The Bake Sale

iTunes Review

The Bake Sale is at the forefront of a new multihued strain of hip-hop spurred on by Kanye West’s success. The Cool Kids’ literate, fashionable brand of rap music has one foot in the golden age inventions of De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, EPMD, and the other planted firmly in the au courant attitude of skateboard culture. Or maybe, as Chuck Inglish puts it in “One Two,” this duo is simply “the new black version of the Beastie Boys.” Sure, their taste in BMX bikes and retro Sega games might be passé within a year, but it’s hard not to revel in all the fun the Cool Kids are having. The Bake Sale wins because it avoids the holier-than-thou attitude that engulfs so many revivalist rappers. Songs like “Mikey Rocks,” “Gold and a Pager,” and “Jingling” incorporate to the minimalist beats of old-schoolers like Boogie Down Productions and the slowed-down styles of contemporary Southern hip-hop without excluding either. Like Pharrell and the Neptunes, whose influence is all over The Bake Sale, The Cool Kids strike a carefree balance between the classic and the current.