April 23, 2008 @ 5:00 pm

The Cool Kids

by: Jon Caramanica

Hipster Than Thou

On a Friday in January, Chicago’s The Cool Kids walk into Coat Of Arms, a clothing boutique on NYC’s Lower East Side, mouths agape. The shop specializes in vintage hip hop apparel—Polo, Starter, British Knights, and so on—and the Chicago duo look right at home. Evan “Chuck Inglish” Ingersoll, 23, gripes about how their New York friends have been holding out on them, then begins to furiously stock up: “I’m like an addict in a heroin den!”

In everything they do, from music to style, The Cool Kids are meticulous. They’ve honed a refreshing signature sound, equal parts throwback formalism and contemporary swagger—the ease of Tribe, the texture of Gang Starr, in the shadow of Pharrell. On their debut EP, The Bake Sale (C.A.K.E./Chocolate Industries), they make rap songs that are essentially, either in lyric or in ethic, about growing up on rap music—they’re faithful torchbearers.

Both Kids were raised middle-class—Chuck in Detroit and Antoine “Mikey Rocks” Reed, 20, in the Chicago suburbs. When Mikey was a teenager, his mother would ferry him around to pick up beats from producers. The two met on MySpace in 2005, began making music soon after, and quickly became popular at hipster dance parties in Chicago. “Punk kids, backpacker kids, indie rock kids,” says Mikey, “and they all know the same songs.”

Thanks to the Internet, their music quickly spread. “Last year, we could Google ourselves and shit would pop up,” says Chuck, still a little mystified. “That’s when I started to think, Yeah, we could really make this happen.

And later that January night, it’s happening for real, as the Kids share a sold-out bill at the Rose Center for Earth and Space—yes, the planetarium—at the American Museum of Natural History. Mikey’s wearing the L.A. Kings varsity jacket and Chicago Bulls pinstriped baseball jersey he bought earlier, and Chuck’s rocking the vintage Seattle Mariners Starter jacket he scooped. On stage, in front of the 2,500-plus fans of all stripes, they look perfect, as if they were made—or made themselves—to do just this.

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