Spaced Invaders

I picked up this while browsing through the turntable lab website. I have to admit that this has been my guilty pleasure listen of 2008. I would sneak tracks of “The Bake Sale” into my sets and watch the crowd go nuts. Most of them didn’t know who it was, which made it even better! I have to admit that I did not hear a single radio station around the area drop a single track from this album, nor did any City Paper review. This album seems to me that it was one of the more over-looked albums of last year.

From day to day it gets more and more difficult to find real hip hop elements in today’s rap music. For the most part lyrics help. While there are plenty of artists that won’t rap about bitches, bling, guns, and violence many of them don’t have the means to. With bitches, bling, guns and violence off the list many of them rap about how they’re never going to rap about bitches, bling, guns and violence. As if they deserve some sort of metal for not killing anyone. The Cool Kids take a different approach to that and seemingly sum themselves up in the first few minutes of the album by stating, “Come check the noise, it’s the new black version of the Beastie Boys.”

Now hearing that lyric, and being a huge Beastie Boys fan, I guess I should be thinking. “How dare they have the gonads to say something like that.” Actually, that lyric got me to pay attention to the rest of the album. I am very happy that I did. These guys really are paying homage to the golden days of rap and do a good job at making the ideas of that time relevant with today’s music scene. Each tune is relatively catchy with good party rhymes. No lyrics about bling, no lyrics about Bentleys, none of that stuff. After listening to the intros to tracks on the album I feel like getting my white ass on the dance floor.

However, I do have to be a purist and say that there is very little funk and soul sampling in this album and that they have no DJs that they are rhyming for. Which stops this album from being a 10 for me. The reason for this is that they are paying homage to the golden age of rap in nearly every track on this album, but they excluded a main element of Hip Hop. So it’s almost like they are talking the talk but not walking the walk.

Don’t let that stop you from adding this album to your collection though. If you want a good party album, this is a good choice. DJs if you aren’t dropping tracks from this already, you need to be up on this level. The tracks are solid.

Track Listing:
1. What Up Man
2. One Two
3. Mikey Rocks
4. 88
5. What It Is
6. Black Mags
7. A Little Bit Cooler
8. Gold And A Pager
9. Bassment Party
10. Jingling

 

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