The iced-out money mongering that ushered a new school of rap into vogue around the turn of this century has had an adverse effect on the tried-and-true taxonomy — two MCs and one DJ — that reigned for much of hip-hop’s golden age.
Think about it: Two rappers means half the mic time for each, half the attention and, more to the point, half the cash.
Rather than form groups, most contemporary rappers have opted for the solo route with hopes of putting on their friends later if all goes well.
With the exception of the Clipse and Little Brother (both formed in the ’90s), the decade so far has yielded a dearth of standout hip-hop groups, a far cry from the days when giants such as the Fat Boys, Run-DMC, a Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, EPMD and 2 Live Crew walked the earth.
Enter the Cool Kids, the Starter jacket-clad, Chicago-based duo consisting of 23-year-old Chuck Inglish and 19-year-old Mikey Rocks, who have found themselves the latest darling of the industry — they play the South By Southwest Music Conference and Festival on Thursday in Austin.
The Cool Kids’ live set stays faithful to the roots of hip-hop with call-and-response chants, skeletal, bass-heavy beats and a fluid two-man interplay.
But instead of drawing their fans from the pool of graying Golden Agers, they’ve built a base among the hipster set whose retro aesthetic goes perfectly with the Cool Kids’ unremembered nostalgia for shell toes and fat gold chains.
With “I (Mikey) Rock,” with its fuzzy, 808 vintage, and their ode to BMX bikes, “Black Mags,” the Cool Kids have managed to put fresh packaging on an old sound, pairing goofy punch-line raps (“Eating a bowl of them Fruity Pebbles/How gangsta is that?/Not gangsta at all/Oh, you judging me dawg?/You shop at the mall”) to slow steady flows, and beats that wouldn’t sound out of place on Eric B. and Rakim’s “Paid in Full.”
Of course, they’ll one day have to innovate their own sound, but for now, they remain one of the more promising new groups to emerge in recent years.
