Photo: corprahlanfrey.wordpress.com

After the Cool Kids member, Chuck English, successfully tried his hand at solo production work it was only natural that the other half, Mikey Rocks, would attempt the lyrical equivalent.

The duo known for their flashy gear and bass heavy production style, found each other on Myspace in 2005. They made a huge splash in 2008, opening for M.I.A. on her World Tour, joining the Rock The Bells concert roster and headlining the “NBA 2K Bounce Tour” with rap veteran Q-Tip. The two are not credited as the most profound lyricists, but with  approval from hip-hop notables like Q-Tip, few find it problematic.

Miss us much? Pardon the hiatus, the newsroom has been astir with new developments and site delay has been the byproduct. Never fear, we’re back and with a few goodies you may have missed!

Lil Kim had a few choice words for Nicki Minaj concerning the “swagger jacking” rumors. At the end of the day, Kim says, “just pay homage.”

The Cool Kids are keeping us waiting in anticipation for their upcoming LP, When Fish Ride Bicycles, and dropped the mixtape Tacklebox on Memorial Day. Download it here.

Happy Holidays from the @25mag fam! Check out our Holiday downloads!

We hope you all are enjoying your holiday! As a special treat, 25 Magazine has posted downloads to some exclusive Holiday releases from The Cool Kids, U-N-I and J*Davey!

CHECK IT OUT!

The Cool Kids x Don Cannon – Merry Christmas (EP)
Thurzday of U-N-I x Dibia$e – “Not Quite A Christmas Story” (mp3)
J*Davey – Boudoir Synema: The Great Mistapes (mixtape)

P.S. Check out the redesign in our new beta site!

Best,

25 Magazine

Check out The Cool Kids x Don Cannon EP, Merry Christmas. Download and tracklist after the jump!

1. BBQ Wings f. Boldy James (prod. Don Cannon)
2. Catch of the Day (prod. Chuck Inglish)
3. Free Throws (prod. First Team All State)
4. Tires f. Boldy James (prod. Chuck Inglish)

The Cool Kids x Don Cannon – Merry Christmas EP | Download Here

25 Magazine catches up with Von Pea and Donwill of rap trio Tanya Morgan on the heels of their LP,  Brooklynati.

Music has met its match, the internet, and over the past decade they’ve built a strong alliance and revolutionized music discovery and distribution. Many artists have benefited from the joining of the two mediums. Some notable offspring include Soulja Boy Tell’em, who has over 400 million views on YouTube; The Cool Kids, who formed after finding each other’s music on Myspace in 2005; and Asher Roth who was signed by Atlanta based manager Scooter Braun through Myspace in 2006. But long before these artists used the internet to network and share music, rap trio Tanya Morgan had already been there and done that.

Rapper Von Pea credits the internet for Tanya Morgan’s formation. Its connecting power brought Von Pea from Brooklyn, and Donwill and Ilyas from Cincinnati together. Back in 2000, Donwill was working with Ilyas in a group called Ilwill, and first heard Von Pea’s music on okayplayer.com. By 2003, the three emcees formed Tanya Morgan and released their first mixtape Sunlighting online in 2005, as well the EP Sunset later that year. In 2006, they dropped their debut album Moonlighting and took their career on the road. During the mid-2000s, Tanya Morgan made their presence in the indie Hip Hop circuit performing in Toronto’s NXNE Festival with Noveau Riche and performing in the Brooklyn Hip Hop Festival with Consequence and Ghostface Killah. Just last week they headlined with Torae & Marco Polo at Southpaw in Brooklyn.

In the past six years, Tanya Morgan has received nods from rap notables De La Soul and Black Thought from The Roots for their affinity for both lyrical complexity and content. The trio has pumped a steady flow of music into the blogosphere over the past few years, releasing their mixtape Tanya Morgan Is A Rap Group and The Bridge EP in 2008, and their LP Brooklynati in June. Although Tanya Morgan has not hit the mainstream Hip Hop scene, their focus is not on commercial cross over. They understand true success, and rather than define themselves through records sold and Myspace hits, they’d rather focus on making the best “intelligent car music” possible.

25: What is the story behind Tanya Morgan’s name?

Donwill: Pretty much the name was designed for a one-off project. It was to throw people off with the album so they discover that it’s rap. It’s kind of like a weird inside joke and the name stuck. We’ve adopted several meanings to the name but it’s to expect the unexpected.

