The relationship between musician and critic is traditionally a fractious one. People who make records understandably tend to view those who judge their efforts in public with profound suspicion. The former are not in the business of making the latter's lives easier, which is, of course, is right and proper and exactly as it should be. So it's surprising to see an artist breaking with tradition and leavening the critic's workload by providing a perfectly succinct and accurate review of themselves. And that's precisely what happens three minutes into the first British release by hotly tipped Chicago rappers The Cool Kids. "Come check the noise," offers one half of the duo, Antoine "Mikey Rocks" Reed, "it's the new black version of the Beastie Boys."
The new black version of the Beastie Boys is so obviously the size of it that it's tempting to stop writing there. It's not just the duo's loudly proclaimed love for the "golden age" of hip-hop that hoisted the New York trio to fame ("I'm bringing 88 back," they rap at one stage, for the benefit of any listeners who heard their lyrical references to doing the smurf, bodypopping and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and mistakenly came to the conclusion that they were trying to revive traditional English folk music), nor their favouring of the dextrous party-hearty lyrical style that flourished in the pre-gangsta era. It's their fanbase, which, like that of the Beastie Boys, tends towards the white and trendy.
They are the first rap act to break through via blogs and MySpace: Reed met his partner, Evan "Chuck English" Ingersoll on the latter's website. The disparaging term "hipster-hop" has been bandied about. The duo have been defensive about their obsession with the past. "Nobody is gonna tell Jack White he doesn't know what's going on when Led Zeppelin was poppin'," protested Ingersoll last year, to which you could reasonably respond: that's because the White Stripes are a rock band, and over the past two decades, rock music has been consumed by its own history - rightly or wrongly, most people have apparently stopped expecting it to be genuinely innovative. It would be a shame to see hip-hop, a genre predicated on novelty, where the word "fresh" was once the highest praise, go the same way: no matter how lachrymose and sentimental rappers get about events "back in the day", the music still largely tends to look forward.
And yet, it's perhaps underselling Ingersoll's production style to characterise it as entirely retro. At its best, as on What Up Man or What It Is, it moves beyond homage to early Def Jam or Marley Marl into something that resculpts familiar styles. Gold and a Pager turns a boastful NWA sample on its head: what once sounded like the height of expensive technology now sounds a bit pathetic. If nothing here exactly bursts with the shock of the new, then there's still something impressive about the way he turns minimal ingredients into undeniable party music.
The lyrics help. It's one of the weird ironies of hip-hop - and one of the many things that makes "conscious" rap such a chore to listen to - that while plenty of rappers have the will not to write about guns and violence and drugs and diamonds, not many of them have the wherewithal. With the staples of bullets, bitches and bling off the agenda, they seem to run out of things to say, and just end up telling you over and over again that they're not going to tell you about bullets, bitches and bling, as if they deserve a medal for not threatening to shoot anybody. The Cool Kids' lyrics are utterly devoid of sanctimony - they don't overplay the be-yourself message of A Little Bit Cooler - and witty to boot. Black Mags applies the kind of fetishistic technical detail that rappers usually reserve for cars and guns to BMX bikes. There's a scene in which the duo attempt to attact a girl by offering her a ride on the bike's stunt pegs. They avoid the temptation to slather on the goofiness and play it completely straight, as if they're offering her a spin in their Bentley and limitless Cristal, which makes it infinitely funnier.
There are moments when The Bake Sale sags - notably the Miami Bass parody Bassment Party - which is a little troubling, given that it's only half an hour long. Whether that's a result of their own limitations, or just evidence that they're saving better material for their next album, remains to be seen. For now, there's enough great moments to suggest the black version of the Beastie Boys might yet come entirely into their own.
