Featured Album: Kool A.D.

Featured Album: Kool A.D. – ‘WORD O.K.’

Kool A.D. (real name Victor Vasquez) is one the most inventive and prolific rappers in the Bay Area, and the entire country, really. After gaining notoriety with the now-defunct New York-based Das Racist, Kool A.D. has released album after album of quality material that is sometimes weird, sometimes melodic. At times, it’s incredibly basic lyrically – other times you need a thesaurus and a Wikipedia page to decipher the lyrics. No matter the style, Kool A.D.’s work is always a treat (and almost always includes a reference to Alameda, where he went to high school.) His latest, WORD O.K., is our featured album of the month for November.

Featuring guest appearances from Bay Area heavyweights Del, Boots Riley, and Chaz Bundick (aka Toro y Moi) along with a wide variety of styles, WORD O.K. really picks it up on the back half, with my favorite tracks: the epic “LIFE & TIME” and the easy-ridin’ “HICKORY” featuring Talib Kweli and Boots Riley. Listen to WORD O.K. below or on our homepage.

Vasquez has also dropped a ton of videos for this album, including a very NSFW cartoon of characters that he sells on his instagram page.