Get Your Mickey Factz Straight

I don't know where it came from, but I think I have a new favorite musical subgenre. The cool kids are calling it "hipster hop." I calls it "can i has a more?"




This quaint little umbrella includes artists like Kid Sister, The Cool Kids, Flosstradamus, and others. I've always been a fan of underground hip hop music, from Def Jux to the okayplayer, Roots-types. I fuck with all of it. The thing I'm liking about this new little wrinkle is that its bringing back something hip hop music's been missing: fun.

Yeah, you could argue that Soulja Boy just wants to have fun, but fuck him (YAHHH TRICK YAHHH). I'm talking about being enjoyable without being retarded. The Roots, Talib Kweli, dead prez: all amazing hip hop acts. I love them to death, but they're so fucking deep. They're intrinsically bound with their ideologies and political leanings that its hard to just kick back with them in your headphones.

Def Jux labelmates like Aesop Rock and El-P are awesome, too, but they're so out there. They all subscribe to that Kool Keith-Dr. Octagon, weird-as-fuck school of hip hop production, with their overly verbose rhymes and generally headache inducing flows.

To ask a question posed by Ghostface Killah in a recent interview, whatever happened to "can I kick it?"

Its back, bitches.

These new artists fuse skate culture, hipster fashion senses, late 80s native-tongues attitude, and bass-and-drum heavy beats with clever pop culture references and a likable swagger. I know everyone was getting used to calling Lupe Fiasco the future of hip hop, but, pocket thesaurus and sociopolitical insight notwithstanding, he's not it.



Listen to "I Rock" from The Cool Kids or "Southside" from Kid Sister. These motherfuckers are the future.

The guy I'm really fucking with right now is Mickey Factz. He rolls with Chuck Inglish and Mickey Rocks (of the Cool Kids) and he's got two killer mixtapes that you have to hear.



"In Search of The N.E.R.D." is a compendium of killer freestyles laid over N.E.R.D. instrumentals and his follow-up "Heaven's Fallout" shows a lot of growth in a little time.

Both are available at www.gfcny.com

He's no Weezy, but I know we haven't heard the last of him.