Anticon MC Serengeti: The Quirkiest, Deepest Rapper

Family & Friends navigates similarly complex terrain: the reinvention of self ("California"), deadbeat dads ("Long Ears") and the ravages of heroin ("Tracks").

Its offbeat pop production was handled by Advanced Base (formerly known for the lo-fi electronic project Casiotone for the Painfully Alone) and Yoni Wolf of Why?

PHOTO BY JENNIE WARREN

"My future's so bright ... Wait, could someone move these plants?"

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"He originally came in with more silly, funny lyrics, but I told him to write something from the heart," Wolf says, discussing the recording process last summer in Oakland, when he and Cohn cut six tracks in as many days. "On the spot, he wrote lines about sleeping on a pool table with his keys and wallet in his jeans to avoid getting them stolen. He's raw and honest and has a quirky dark sense of humor."

Kenny Dennis could never leave the Second City, but Serengeti's keeping his spot in L.A., at least for the time being. In a simultaneous attempt to shed the burdens of the past and avoid paying airline baggage fees, he dumped eight notebooks full of lyrics prior to boarding his one-way flight to LAX.

"I wish I hadn't thrown away all those notebooks. I had a lot of songs in there, but they felt like they were weighing me down," Cohn says. "It seemed like I needed to toss them before coming here."

Since landing in California, Cohn has cut an EP with ambient-experimentalist beat producer Matthewdavid. There also are upcoming albums from his side project Tha Grimm Teachaz and a full-length collaboration with Advance Base, plus a yet-to-be-announced work coming next year with one of the most famous and acclaimed songwriters in indie rock. (Unfortunately his identity can't be revealed, due to a press embargo from one of the labels involved.)

Despite his misfortunes, and his habit of being perennially overlooked, Cohn has carved out a modest but fiercely devoted following, made up of those who like their reality rap based on immutable realities: transformations, temptations and all points of psychic unrest. He's a writer who happens to rap and not the inverse.

"I could never stop. I hear words in my head or overhear something on the street and I have to write it down or else it will be lost forever," Cohn says. "It's a curse. Write, write, write, edit, edit, and then go back over it. It's not about sitting down to write, it's about being open to the ideas."