On: The Cool Kids
When we spoke to Chitown’s finest, the Cool Kids, they had a few words for their detractors. “People think they got us figured out,” said Mikey Rocks. “All these hip-hop guys say ‘oh, you make cool music, but you can’t rap, not really,’ even though we’re rapping our asses off in every song. Don’t get it confused, man. We will rap your ass into a hole. We are writers and you will get demolished.” Courtesy of OnSMASH here’s their latest minimal masterpiece (“I made this track with my mouth and a bell”) and after the jump they talk about juke, jams and meeting Barry Obama.
On: Juke and Jams
Mikey Rocks: “Juke is Chicago party music. It’s weird how the rest of the world is really amazed by it. Growing up out there, it’s what we’ve been doing since we were shorty shorties; really young, like 5th grade. I didn’t know the rest of the world didn’t know about it. It’s played at every party, man. We’d play the regular party songs and then turn on the juke mix and everyone’s like ahhh yeah, and then it gets started, man. It’s cool because I grew up with that stuff. It’s pretty much my childhood, every party was just juke stuff. Now that I look back on it we were a part of a really cool underground scene that nobody really knew about. There are really juke acts, it’s more a DJ driven scene. Check out DJs like Gant Man and Nehpets. DJ Chip- he was a childhood hero man. DJ Chip had every mixtape on super-lock man. He was the Lil Wayne, Jay Z of juke stuff back then. It’s a fun, fun form of music. Play it at a Chicago party and see what happens. It goes down every time.”
Chuck Inglish: “I don’t listen to much hip-hop. I’ve been listening to a band called Hail Social from Philidelphia. I don’t get how they aren’t killing shit right now. When you listen to their first album you’ll be like, this is the greatest shit ever. Other than that I don’t get inspired listening to other people. It’s usually me listening to all my old jams. You know people from that era between disco and 90s R&B. Like Roger Troutman and George Benson. That’s my shit.”
On: Obama
Chuck Inglish: “We played a benefit for him in late 2007. It was us, Macy Gray, Jeff Tweedy… an interesting combination,”
Mikey Rocks: “He said, ‘hey Cool Kids, right? You guys are up-and-coming like me, that’s good!’ He has that voice. It’s crazy, man, how a voice can be so powerful. It was cool sitting there and being able to chop it up with him for a while.”
01.04.08.