Cool Kids

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• Genre: Indie Rap/Hip-Hop
• Hometown: Chicago
• Cool Kids Website

About

Pointing back to a distant era in rap, Cool Kids mix booming 808 drums with simplistic rap patterns, minimalist synth embellishments and references to double dutch, Rakim and Do the Right Thing. Still, kids Chuck Inglish and Mikey Rocks put enough space in their beats and randomness in their rhymes to make their aesthetic fresh -- think the Beastie Boys filtered through Pharrell and Diplo. The two retro-futurists met up in music's current melting pot, Myspace, and garnered a significant underground buzz when they were featured at the 2007 CMJ Music Conference and selected to open for hip harbinger M.I.A. Later that year, their debut single, "Black Mags," a paean to tricked-out bikes, took the indie world by storm. Its success, as well as the ascension of like-minded acts the Knux, Kid Sister and others, birthed the new micro-genre hipster hop. Their debut EP, The Bake Sale, dropped in the summer of 2008 on Chocolate Industries.

- Sam Chennault