Kottonmouth Kings’ Appeal Blunted by One-Note Approach

Don’t look for the Kottonmouth Kings to be playing any inaugural balls next month. This hip-hop trio’s entire worldview can basically be distilled into one declarative sentence: Smoke a lot of pot. Kottonmouth Kings use dope as a trope the way country artists use heartache and jukeboxes.

For its performance at the Key Club on Wednesday, the L.A.-based band decorated the stage with artificial marijuana plants, draped their monitors in weed bunting and hired a mime to toke up and do the robot.

The message was crystal-clear: Subtlety is for squares. “Where my joints at?” the band yelled at the top of its set. As if they had to ask?

The Kottonmouth Kings aren’t alone in using marijuana as a hip-hop leitmotif; Cypress Hill, Snoop Dogg and many others have trod over this terrain. But few bands are as on-point as this one.

Looking like refugees from a skateboard park, the threesome trawled across the stage with benign menace, barking out syncopated, sing-song odes to blunts while bold stage divers came and went.

The band’s shtick has a kind of warped charm, but, as any politician can attest, hammer home a single message long enough and you’re liable to start sounding like a tape loop. The Kottonmouth Kings teased out their theme to the breaking point, until it collapsed under the weight of its own gimmickry.