Oh hell yeah. Curtis Plum’s album is dropping on February 16th. I am super-excited for this. I have been super-excited since July of 2009. It’s weird that I’m so excited. Let me pull on your coat about this for a second; Curtis Plum is a seriously unique individual and you’re not going to hear another album like his for a long, long time.

I’m going to fill in the details for you now. Back in July I was listening to the XLR8R podcast. Sage Francis, who we all know and love, put together a megamix full of jams by artists on his Strange Famous label. So I’ve got it on in the background and I’m doing whatever, doing the dishes, practicing some chessboxing, whatever, I’ve got the podcast on in the background. All of a sudden I hear . . . well, I hear what sounds like Katherine Hepburn calling hipsters out for liking Blink-182 in junior high, over a cheap chiptune version of “No Surprises.” And then it’s gone. Half-hour later, I’m still hanging out, you know, baking a salad, painting my teeth, podcast still in the background, and here comes Katherine Hepburn again, rapping about how my cellphone’s going to give me brain cancer over another blippity-beep-boop beat. What?

So looked into it and it turns out that “Katherine Hepburn” is actually Curtis Plum, a fabulously weird and unique MC. I looked at his MySpace, his blog, the label, and I couldn’t really get any definitive information about the guy aside from some too-strange-to-be-untrue legends. His last.fm page straight-up admits that nobody has ever met him. Apparently he’s a street-rapper-slash-busker who is running for mayor of Boise, Idaho. Apparently Sage Francis signed him on the strength of a bizarre, unsolicited, stream-of-consciousness email Curtis sent him. Apparently Lil’ Wayne tried to rape him backstage after a concert on the Carter III tour. Who knows what’s true?

Curtis affects this spooky warble and writes immensely creative and arresting raps about the damnedest of subjects. The Kraftwerk-on-nitrous beats are self-produced as well, so the album really is the unified product of a beautifully twisted mind. The album doesn’t come out for another three weeks, but you should remember to buy it for a couple of reasons. Number one, something tells me Curtis isn’t destined for megastardom, so there aren’t going to be a whole lot of records from him and you need to get yourself a piece of history. Secondly, I think in this type of situation it’s important to send a message to the record labels, the agents, the powers-that-be, that weirdness is welcomed and creativity is to be rewarded. We’re pretty lucky that these songs exist, and I want a whole lot more of them. But maybe that’s just me; maybe I’m the weird one for anticipating this record for seven straight months.

I hesitate to share too much since the album doesn’t come out for awhile yet, but here’s the first CP track I ever heard. You can find more at his MySpace, and pre-order the CD from the Strange Famous website. Also, labelmate B Dolan did a verse riffing on Curtis’ track ‘Vin Diesel,’ which is, by the way, a love song. The B Dolan track is off a free mixtape that’s already been released, so you can have that too.

Curtis Plum – “Indie Rocker”
B Dolan – “Vin Diesel (feat. Curtis Plum)”

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