All Hail the King of Rhythm and Rhyme!

"I don't think anyone could have foreseen booty music back then," says Jeff Lemlich. "But when you know 'Loo-key Doo-key' is about a girl, it gets you thinking. They definitely share the same genealogy."

Coleman, who is writing a memoir titled Down in the Hood ("It's like they said about Jesus: 'Can anything good come out of Nazareth?'"), remains proud of his rapper descendants. "The hip-hoppers and the rappers today are mainly emphasizing the triple beat on the bass drum," he notes. "They've added to what we did, taking it to another level. That's what evolution does. It's like what others were doing before me -- I took it to another level. That's why I think it's good that they keep on taking it. Rhythm is always going to sell."

On July 13, 1995, King Coleman did the "Mashed Potatoes" one last time at Cheers, a now-defunct Miami punk club. The 250 punks and mall rats expecting the whoa-whoa power-pop stylings of Quit never knew what hit them. "God bless you all!" Coleman pronounced as he grabbed the mike. "I want to let you know that the last time I was onstage was in 1967 at the Apollo Theater. One, two, three: Mashed potatoes, yeah!" The crowd went crazy as Coleman, dressed in an elegant suit, mashed potatoes, shotgunned, and twisted with abandon, high-kicking above his ear. "Hash brown potatoes, yeah!" The punk show turned into a sock hop, and time-warped kids busted out moves from American Bandstand reruns. The crowd screamed with approval: "Mashed potatoes, yeah, yeah, yeah!" A roar went up as Coleman danced off the stage and left the building.

As he put his performing career to rest, Coleman's broadcasting career took off again. In 1995 Bishop Victor Curry's New Birth Broadcasting Corporation bought WMBM-AM and turned it into a gospel station, and the opportunity was too great for Coleman to resist. "Don't you know how thankful I am to have come along in the old rhythm-and-blues days and still be employed to this day in a gospel radio station?" he asks. "My audience knows me. That's why I'm popular. It's because of the work I did as King Coleman, and the work I've done as Reverend Coleman."

He sees a bright future for the young gospel artists he spins on WMBM. "It's going to another dimension!" he predicts. "So many new artists are putting their language and their culture to gospel. That's why the church has stagnated. It's the same hymns, the same thing, and thus the young people are not in the church like they were in the old days." He turns up the studio monitors and blasts "Oh, How Wondrous" by John P. Kee.

"This is very creative," Coleman shouts. "He ain't imitating nobody. He's got the groove!"