Maybe I am a hipster, just a poorly dressed, uncool one: Cool Kids v. Omnikrom and TTC

What's up, all?

I hope everyone had a nice Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa etc.

So, a few months ago, back when the weather was nice, I was at an event DJed by my good friends Matt Blair and Nemo Burbank.

Nemo started talking about the hipster rap phenomenon, and said something to the effect that, while he hated the whole thing, he couldn't help but like The Cool Kids 'cause they were just so damn catchy. I attempted to mount a defense of Spank Rock, to which Nemo responded with a concise "Spank Rock can go get AIDS." (Or something like that. I definitely know he wanted them to get some sort of horrible, fatal disease. The specifics may be hazy due to time and alcohol.)

Let's back up, here. What is hipster rap? That's a really good question. As far as I can tell, it's hip-hop made by hipsters -- either the garden vareity white ones like Ghislain Poirier and half of Spank Rock or blipsters ("black hipsters") like The Cool Kids and the other half of Spank Rock -- for hipsters. They lyrics are pointedly ungangsta. It usually, although not always, incorporates a lot of late '80s/early '90s throwbacks as far as aethetics, and the beats are often pretty heavy on techno influences.

Again, the key component here seems to be the hipstertude of the performers. More "street credible" acts that have accidentally attracted a large hipster audience -- a la The Clipse and Lil' Wayne -- are not considered hipster rap, even if they have electro beats and rope gold.'

I maintain that I'm not a hipster based on the fact that I'm slightly overweight, poorly dressed, broke and about six-to-eight months behind on every trend. On the other hand, I like Labatt 50, have a blog, and fervently deny my hipsterdom.

Whatever, enough about me.

The Main Event

In the red corner, from Chicago, Illinois and Detroit, Michigan, a group that's nostalgic for the '80s, even though they were both born after 1985, THE COOL KIDS!

The Cool Kids (known individually as Mikey Rocks and Chuck Inglish) may be the poster children for Internet-era music. They met via MySpace, and spent most of two years using that same website to get their music to the public, creating a huge media buzz. They then released a hit EP that was available on iTunes weeks before you could buy a physical copy, and made a load of money licensing songs to ads and video games. Oh, and most of their songs are shorter than three minutes.

They're also pretty divisive. I'm not speaking as a journalist here, I haven't done any studies, but anecdotally speaking, you either really like this group or you don't.

People in the pro-Cool Kids camp say they make likable, danceable old school-flavoured party records that appeal to people who are turned off by both thuggin' crack rap and heavy-handed, message-driven conscious music.

The anti-Cool Kids crowd say they're the Seinfeld of hip-hop, and not in a good way. They're about nothing. At their core, they're two guys waxing nostalgic for a mythical version of the year of their birth. They represent everything that's wrong with modern hipster culture, they're a meaningless collage of pop-culture signposts.

Personally, I like them. Here's the video for "Black Mags."

The Competition

In the blue corner, from Montreal, Quebec and Paris, France, the Francophone hipster rap power team of OMNIKROM AND TTC!

I openly don't know nearly as much about either of these artists as I do about The Cool Kids, and my iffy French makes research a bit of an uphill struggle.

Here's what I know. They have three members (MCs Jeanbart and Linso Gabbo and producer Figure8).

They roll with Montreal-based DJ-and-superproducer Ghislain Poirier.

They have a lot of songs that are either about food or use food as a metaphor -- again, my French is sketchy, I understand the words but can't read them for secondary meaning and I don't get idioms -- and finally, a writer for La Presse dubbed them horrible misogynists when they played the '06 Francofolies de Montreal, and the ensuing controversy got them on Radio-Canada and helped make them minor celebrities among the French-speaking third of the population.

TTC are from France and were making what's now called hipster rap way before the term hipster was resurrected in about 2002. They consist of Tido Berman, Teki Latex, Cuizinier and DJ Orgasmic.

They're also signed to Big Dada, which has got to be one of my favourite record labels of all time.

Most importantly, their first full length album was call Ceci n'est pas une disque. Put that in your non-existant pipe and smoke it.

Here's the video for "Danse la Poutine."

Now, this could just be my sketchy French again, but why are they looking for the poutine place on Rachel St. if they're hanging out with a giant carton of poutine? Couldn't they just eat him?

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Robyn, The Grammiest of Them All

Robyn beats Lil' Wayne.

Man, this blog loves Robyn.

Good luck to both of them at the Grammy's.

Our Grammy nominated friends: Lil' Wayne v. Robyn

I'd like to think that Music Video Violence had something to do with Lil' Wayne and Robyn getting Grammy nods, but it's probably not the case.

