Entries associated with the tag "Kid Sister":

Remember my column from a while back about Kid Sister shooting her first video? Well it's finally all edited and it's funny as hell. There's way more finger dancing than I was prepared for, and apparently I think people making their hands act like little people is the funniest shit in the world because I can't stop cracking up during those parts. Keep your eyes open for the cameo by J2K from Flosstradamus and for A-Trak trying to look cool while DJ-miming from inside a large potted plant.

So either half the rappers in town got together and decided to just take over October, or else it's just a coincidence that they've all clogging the Internets with new stuff. Either way, it's a pretty nice situation.

Hollywood Holt's following up on his unexpectedly blown-up tribute to the moped lifestyle with a full-length mix tape, available as a free download at his new site. He's got the energy and attention span of a Ritalin-amped six year old, and bounces from Dirty South-style ringtone joints to neo-hip-house club tracks to throwback shit that can remind you of a time when LL Cool J wasn't a complete embarrassment. There's not a lot of nuance going on here, but it's a partywrecker, and who wants to think about stuff at a party?

Vice has more good-times rap from Kid Sister on a Sinden remix of Chromeo's "Tenderoni." That latest Chromeo album is near the top of my "most listened" list for the year, Sinden consistently slays with his remix work, and Kid Sister is pure fun, so if someone wants to blend it all up into one big hedonistic electro-funk mess, that's fine by me.

The Cool Kids just dropped their new video for "Black Mags," strengthening the connection between Chicago rappers and unconventional forms of transportation. In this case it's BMX bikes, but they throw in some mopeds to keep themselves covered. I was given "Black Mags" while I was working on my Cool Kids column, and somehow without my noticing it's gone from being my least favorite of their songs to maybe my most favorite. The video looks completely professional. We'll see how it competes with the moped hit.

The new issue of Spin showed up at my house today, and after giving it a cursory flip through I'd say it looks like the magazine has a serious boner—that's a journalism term—for the City of Chi right now. The Spin Mix lists Miss Alex White & the Red Orchestra's sugar-thrash treat "Squeaky Clean" and the bumping remix of Matt & Kim's "Yea Yeah" that Flosstradamus (described here as "DJ gremlins") did a little while back. A few pages later there's a picture of Kid Sister alongside a description that makes her come off as some sort of club gangsta rather than a fun-time lady who raps about getting her nails done. Then Office shows up with a full-page profile that's oddly focused on their drinking abilities. It's a full-on Chicago party up in there.

Just as I was thinking how weird it is that I've probably seen half of this month's Spin together in the same room, I got an e-mail alerting me that the Mannequin Men—local purveyors of "tight-pants swagger"—are today's band of the day at Spin.com. You can and should download the track "Boys" from their upcoming Fresh Rot here. (Full disclosure: I wrote the bio for Fresh Rot's press materials and those guys are my bros.)

I smell a "Chicago is the New Seattle Austin Portland Montreal New York" trend piece in our near future.

Fucking Kanye, man. He can piss me off again and again, talking crazy bullshit about how tough it is to be rich and famous or making an absolute fool of himself at European awards ceremonies, but every time he puts out a new record he wins me back all the way. The latest is Can't Tell Me Nothing, a new mix tape that dropped on the Internet over the weekend that's already shaping up to be the hot hip-hop joint of late May and early June. I can say without reservation that you have to download it right now and spend the rest of the day listening to it at full blast, on repeat, while hanging out the windows of a vehicle and screaming.

Kanye brought out all of his friends for the Can't Tell Me party, including Common (a couple of tracks from his upcoming Finding Forever), local track-killer GLC, Talib Kweli, Sa-Ra (who people really gotta start paying more attention to), and former Puff Daddy valet and current fashion plate Fonzworth Bentley ("I don't wear sneakers / I wear slippers"). The Lil Wayne verse on "C.O.L.O.U.R.S." is, like any Lil Wayne verse, reason enough to get the whole thing. The fact that he can make a line like, "When you're really rich / then asparagus is yummy" actually work goes a long way toward justifying his self-anointed Best Rapper in the World title.

As for Kanye's own contributions, he's still keeping up his role as hip-hop's premier smart-ass, flipping Rich Boy's "Throw Some D's" into an ode to breast implants and opening his take on T-Pain's "Buy You a Drank" by declaring that "this verse has not been Russell Simmons approved." But Kanye's been working on another part of his image for a minute now: the most up-on-it hipster in the rap game. Can't Tell Me has one song (a snippet of "Stronger," which is going to be Graduation's club-slayer) built off a Daft Punk sample, another ("Us Placers," in a supergroup with Lupe Fiasco and Pharrell) off a Thom Yorke solo track, and yet another where he shouts out being on the cover of Fader while riding the beat to Peter Bjorn and John's "Young Folks." He also makes a surprisingly big deal out of local scene star Kid Sister, whose fanbase is decidedly more Brooklyn Vegan than Murder Dog. Not to mention the cover art is by Takashi Murakami, who probably half the indie rock world would give a lung to score.

I'm all for Kanye's indie rock kick, but I'm afraid he's going to take it too far with an Arcade Fire collabo or something, and the resulting blog-gasm will basically melt the Internet. Please, Kanye, watch how far you take it: I don't know how I could survive without my daily LOLcats fix. In the meantime, I'll be sitting here with the 1:23 cocktease of "Stronger" on nonstop repeat for the rest of the week.