Hollywood Holt

May, 20. 2009 by Brian .

So the other day I impulsively went to see Lady Sovereign at the Metro here in Chicago. Lady Sovereign has some good stuff (though she has an obnoxious habit of pouring her heinekens all over the crowd), but I was really there to see Chester French, who put on a really good live show. The other opener, Hollywood Holt I had never heard of. I arrived in the middle of his set only to discover that this guy was CRAZY, in all the best possible ways. Despite being like, 5 feet tall, and the FIRST opening act, he still had the modestly-sized crowd going nuts and following every command.

Along with Kanye, Kid Cudi, Lupe, the Cool Kids etc., Hollywood Holt is another Chicago artist, and leader of Chicago’s Murder Club Moped Crew. Two years ago he teamed up with his cousin, DJ/Producer, Million Dollar Mano, which was the “missing link to complete his persona.” He’s also a break-dancer and DJ, who describes his show as “like a punk-rock show, but its hip-hop music… the way I rock is crazy… I just go off.”

That sounds about right. Here are some clips:

For more about Hollywood, here’s his website: http://www.hollywoodholt.com/

The Cool Kids: Gone Fishin

May, 05. 2009 by Andrew .

Download the “Gone Fishin” Mixtape

Chuck Inglish (Evan Ingersoll of Mount Clemens, Michigan) and Mikey Rocks (Antoine Reed of Matteson, Illinois) refer to their duo as “real finding real.” Their journey together started in 2005 when Mikey sought out a beat produced by Chuck that he had put on MySpace and when they finally met to produce the track, ended up working on it for two hours before they realized their shared passion for the golden-aged, Erik B and Rakim style of hip-hop.

After journeying through DJ A-Trak’s Fool’s Gold label and Chocolate Industries, they settled with C.A.K.E. recordings, a subsidiary of Chocolate to put out “The Bake Sale” in 2008 and “When Fish Ride Bicycles” in 2009. They have since been featured in several tv shows, video games and movies and have been listed on both Rolling Stones’ and XXL’s top ten hip-hop acts to follow from 2009.

When asked about their stance on people categorizing their sound as retro-rap: “I think writers just can’t come up with any new words for what we’re doing, because we’re not “retro-” anything. Like, in “Gold and a Pager,” we’re not talking about what was current-pagers were cool to us, but they never stopped being cool; people just stopped using them. So, I think that’s the line we’re on. We’re doing new stuff, and creating our own lane, and we want people to see that.”

Their latest mixtape “Gone Fishin” was just released and has left all of us waiting for more for when their actual album drops later this year.

Image via Toki Collection

The Cool Kids – Popcorn

May, 01. 2009 by Andrew .

Click here to Listen and Download.

The Cool Kids – Champion

May, 01. 2009 by Andrew .

Click here to Listen and Download.