Serengeti Kenny Dennis EP

The worst way to start a review is "you have to get it." Jokes are ideally obvious and obtuse. All art would be objective. All draft picks guaranteed and insured. There is no fan interference and all mustaches are created equal. But sometimes, you laugh or you don't. Serengeti's Kenny Dennis EP is one of those times.

Back when 50 Cent was the rap Roger Maris at comparing his cock to candy, Serengeti conceived his Kenny Dennis character. At the time, the erstwhile beer delivery driver was watching the Little League World Series on a viscous August afternoon in Chicago. Between swings, ESPN flashed capsule bios of each player: favorite athletes, foods, and films. Somehow, the concept bloomed around a Super Fan who worshipped Brian Dennehy, the Vietnam-fabricating actor best known to younger generations as the dad in Tommy Boy.

Enter Kenny Dennis, a 45-year old white rapping schlub with a lunch pail Great Lakes accent and a mustache the size of "Mike Ditka's forehead." Primary interests include: bratwurst, his wife Jueles, O'Douls, Buicks, softball, Kools, Richard Daley, Tom Berenger, the Bears, the Sox, the [Black] Hawks, and the Bulls. If you're confused, the video for "Dennehy" is your Rosetta Stone. Over a velvety violin loop of sad Chicago soul, Serengeti depicts a blithe afternoon in the life of the accidentally enlightened, Kenny Dennis. His desperation is never quiet and only occurs when Chicago sports teams tank. "Dennehy" is the only rap song in history to establish a timeline before-and-after the retirement of ex-Chicago Bulls short-shorted stiff, Dave "Lumber" Corzine.

From Dr. Jekyll to Dr. Dooom, rap has seen plenty of alter egos, but none so pleasant or ostensibly pedestrian as Kenny Dennis. The salient question is why would anyone want to listen to a middle-aged, rapping telephone booth repairman with an accent thicker than a slice of Giordano's pizza. And honestly, there is no logical answer. I could tell you that Serengeti's dedication to the character is as absurdist and extreme as Andy Kauffman in wrestling tights. I could argue that his conceptual ambition, comic creativity, and bizarre specificity are half Prince Paul, half-Waiting for Guffman. But you could also retort that no one would want to hear a soundtrack of Corky St. Clair-led original show tunes.

Too esoteric to be commercial and too weird for purists, Serengeti's aesthetic more closely resembles the unshaven folk-rap of Beck and Buck 65. It's fitting that Serengeti's been championed and collaborated with such inscrutably gifted peers as Sufjan Stevens, Yoni Wolf of WHY? and Brainfeeder's Matthewdavid. All of whom he's collaborated with in the last year. Most notably, Family and Friends found Serengeti playing it (mostly) straight, spinning despondent spells of pop culture detritus and addiction. With apologies to the Roots' "Water," but it's the closest rap has gotten to "The Needle and the Damage Done."

In spite of its inherent esotericism, the Kenny Dennis doppelganger has been Serengeti's most beloved creation. The video for "Dennehy" is closing in on 200,000 views-- scraps for a major label rapper, but kielbasa for an idiosyncratic indie rapper prone to releasing records with neither advance notice nor organized publicity campaigns. Ultimately, it led to a recording contract with Anticon, one of the few labels experimentally inclined enough to promote a raspy-voiced palooka who flows like his chief inspiration was Jim McMahon on "The Super Bowl Shuffle".

The Kenny Dennis EP is the fourth chronicle of Kenny, following Dennehy, Conversations With Kenny/Legacy of Lee (2009), and last year's There's a Situation on the Homefront. If it was possible, that's when things got even more ridiculous. Long baffled why a 45-year old white guy would rap, Serengeti scripted a prequel for his favored creation. Ergo, Kenny Dennis was once a 30-year old rapper in the Chicago-area group Tha Grimm Teachaz. Briefly signed to Jive Records in 1993, There's a Situation on the Homefront was shelved when the group's lone single "I Getz" flopped. Enlisting his long-time conspirator Hi-Fidel, Serengeti recorded the "long-lost" Teachaz record, complete with raps by KDz (The Killer Deacon) and PMDF (Prince Master Dark Force.), scratches by DJ Koufie, and a cameo from Funkdoobiest's Son Doobie—complete with styles suspended in the amber of the early Clinton era. For those keeping score, the alter ego had begat an alter ego, complete with a video that allegedly played only once on Yo! MTV Raps. In effect, Kenny Dennis was the Moonlight Graham of hip-hop.

