The Cool Kids: new mixtape
Sat 5 Jun 2010
Haulin’ Up Bass
After weeks of tweeting about their summer mixtape The Cool Kids have finally flipped it. Their latest 15-track comp was produced by Chuck Inglish and DJ sourMILK and was released in conjunction with Los Angeles Leakers. Titled Tacklebox, they’ve kept to the fishing theme; their last mixtape was called Gone Fishing and there is several fishing references on The Bake Sale EP, released in 2008.
Tacklebox is stripped back to the bare basics, with a beat, a rhyme and the odd backing vocal thrown in to spice it up. It’s sparse in places and focuses heavily on the vocal delivery of Mikey Rock and Inglish. Raekwon is among the guests but unlike other star studded sessions this is all about The Cool Kids. The duo has always been street-level rappers and they again touch on the simplicity of life, referencing objects and people in a way to make them visible and real. There are lessons about life and shout outs to the LA Lakers; the universe they create is inspirational and realistic. Tacklebox doesn’t have the bouncy adolescent beats of their previous releases, but it fits into a different category. It’s hip-hop brought back to its roots, using simple keyboard riffs and old-school drum beats. In the past they’ve shouted out their beats in a repetitive rhyming pattern but here the beats are all machine made. It’s not quite my favourite hip-hop release of the year, that title still belongs to Pac Div, but fact remains that The Cool Kids are one of the most underrated hip-hop acts around. Download and indulge.
The Cool Kids- Strawberry Girl: MP3
The Cool Kids- Great Outdoors: MP3
The Cool Kids- Tacklebox Mixtape
Posted by Nick Fulton under Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A
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