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88-Keys: Divine Circumvention :: Futuristic throwback producer 88-Keys took a message from God and turned it into an album about the vagina

By Jason Newman   Photography by Eric Vogel

11/12/08 :: URB 156

“Once I heard People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm, I felt like I had to be a part of hip-hop. I didn’t know how. Hell, I didn’t even know what a producer was. I just knew I had to figure out how to make music ’cause that shit was crazy.”

For posterity’s sake, let’s attribute the above quote to Charles Misodi Njapa, better known as 88-Keys, on September 18, 2008. But let’s also co-sign it to anyone—and there are more of you than you think—who’s ever had a similar revelation to albums like A Tribe Called Quest’s debut. After a brief flirtation with fame in the late-’90s, crafting gems for Mos Def, J-Live, and Black Star, 88’s current mix of Golden Age beats with diverse genres, coupled with a geek-like obsession for fashion and the Internet, has made him a movement personified. For anyone who watches old rap videos on YouTube, scans hip-hop message boards in the office and can’t empathize with 50’s problems, 88-Keys feels your pain.

Throughout various stages of the genre over the past ten years—think Mafioso strings, handclaps, etc.—we could find 88-Keys (named years ago by legendary producer Large Professor) with an MPC and a crate full of records, waiting on the word of God (more on that later). With his debut album, The Death of Adam, dropping after a decade-plus in the game, this moment stands as the producer’s resurrection, rather than just the next act in a hip-hop career.

“WE’RE ON A MISSION FROM GOD”
“I’m a talker. I’m definitely a talker,” he says, lounging in a Cosi sandwich spot before a DJ set later that night. It’s true. Like the best raconteurs, everything is a story, and a conversation with Keys is not so much linear as labyrinthine, filled with backtracks, dead ends, and stories-within-a-story. It’s this same ability that helps carry Adam, a fictional narrative that eschews the standard producer compilation in favor of a concept album about, well…

“The vajayjay,” says 88.

“Excuse me?”

“The vag,” he says, clarifying, as in vagina. “I got this word from God: this is what your album’s gonna be about. Get to work, my child.”

So it is written, so it shall be. Adam, a cautionary tale about a man who takes the “hit it and quit it” philosophy too far and reaches his titular demise, challenges the listener both musically and conceptually. Tracks like the Kanye West-assisted “Stay Up (Viagra)” recall the ’90s horn-drenched production of Pete Rock, yet the scope of the album includes genres—psychedelic rock, sunny pop, modern rock—previously untested by the artist.

“I didn’t want to make a ‘typical producer’s’ album,” says Keys. “I spent a lot of time listening to [Hi-Tek’s] Hi-Teknology, [Pete Rock’s] Petestrumentals and [J. Dilla’s] Donuts. I love, love, love those albums, but I honed in on what I didn’t like about each of them and tried to apply that to my own. I knew I didn’t want a strictly compilation or instrumental album.”