The Cool Kids Get Their Crunk On

The Cool Kids, former underground heroes, are currently enjoying the spoils of people catching on. Though their songs were inspired by a school of hip hop that emerged while they were still in diapers, The Cool Kids deliver more than the literal pick ‘n’ roll helping of classic hip hop wannabes. Instead they serve up concoctions as sophisticated as they are inventive, with the release of their latest EP, The Bake Sale–including the “Delivery Man” single, which is available for download exclusively via Mountain Dew’s Green Label Sound. When we sat down with them in New York, we spoke about asking their mothers for money, and the struggles of coming up in the music industry. But naturally, we talked mostly about getting drunk, because isn’t that what all the cool kids are doing these days?

How has your week been? Has it been crazy? What’s the first thing you did this morning?
Mike: It actually wasn’t busy until I got here. I was at home putting shit in my room, man. But it’s been going good so far. I listened to him [Chuck] tell me about everything today. He’s like, “Hey, get up, man”. So I woke up to the phone blasting in my ear and that was the first thing, and I’m in this room. There’s no windows and it’s dark as hell and I’m like, “Hello.” You got to open the doors to get out to the living room, so I just woke up thinking it was still nighttime and went back to sleep. But it was morning.

Given that the Midwest is a little more conservative than New York, what was it like growing up there? Was it tough?
M: I grew up south of Chicago, like about a half hour south in the suburbs. We had parties, fights, school dances, field trips—got stuff for Christmas, had a dog. I had a fun childhood. I didn’t grow up hard or nothing like that. I’m not saying that we grew up rich because we were far from that. I was just lucky enough to have my childhood.
Chuck: I had a cool childhood. There’s a lot of close-mindedness everywhere you go but I think that area [Detroit] was a little more segregated. I never became a product of my environment and that shaped me. When I turned 21, I really wasn’t drinking like that. I was just in my crib, consistently every weekend watching TV, listening to records, making beats. Plus I never chased girls like that, so why am I going to go out? I’ve had drinks before, ever since I was a child, but getting drunk was something I [had never done].

Really, you never drank before then?
C: No, I didn’t like [it]. Even to this day, I don’t know why I’m still doing that shit. I don’t know why I’m drinking – it never treats me right. It’s always nice to me in the morning, and as soon as the club closes and that light comes on it’s like, fuck. I remember my first hangover. That was death. That was complete death on the couch.
M: It was funny, I was at a party that he had taken me to. I’m walking through the kitchen and the walls ain’t so easy to walk along no more. Getting drunk for the first is an experience because you don’t know what it’s like. You don’t know what getting drunk is like until it actually happens, so my preconceived notions of what it was like were all wrong.

Do you remember what you were drinking? What does it for you?
C: Yes. I like to sit at the bar and have a glass from the draft. Other than that if I’m at a club and I want the get the warm feeling started fast, I’ll drink a gin and tonic. I drink like James Bond - I don’t do the fruity shit; I don’t do vodka and cranberries.
M: Outside of a club if I get to pick what I’m drinking, just give a fourty to me, man—no hangovers. You get drunk, but it’s a fun drunk. Some people get angry when they get drunk.

Do you get angry when you’re drunk?
M: No, I don’t get angry. I get drunk and I love everybody. I’ve squashed numerous grudges against people and we really have squashed all problems before when I got drunk.

Did anyone give you shit about being a late bloomer?
C: You’re not supposed to be getting that wasted at that age. I just did my own thing. Nobody ever gave me shit about nothing. I’m not going to diss you for it, either, you know, I still partied. But I didn’t want to drink. I still don’t want to drink. I just kept my head down and kept running towards what I really wanted to do. I know kids who graduated with all the little tassels. I just talked to some of them, and one of them is working at Best Buy, and the other one is still waitressing at the same place she was waitressing before she graduated. When I first started making shit I thought it was the hottest. Ain’t nobody listening to it but I didn’t make beats because they wanted to hear it. I did my shit harder because y’all aint’ gonna tell me what’s dope.

Tell me a bit about your strategy in getting to where you are now. What’s set you apart?
C: There are people that have flown to destinations and we have driven just because it would make more sense. We did the M.I.A. tour with no money, completely broke, charging up credit cards with money we didn’t have, sleeping in La Quinta’s and promoters’ cribs. We just went to shows and people didn’t take care of shit for us. We made a Toronto show that we should have never ever made. Ain’t no excuse not to make a show, man, unless your balls are falling out of your sack.

You guys collaborated with Mountain Dew’s Green Label Sound on the exclusive, “Delivery Man”. Can you tell me about the inspiration behind that song and the process?
C: The song was just us working on our new album, making songs and basically, how it happened was for a string of like two weeks, I wouldn’t play a drum machine. I would play the keys, like this vintage rolling D20 that some engineer got—
M: He tried to throw it away.
C: It’s got some cool sounds in it, so I started playing it since I wasn’t playing the drum machine, and from there he heard it and I wrote a verse for it. It didn’t have a chorus, and he was over there one day and was like, “Yo, I finished that song”. We just switched it to a level to where we wanted to get to a long time ago, getting into a position where I can play more instruments.

What do your mothers have to say about your success?
C: Our mothers are basically the heads of our label. They drop the hammer and make all of the decisions on our own money. It’s the safest thing, like, your mom naturally, unless she’s a piece of shit, would never screw you over. It just doesn’t happen. Plus now I don’t have to call home and ask her for her money. I just call home and ask for my money.
M: Not like Macaulay Culkin’s parents.