Chicago blog-era DIY luminaries The Cool Kids dropped new content ahead of the holiday season on Tuesday with a twist.
Akin to Atlanta hip-hop duo OutKast’s fifth album “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below,” Chuck Inglish and Sir Michael Rocks plan to release their fourth studio effort, “Before S--- Got Weird,” which will be released as double album packaged as their solo LPs.
On Tuesday, staying true to their blog-era roots, Rocks dropped the song “Home Improvement,” while Inglish released “Driver.”
“Given the times, we spent the whole year pretty much working on a record and I realized that we’re breaking things down into individual moves and giving them [fans] songs showing our versatility,” said Inglish. “We’re showing our solo growth and putting it all together in one big pot and doing something different by giving people a record right now.”
While the duo have yet to decide on a release date, the names for each of their albums will be called “Chillout” for Inglish, and “Babyoil Staircase,” they told the Sun-Times.
They describe the double album as an “audio movie.”
“It’s a play on words, the imagery you see on that album cover,” said Rocks. “You see a beautiful, luxurious looking staircase — obviously you want to get to the top of it. But it seems like nowadays it’s baby oil on it like an illusion. … We’re told to reach for things that we are told that we should be — or striving for. But are really attractive.”
And Inglish wanted to keep things simple when he came up with the title of his album.
“When I thought about what was going on in the world, I was like: ‘Alright, I can preach people to death, but my mantra to myself was just chill out,’ ” said Inglish.
While they’ve released a litany of EPs (“The Bake Sale”) and mixtapes including “Totally Flossed Out,” “Gone Fishing,” and “Tacklebox,” among others, the two are mindful of how listener habits’ have evolved over time.
The duo says fans will see that evolution.
“We know each other better,” said Inglish. “I think we have a clear-cut idea of how we want to exist to the world even though the world’s changed a little bit. People’s hunger for creativity and creation will never really go anywhere. You just have to figure out ways to tap into what they want. And I know where our minds are and how fearless we are toward our sound and you know what we want to put out.
“You can’t really invent anything new now. You can put your spin on it, and as a group that has almost been through our 15th year, it’s important to me to figure out ways that we exist better together.”
