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Keeping up with The Cool Kids

The show's intimacy was worthwhile.

By Jon Ingram

Published Nov. 10, 2009

As he caught a pack of Big League Chew bubblegum out of midair tossed to him by a member of his entourage, I complimented Chuck Inglish of The Cool Kids on his flavor of choice: grape.

"Been loyal to grape for the last three years," Inglish said matter-of-factly, with a content smirk on his face that showed all of the signs of the successful performance he pulled off just minutes ago.

He wore a black Air Jordan sweatshirt and a red fitted baseball cap and he sporadically rotated his single pair of headphones in between two iPods that were sitting on his designer jeans. Why he had two iPods in action simultaneously I will never know, but it will leave a burning imprint on my mind for years to come.

"Used to be hooked on that regular flavor," Inglish said. "Can't do that no more though."

The Cool Kids are a mixture of bizarre and typical and that is exactly what makes them so cool. Chuck Inglish, the stockier member from the south side of Chicago, is just "chillin'." The go-with-the-flow artist seems to find humor in the fact that he can go on stage 10 minutes after arriving in the town, perform for an hour in front of belligerent students who blindly obey his every word and walk away unscathed with about four or five Gs.

Mikey Rocks is harder to read. As I waited to go backstage three attractive girls were begging me to get Rocks' number for them. They even offered to buy me a beer for my troubles. I said I would, but it was only to get these desperate and high-pitched females off my hands. When I walked backstage, Rocks had taken off his black Colorado Rockies hat and was lounging with a white towel over his head and a wife beater loosely hanging over his lanky body. He didn't really want to talk to me and I was fine with that. On stage, Rocks is more rambunctious than Inglish, a twitchy and jumpy guy with the charm to woo the ladies and an ego that is more apparent live than on his self-titled track "I'm Mikey."

The concert itself was alright. There weren't too many people there, about 200 if I had to ballpark it, and since the concert was in Jesse, everyone was crowded around the stage, leaving an empty, dark feeling eerily present throughout the show. I was surprised by the low turnout, but when I asked Inglish about it, he didn't seem to care.

"It's all good, man," he said. "We'd rather have the loyal fans, you know, the people respect and follow The Cool Kids, than the ones who don't give a shit about what we're doing."

And what exactly are they doing?

Most would say The Cool Kids are representing a rebirth of a genre of rap that seemed to disappear in the early '90s, with minimalist beats with a bass that's heavier than their immense bodyguard, Poppi. But The Cool Kids themselves don't seem to think much of it. They seem truly content with rockin' small college crowds, going from city to city and eating Grape Big League Chew. And to me, that's cool.