The Main Event

In the red corner, from New Orleans, Louisiana, with a mind-blowing, pack-leading eight Grammy nominations... LIL' WAYNE!

Anything you want to know about the artists, I've probably already covered in the previous posts. If I missed it, that's waht Google is for.

What I can't believe is that Lil' Wayne, who I still think of as the least hot of The Hot Boys, is a multiple Grammy nominee.

Here's the video for "Lollipop."



The Competition

From Stockholm, Sweden, this year's nominee for "Best Electronic/Dance Album" ROBYN!

Wow...

After completing the most awesome image make-over ever, Robyn gets nominated for a Grammy. Hot damn.

Here's the video for "Cobrastyle." Dig it.



Comment to vote. All votes due by Friday, midnight.

Pass the hairspray, it's a win for Heart

What up gang?

In what was a bit of a strange battle, Heart get the victory with three votes to two. (Sue voted for the hummus song, which wasn't actually supposed to be an option.)

Here's the video for "These Dreams." Good shit.

These are guilty pleasures even for me: Heart v. Crime Mob

OK, before we get to the heavy shit, watch this.



You're welcome.

OK, onward.

So, I'm not big on the concept of "irony" or "guilty pleasures." I kind of feel like you should like something and totally own it or just leave it alone. As a result, I've been known to openly express my love for crap like pro-wrestling, Gossip Girl and movies the Ben Stiller remake of Starksky and Hutch.

That said, I do enjoy some things that are so totally inexplicable that "guilty pleasure" may be the only way to describe them.

The Main Event

In the red corner, from Seattle, Washington via Vancouver, BC, the greatest female-fronted rock band ever, HEART!

Heart were formed in Vancouver in the early '70s by sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson and a bunch of random Vietnam War draft dodgers. They took their name from a book by futurist and scuba diver Arthur C. Clarke. In 1976, they released their debut album Dreamboat Annie, which produced two hits, "Magic Man" and "Crazy on You." Both of these songs count as CanCon for CRTC purposes, which is why Q107 plays them about a million times a day.

In 1977, Jimmy Carter said the male members of Heart (along with hundreds of thousands of other draft dodgers) could come back to the States, causing the band to relocate back to Washington State.

To make up for lost time, the band released four albums in 1977 and '78, toured relentlessly, and had an extended legal battle with their Canadian label, Mushroom Records. By early 1979, most of the members not named "Wilson" had quit and Heart were pretty much on hiatus.

The Wilson sisters released two commercially unsuccessful albums in the 1982 and '83. In 1985, Heart re-emerged with their hard rock edges rounded off, making shiny pop-rock tunes, including "What About Love," "These Dreams," All I Want to Do" and, most importantly, the best power ballad of all-time, 1987's "Alone."

In the '90s, Heart went back to making hard rock, but their cred was already shot.

Here's the video for "Alone." I don't know why I like this song so much, I just do.


The Opposition

In the blue corner, from Ellenwood, Georgia, a group that pretty much takes every negative stereotype about rap music and lives up to it, CRIME MOB!

Crime Mob were formed in 2003 in DeKalb County, Georgia by high school friends Jay "MIG" Usher, Alphonce "Cyco Black" Smith, Brittany "Diamond" Carpenter, Christopher "Killa C" Henderson, Jonathan "Lil' Jay" Lewis, and Venetia "Princess" Lewis. In 2004, they released their self-titled debut album and produced three hit singles, "Knuck if You Buck," "Stillettos," and the oh-so-charming "I'll Beat Your Ass." All three songs were about fist fighting, as was most of the rest of the album. In Crime Mob's defense, the band's average at the time was 17.5, with Diamond being the baby at 16 and Lil' Jay being the Mob's senior citizen at 19.

Their second album, 2007's Hated On Mostly, came out a year after it was supposed to, and by the time it dropped, Crime Mob was down a member. Killa C was convicted of child molestation in early 2006, and then jailed for failing to register as a sex offender. The Mob really, really don't like to talk about this. Hated on Mostly was a more polished sounding record, and more importantly, the group had grown lyrically. Songs about mob violence were replaced by songs about sex. There was even, God forbid, something that verged on being a Cool J-esque rap ballad ("Circles"). It also had a song that sampled the theme from Conan ("On the Rise"), which is pretty fucking rad.

There's no denying that Crime Mob may be the most willfully ignorant rap group of all time. I'm not sure that anyone has done more to undermine the work done by "conscious" rappers than this group of barely post-adolescent Georgians. Maybe The Clipse, but even they have some pretty amazing word play. That said, either Crime Mob album is a guaranteed winner if you put it on at a party.

Here's the video for their first hit, "Knuck if You Buck." Check out the part where Princess compares herself to Saddam Hussein, Hitler and Osama bin Laden.



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