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Friday, June 4, 2010
News Mixtape review: The Cool Kids' Tacklebox
Posted By Mike McCray on Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 4:42 PM
The Deal: Mikey Rocks & Chuck Inglish drop a new mixtape on Memorial Day amid beef with their current label.
The Good: The Cool Kids have always kinda cornered the retro rap thing and this tape shows Chuck Inglish channeling the G-Funk, West Coast era. His production continues to get stronger. When you weren't imagining images of West Coast rolling, it was just pure hip-hop in the classic sense, nods to early '90s NYC and even a couple Dilla-esque sires in there.
Lyrically, it was clever, cool and laid back as expected. It's hard to say their rhymes have grown by leaps and bounds but you can hear them growing up on records. It's not all fun, games and chicks anymore and I can appreciate how deep the dug for some of the references they used which should please hipsters and sports fans alike.
"Flying Kytes," "So Neat," "Volume II," "Birthdays" and "Great Outdoors" are my favorites, but it's hard to sleep on "Summer Nights" or "Good Afternoon" either.
The Bad: Being experimental has it's downsides. Some of those weird noises and sounds can be hit or miss depending on how they're worked into the beat and rapping about rapping can be annoying. Not once did they let the issues they were having with outside entities affect the record, no mention of any label issues at all was commendable.
The Verdict: The progression you hear on Tacklebox (Chuck Inglish's production and Mikey Rocks maturation especially ) has me exited for an album, whenever they get their situation with their label worked out but the problem with being The Cool Kids is that people expect you to the be the avant garde and different when really being too cool for school can have disastrous results. Thankfully, Tacklebox didn't make the mistake of being too cool (like some would argue Gone Fishin' did).
INFO
Release date: May 31. 2010
Download The Cool Kids' Tacklebox here.
Tracklist (Production Credits):
1. Fishing Lessons (Produced by Chuck Inglish)
2. Flying Kytes (Produced by Chuck Inglish)
3. Freak City (Produced by Chuck Inglish & Old Young)
4. So Neat (Produced by Chuck Inglish)
5. Going Camping (Produced by Chuck Inglish)
6. Volume II (Feat. Like of Pac Div) (Produced by Chuck Inglish)
7. Birthdays ((Produced by Ski Beatz)
8. Great Outdoors (Produced by Chuck Inglish)
9. Strawberry Girl (Produced by Chuck Inglish)
10. Systems (Produced by Chuck Inglish)
11. Good Afternoon (Produced by The Productionix)
12. Parking Lot (Produced by Chuck Inglish)
13. Summer Nights (Feat. Tennille) (Produced by Chuck Inglish)
14. Los Angeles Leakers Outro (Produced by Chuck Inglish)
15. Gettin' Flicked (Produced by Chuck Inglish)
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