deep Puddle Dynamics.
Recently, Dose and Jel unleashed Them, which serves up rumbling jeep beats, noisy electro-fuzz, and Dose's trademark feverish non-rhymes, one of which goes: "Jesus and I / Go out to dinner / And uh, everyone keeps nailing themselves to things / Like trying to impress him, you know / Even my friends and the waiters." No wonder some think this guy is simply too weird to be a "real" MC. But Dose is unrepentant: "You'll have this wonderful idea that gets cut short because it has to rhyme with emancipation!" he says. "Bob Dylan wishes he could say this many words in one song."
OLIVER WANG