Speaking to this reporter not long ago, Dose One, the Oakland avant-rapper behind Subtle and cLOUDEAD, ventured that mainstream hip-hop currently finds itself at an impasse analogous to that faced by hard rock circa 1986. Instead of hair metal and poodle permed power-ballads we have the empty braggadocio of Fiddy and Kanye’s be-sweatered vainglory. What is needed, he elaborated, was a hip-hop Nirvana, a breakout act to unmask the megastars as the lazy-ass dinosaurs they’ve become.
Could Chicago buzz duo Cool Kids be rap’s saviours in waiting? Listening to The Bake Sale, their darkly glittering, bare-boned debut, you’ll find plenty of arguments in the affirmative. Constructed from clipped beats and hazy keyboards the record opens with the minimalist swagger of ‘What Up Man’, a marriage of candy-floss hummability and glitchy menace straight out of The Neptunes playbook. On ‘Black Mags’, one of several tracks offered up to the glories of the tricked-out push bike, they brag about pulling wheelies and breaking lights against a backdrop of nasty drum shuffles and rhythmic menace. Even better is ‘One Two’, an infectious BMX paean that would have you believe freewheeling through the hood is as gangsta as hawking crack at the school gate .