25: How did you all form Tanya Morgan?

Von Pea: Donwill and Ilyas met in college. They went to college together in North Carolina and they’re both from Cincinnati. I’m from Brooklyn. They hooked up and became homeboys in college. I was just starting to try to get my demo together. I was working with DJ Brainchild and Phonte back when Phonte was a solo artist. Donwill was one of the first people to hear my music when I first started in 2000, I guess through internet music sites like okayplayer.com and mp3.com. From there we started working with each other, but as far as being a group, me and Don became a group and he and Ilyas were already working together. From there, I just started working with both of them. We decided to do what was supposed to be a one-off project and we got stuck together.

25: You guys merge styles from Cincinnati and Brooklyn, how does that impact your sound?

Donwill: I would say our music is a mix of the east coast boom-bap and the mid-west stump. We make intelligent car music. It sounds good in your truck bunk and sounds good when you think about what we’re actually saying. In short, we make smart car music.

25: What distinguishes Brooklynati from your other productions?

Donwill: I think if people have ever heard anything that we’ve done it’s just a progression of the things we’ve done. It’s just everything is on a more professional, better version of what we’ve done. More thought out. We just did our own production this time around.

25: Do you think your music would be heard without the internet?

Von Pea: It would be interesting to see that, because we would have never become a group if not for the internet. I wouldn’t have any way to meet them, [Donwill and Ilyas]. I would have to go to Cincinnati. I don’t have friends or family in Cincinnati. They’re like my family in Cincinnati now but before them I had no reason to go to Cincinnati. We wouldn’t even be a group.

25: Why did you sign with Interdependent Media?

Donwill: We were actually, since our first album, signed with a subsidiary label called Loud Minority and that label got dissolved into Interdependent Media, as opposed to switching up the whole team that was part of the creative line up. A lot of our ideas are unconventional, and we wouldn’t be able to receive that sort of creative control from other vessels. So we just chose to rock with what we’ve been rocking with, and try to see what we can do together on a slightly larger scale.

25: How do you feel about the music industry and how has it impacted your work?

Von Pea: I feel like the music that we make is influenced from our life, and is the music that we gravitated to and listened to growing up. As far as hip hop, it’s more of the same. It hasn’t really changed. It’s more of a financial or monetizing thing. You see less intelligent music and more commercial, mainstream music. It’s harder to find, but if you go into Fat Beats, I guarantee it is all there. I think hip hop is okay. I think the rap game is in crutch right now because we don’t have record stores. We have Fat Beats and your local mom and pops. You go in there to look around and they carry our products and many of our friends. Hip hop is alive and well. It’s not really dead, it’s just harder to find.

25: You have been making music for some time, how do you feel about your slow rise to recognition?

Donwill: Still waters run deep. Nothing is overnight. Even if it looks overnight, it was probably 10 years in the making. You can’t really name an artist that was just concocted and rose to this meteoric success, without understating the 10 years or 20 years of work they put in until they get to that point of even having a meteoric rise. Name any artist, and there’s at least 10 years worth of grind and hustle. They just don’t talk about it because it’s behind them; it’s the past. It may work to be slow and steady, but 10 years from now after all is said and done and we have our cult following-I’m not in it for the fast run. The quicker you get in the quicker you leave.

25:What has been the defining moment for Tanya Morgan?

Von Pea: I think every time we meet artists that we grew up on, they always seem to know us and show us love. Just to see emcees we grew up on and we’ve learned so much from have respect for us, gets me every time. It’s been De La Soul, Ali Shaheed Muhammad from A Tribe Called Quest, and Black Thought from The Roots, the whole Hieroglyphics [artist roster], and DJ Jazzy Jeff. It’s been so many people that you would think pay you no mind at all, and then they go, “Oh yeah! We know you! We like what y’all do! Y’all are dope!” They understand that you’re the next generation of what they do. They still have the torch and they’re still running, but if they say, “If I stop today, the torch will be handed to y’all,” that’s special to me. That’s defining to me. That’s how we know we’re doing the right thing.

