Cool Kids Cover Snoop and Skee-Lo at Old School Lollapalooza Show

If the enthusiastic hometown reception for the Cool Kids is any indication, hip-hop's future is firmly rooted in its past. Harkening back to an era of two turntables and a microphone — and adding one more mike for good measure — the tag-team MCs rhymed playful raps for the everyman. There were no hype men or brand-name call-outs — just catchy refrains, solid beat-boxing and an undeniably good rapport between Chuck Inglish and Mikey Rocks. The pair told jokes and shared a story about Magic Johnson, then celebrated summer with a medley of Snoop Dogg, ODB and Skee-Lo hits. Arm-waving fans mouthed the words to the Kids' "A Little Bit Cooler," "Black Mags" and "What It Is" as if the tracks were already old-school scripture.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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