If this sounds mildly insane, that's because it very well might be. Since the days of "Rappin' Rodney," comedy rap has played a crucial role in reminding the genre to stop taking itself so fucking seriously. But no one has ever taken the joke further than Serengeti. At times, he is as insular and zany as Zappy. Sometimes, he is as bleakly comic as Zevon. Sometimes, he just mumbles in a faintly polish accent about O'Douls and onions. But there is no time when anyone can say that they have ever heard anything remotely like the Kenny Dennis EP.

I have spent the last two months attempting to play this record for anybody who gets in my car. It generally elicits a silent film star's range of facial expressions: people wrinkle their nose, raise their eyebrows, and finally roll their eyes. When they ask me why I like it so much, my only answer is that it makes me makes laugh. With its wealth of inherited folklore, inside jokes, and obscure allusions, The Kenny Dennis EP should come with Cliff Notes. You could find the idea of Kenny Dennis recording a diss song against Shaquille O'Neal funny in the abstract, but "Shazam" works a lot better if you understand that it's retaliation for when Shaq mocked Kenny's mustache at the 1993 Jive Records Showcase. Shaq was rocking with the Fu-Schnickens. You should watch the video where Serengeti/Kenny dribbles the Big Aristotle's head like a basketball.

How am I supposed to explain "Rib Tips?" Its hook bellows: "Rib Tips/ Rib Sandwiches/ aaaannndd chicken wings." Kenny reprimands himself for being unable to shake his long-standing enmity against Shaq. He explains that the Grimm Teachaz split up because the KMDMF believed that Kenny expunged his verse from the group's Tevin Campbell remix. We also learn the fate of Kenny's little brother, Tanya, resigned to jumping out of birthday cakes, stripping, and doing an umbrella dance. Kenny sweetly defends Tanya, who "just had to make a living." It is the world's greatest karaoke song about smoked meats that will never be sung.

Then there is "Don't Blame Steve", the Chicago Cubs anthem in defense of Steve Bartman, the fan whose interference in a 2003 playoff game indirectly led to the team missing their first World Series since the end of World War II. Using the Cubs 8th inning Game 6 collapse as the setting, Serengeti/Kenny indicts 100 years of franchise futility. The refrain assigns blame to Paul Assenmacher, Jeff Pico, Damon Berryhill, Kevin Tapani, Steve Stone, Luis Salazar and every other choking Cub. Except for Andre Dawson, the first player to ever win an MVP on a last place team. The Hawk gets an extended bridge where Kenny celebrates his merits. It's like a game of RBI Baseball brought to life. The only flaw is that there is no Harry Caray narration.

Jel and Odd Nosdam slyly coax a full spectrum of emotion from the character. They produce every track, gleefully re-creating the break-beats and no bullshit attack of '93. After all, "Shazam" and "Top That" were unearthed from the lost vault of Tha Grimm Teachaz, complete with scratched hooks featuring Guru and Q-Tip. While "Rib Tips" swoons with seraphic horns seemingly stolen from Leyland Kirby's Caretaker sample bin . Like Kenny himself, it is sentimental but without nostalgia. Dennis is too focused on the simple pleasures of marriage, high cholesterol products, sports, and non-alcoholic beer to lament any tragedies of time.

If anything, Kenny Dennis is the anti-Willy Loman, a character once resuscitated on Broadway by Brian Dennehy. He is the most antiquated of American heroes, the average ecstatic Joe. The erosion of age and obsolescence are unimportant. What matters is that there is plenty of pop and smoked sausage and Swanson's Chicken. Spring training is always around the corner and serenity occurs every Sunday each Fall. Unless the Bears lose.

1.Rib Tips (2:44)
2.Don't Blame Steve (3:08)
3.Shazam (2:25)
4.Top That (1:51)
5.Kenny Dennis (3:26)
6.Flat Pop (3:27)