The Cool Kids x Don Cannon- Gone Fishing (C.A.K.E Recordings/Cannon Music)

Let’s be real, The Cool Kids just want to have fun. They are great at rapping about absolutely nothing important and will only get better at it. The duo known for their flashy gear and their bass heavy production style, found each other on Myspace in 2005. Three years and four mixtapes later, The Cool Kids are back with their most impressive project yet. They have enhanced their production, but have left their lyrics behind in the release of their mixtape Gone Fishing with Don Cannon, a prelude to their highly-anticipated upcoming album, When Fish Ride Bicycles. They made a huge splash in 2008, opening for M.I.A. on her World Tour, joining the Rock The Bells concert roster, and headlining the “NBA 2K Bounce Tour” with rap veteran Q-Tip. The two are not the most profound lyricists, but with recent approval from Hip Hop notables such as Q-Tip himself, many wonder what gives The Cool Kids, their cool?

The key to The Cool Kid’s success is their ability to make music that mixes boom bap and early rap influences as a soundtrack to simply having a good time. With fun storytelling, punch lines, and amusing analogies, they show their playful tone on many tracks as in “Popcorn,” where Chuck says “Doorbells, door knocks/ Open up it’s the cops/Sike naw it’s The Cool Kids/Came to jump on your couch.” Their arrival complements the new wave of rappers with a refreshing approach to Hip Hop, where the alpha-thug is no longer the genre’s idol.

Throughout the mixtape, their corny yet cunning style of word play continues to work in their favor. On the bass-loaded “Premium Blends,” Mikey Rocks feels he can reel in women like a master fisherman saying, “Throw that girl a line and I bet that I can catch her.” But Chuck makes it clear that there are many fish in the sea and he is not in for the long haul. On “Weekend Girls” (Don Cannon borrowed from Camron’s “Weekend Girl”) Chuck says, “You looking wedding day nice/ Now I don’t want you to think that I’m the wedding day type/ I just had to make it clear/ Before we make it outta here.” Their cockiness when is comes to the opposite sex is both cheesy and entertaining.

The Cool Kids go beyond their often heavy bass production on the laid-back “Summer Vacations,” where the keyboards rule the track. But some things never change for the two, as they still show signs of having gold chain obsessions on “Gold Links,” a follow-up to The Bake Sale’s “Gold and Pager.”

One won’t find memorable lines on Gone Fishing, but it is amicable in its entirety, keeping one zoned in track by track. Also, Don Cannon doesn’t overload the tracks with drops, making it an easier listen than most mixtapes. With Gone Fishing, the duo makes it clear they want to make good music for relaxing and nothing more. This mixtape is a solid preview of The Cool Kids’ upcoming album and shows that the two charismatic charmers are more than ready to put out their first LP.

(Photo Source: coolxkids.com)

Link to Free Mixtape Download

-Natelegé Whaley

By Natelegé Whaley

“Hot Off the Stove” by The Cool Kids – Crème de La Crème Mixtape

“Hot hot of the stove, Pop pop in the trunk” is the hook on this Cool Kid’s track off the recent Crème De La Crème Mixtape. Is it the almost deafening bass or the catchy, fun hooks that the Cool Kids always offer that has got me once again? Hmmm, not sure. But whatever it is I love it and it’s got me pressing repeat this week.

I don’t remember when or how I found it but I was happy when I did. I’ve been a fan of The Cool Kids for about a year now and I’m always impressed with how they always maintain their fun, colorful sound yet manage to assemble something new for their fans every time.

On this track Mikey and Chuck bring you into their magical musical kitchen. If you listen close enough you can hear the pots and pans click-clacking, and Mikey and Chuck working up–dicing, rearranging, and perfecting their next hot song. In the midst of their culinary genius Chuck’s calling himself a “baker’s man” and proudly proclaiming they “got it hot and it’s sizzlin”. I got a taste of some of this ‘cake’ they’ve cooked up and trust me folks, it’s sweet. I would be greedy when I find something this good, but I will be nice today by letting you guys take a sample.

Wow, what would I do without The Cool Kids? Out of the select artists I actually take the time to listen to today, they are always worth it. And might I add that they are nice to look at. I appreciate a man that can dress. I will also admit I’ve had a crush on Mikey for a minute now. Who doesn’t?

But anyway, for now I guess I will be waiting for the next hot thing. Chuck and Mikey, what you got cooking up next? Because I need another plate of it now!!!