Artist preview:  The Cool Kids

If you're anything like me (in which case, my sympathies), your knowledge of rap and hiphop is limited to a handful of MTV superstars and a few degrees of separation from the 90's rap/metal collaboration for the soundtrack of "Judgment Night".   It's not that I don't like it: I just grew up listening to, and trying to play, rock, metal, and "alternative" music, so I'm more of a "guitar music" kind of guy.   Also, I'm so white I glow in the dark and have an unspoken restraining order against me by dance floors all over the world.  Just think of all those performers at the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, dressed in white, doing the Carlton shuffle.  It's kinda like that.

However, every once in awhile, I get hip (or hipped) to groups like The Cool Kids, a duo from Chicago who have made the leap from MySpace sensations to a national touring and recording force to be reckoned with.  Not only do they rap about being Sega-playing gangstas eating Fruity Pebbles, they ride BMXes.  If these guys came out in the 80's, when I was riding my Dyno with the white mags, my life would have taken a drastically different course upon hearing "Black Mags"-a song about, among other things, riding a Dyno with, obviously, black mags.  And with videos of themselves riding P.K. Rippers (which I also owned!!), and throwing handfuls of pennies around a laundromat, they combine a sense of irreverence with a deep respect for old school.  In short, they keep it real, yet surreal.  They are cool without trying to be cool, funny without trying to be funny-two traits that are increasingly rare in the hiphop world (at least to my limited knowledge of the genre).

Although The Cool Kids describe themselves as "the new black Beastie Boys", fans of N.E.R.D./Pharrell/The Neptunes, Saul Williams, Lupe Fiasco, and Outkast may also need to get their azzes over the band's MySpace page .   Then head on over to YouTube and have a gander at the videos for "A Little Bit Cooler" and  "Black Mags".

Leave your Star Wars belt buckle at home (or not), and be sure to check out what promises to be one of the freshest hiphop shows of the year. 

http://www.myspace.com/thecoolkids