Go See The Doctor

Kool Moe Dee: "Go See The Doctor" (1987)

Kool Moe Dee (Mohandas Dewese) was one of hip-hop's most articulate and historically significant figures, a performer whose career bridged the genre's earliest street and club period with its emergence as a force in mainstream popular culture during the mid-1980s. His background with the Treacherous Three, one of the most respected groups of the old-school hip-hop era, gave him both technical credibility and historical standing that distinguished him from newer artists who had no such lineage. When "Go See The Doctor" appeared in 1987, Kool Moe Dee was at the height of his solo career and in the midst of a high-profile series of recorded exchanges with LL Cool J that had made him a central figure in hip-hop's ongoing internal debates about skill and authenticity.

"Go See The Doctor" was released on Jive Records, the label that had become one of the most important homes for hip-hop music during the 1980s and that had also been responsible for the careers of acts including Whodini and A Tribe Called Quest. The song was produced with a sound that reflected the hip-hop production aesthetic of the period: programmed drums, spare but effective bass lines, and an overall sonic minimalism that placed the rapper's voice at the center of the listening experience. The track's production allowed Kool Moe Dee's verbal precision and his characteristic intelligence to dominate the recording without competition from an overly busy musical arrangement.

The song was notable for its subject matter, which addressed the topic of sexually transmitted infections with a directness and humor that was unusual for mainstream popular music in 1987. The track's central message was public health-oriented: using comedy and hip-hop vocabulary to encourage listeners to seek medical attention when experiencing symptoms of STIs. This was a period when public health concerns about sexually transmitted diseases were intensifying in the context of the AIDS epidemic, and "Go See The Doctor" engaged with that environment while maintaining the humor and narrative accessibility that made it an effective vehicle for its message.

"Go See The Doctor" debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 on April 18, 1987, entering at number 94. The single reached its peak position of number 89 on April 25, 1987, spending five weeks in total on the chart. On the Hot Rap Singles chart, the song achieved significantly stronger performance, reflecting the enthusiastic response from hip-hop radio and from the dedicated rap audience that followed Kool Moe Dee's work closely. The disparity between the Hot 100 position and the rap-specific chart performance was common for hip-hop singles during this period, as the genre's audience was large and engaged but had not yet fully translated into the mainstream pop metrics that the Hot 100 tracked.

The music video for "Go See The Doctor" incorporated visual comedy that matched the song's tonal register, using humor to address its subject matter in a way that was both entertaining and potentially informative. The video received rotation on MTV's Yo! MTV Raps when that program debuted later in the decade, and on the various local and syndicated urban programming that served as the primary outlets for hip-hop video content in the mid-to-late 1980s.

Critics at the time and subsequently have noted "Go See The Doctor" as an interesting example of hip-hop's capacity to serve social and educational functions without sacrificing entertainment value. The song demonstrated that Kool Moe Dee's intelligence and verbal skill could be deployed in service of subjects beyond the conventional boasting and battle rap material that characterized much of his other work, expanding the range of his artistic persona while maintaining the confidence and verbal dexterity that were his trademarks.

The broader context of Kool Moe Dee's career in 1987 included his ongoing recorded conflicts with LL Cool J, which were among the most followed inter-artist disputes in hip-hop's history up to that point. These exchanges helped establish the protocols for what would later be formalized as the "diss track" tradition, and they kept Kool Moe Dee in the spotlight as one of hip-hop's most prominent and combative lyricists. "Go See The Doctor," with its subject matter and approach, demonstrated a different dimension of his artistic personality, one more concerned with community address than competitive positioning.

In retrospective assessments of 1980s hip-hop, Kool Moe Dee is consistently recognized as one of the genre's most important transitional figures, someone who maintained the values and techniques of old-school hip-hop while adapting to the commercial and stylistic demands of the new era. "Go See The Doctor" stands as a characteristic example of his work during this period: technically accomplished, intellectually engaged, and committed to using hip-hop as a vehicle for addressing real-world concerns with humor and directness.