polaroids of androids

The Cool Kids - The Bake Sale EP

Sprite had the whole thing wrong - image is everything. Just ask The Cool Kids. Without their cool-as-fuck swagger, fashionable threads and the way their image nicely compliments their smooth slow grind style they would be just another hip-hop group tracing over the proven formulas of the past in a genre that seems to be getting more and more tiresome and repetitive by the day.

The duo's minimal, bass heavy beats, although sounding slightly repetitive by the record's close, fit snugly around the laid back old-school vocals, doing a good job retracting attention from the group's fairly limited lyrical abilities. The kids live up to the descriptive part of their moniker and across all ten tracks flex their 'cool muscle' as they recall stories of everyday activities such as going to the grocery store, organising highly successful parties and staying in to play Street Fighter.

The 'EP' is refreshingly original in it's approach, with the 808 drum beats punching hard, yet the duo's complete disinterest in the tough guy attitude of hip-hop giving off a much smoother and unaggressive feel. While unique in it's method, the weapons used are all very familiar, with several hooks and clever lines 'borrowed' from various memorable moments out of the hip-hop history books.

The lack of variety across this release - from both the music and the lyrical content - limit it's repeat listens. While tracks like the opener What Up Man, the old-school homage 88 and the head nodding Gold And A Pager are highly enjoyable slabs of surprisingly fun hip-hop, there isn't a lot to them. Without a development and/or expansion of their core sound, these guys have the risk of becoming as much of a fad as their bright coloured clothes.