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Like so many millennial music crews, the Midwest’s illest rap duo, the Cool Kids, met on the Internet. And soon after hooking up via MySpace, Chuck Inglish and Sir Michael Rocks dropped two sick mixtapes (That’s Stupid and Gone Fishing) and garnered mad indie-blog buzz to back it all up.
A couple of EPs and a number of guest spots later, Inglish and Sir Rocks finally released their debut full-length album, When Fish Ride Bicycles, earlier this year. Collaboratively produced by the Neptunes, Travis Barker, and the Cool Kids themselves, the record received critical praise for its fusion of old-school hip-hop and contemporary swag.
A good example of old-meets-new is Ghostface Killah’s verse on “Penny Hardaway,” a track about ballin’ Penny Hardaway-style over a Wu-Tang-like beat: “They shootin’ stars these ruthless bars/Got white girls holding their mouths like, ‘Oh, my God! No, he didn’t!’/Give him a bib, ’cause he keeps spitting lines that so cold where every word’s frostbitten.”
Though it’s technically the duo’s first slab, Inglish and Sir Rocks have outdone themselves with When Fish Ride Bicycles and cemented their place as one of hip-hop’s freshest crews. We’ll just have to wait and see whether the Cool Kids’ live set matches up.
