The deafening buzz surrounding Chicago breakout
act Cool Kids has already given way to an equally explosive backlash—and
for once, the buzz and the backlash are equally justified. Cool Kids' smartass
brand of trunk-rattling old-school braggadocio really does represent the
ultimate triumph of style over substance, retro posturing over sonic innovation
or penetrating social commentary. But The Bake Sale still kicks major ass.
It's all
about stripped-down, brawny minimalism and chest-thumping swagger that falls
somewhere between early Run DMC and Clipse's Hell Hath No Fury. Like so many of the Kids'
True School contemporaries, they're strip-mining hip-hop's rich past, but where
their peers like to pretend they're lost members of the Native Tongues crew,
the Cool Kids would rather be peddling bass-and-boast-heavy rhymes out of Too
$hort's car circa 1988. From the monster first track, "What Up Man," onward,
Cool Kids ain't saying nothing new, but they have a damn infectious way of
saying it; they're charmingly obnoxious in the best possible way. Making
disposable, self-aggrandizing fluff utterly irresistible is just one of many
hip-hop traditions Cool Kids proudly uphold.