Chicago-bred rapper Serengeti (aka David Cohn) has been on a tear lately. Last month his new trio with Anticon labelmate Son Lux and Sufjan Stevens, s / s / s, released its debut EP, a collection of schizoid pop tunes called Beak & Claw. Last week he dropped a solo EP, Kenny Dennis, his fourth release as his alter ego of the same name—a fortysomething former telephone-booth repairman who rhymes in a thick Chicago accent. Introduced on 2006’s Dennehy, Dennis was a member of Tha Grimm Teachaz, a fictional hip-hop group briefly signed to Jive in the early 90s—and Serengeti has released the album that the label supposedly shelved, where he lovingly re-creates 1993 styles. (Dennis also has a long-standing beef with Shaq, which he airs on the Kenny Dennis cut “Shazam.”) Serengeti tells Gossip Wolf that he’s fielded offers to expand Dennis’s intricate backstory into a larger narrative—a feature film, a mockumentary, a sitcom—but nothing has panned out yet.
