music
BRING ON THE BEASTIE
The Cool Kids have a totally different way of reporting life
The story goes that The Cool Kids found each other on MySpace. It’s the short version of the longer version that involves a mutual friend, some e-mails and some other details, but anyway, they met online, which officially makes them a musical outfit of the 21st century. But anyone who knows The Cool Kids knows they are all about throwing back. They like to call themselves “the new black version of the Beastie Boys,” a layered statement that forces us back to not only three dope white dudes from Brooklyn fighting for their right to party, but also to a very specific space in musical time. The “Golden Age” of hip hop, it’s been called – the late ‘80s. There are two Cool Kids: Antoine “Mikey Rocks” Reed and Evan “Chuck Inglish” Ingersoll, and they are both from Chicago. Mikey Rocks heard a beat of Chuck
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Inglish’s on the Internet a few years ago, he wanted to buy it, they collaborated instead, and now they have their own label and people love them. They wear gold chains and Flava Flav clocks, and they are becoming totally famous. Their names get thrown around next to names like Nike, LeBron James, Lil Wayne, M.I.A., Ludacris, Rolling Stone and MTV. They are beloved – so state about a million Facebook pages and blogs packed with drunken pool party photos. While both performers state that more “serious” matters may be in the works, original songs, such as “Delivery Man,” found on their EP The Bake Sale, rap about the every day – not the everyday gunshot violence of urban streets, but the pizza guy on the block. They are equally real, these two takes on urban storytelling, but are different poetries – a totally different way of reporting life. The Cool Kids’ reporting isn’t about dying, killing, sex and retribution. It also isn’t about looking back to the ‘80s as it existed personally for them – they are 19 and 24 – but it’s picking out the wit and novelty, finding the profound and the clever in the mundane. This they share with the Beastie Boys, and this makes for a good comparison.
Purchase the Beastie Boys’ License to Ill and you’ll hear about parents, thieving one-night stands, “girls” and also a lot of specific info about how dope they are and how much better their job is than yours. Then download just about any Cool Kids song, and you’re going to hear about basement houseparties, riding bikes, grocery shopping and how much better their job is than yours. The Cool Kids are not the Beastie Boys. They have something all their own, which is why they are splashed all over right now, but they do deliver something we’ve been missing since then. It’s not tame pop like Will Smith – it’s not music your mother will think is cute, but it is intelligent, sarcastic, and the beats are deliberate and on. The Cool Kids are currently working on a debut album slated for a 2010 release called When Fish Ride Bicycles. Bring it.
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Text Ann Valente
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