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Procrastination proto-hop

Yea Big D and Kid Static want you to fail your classes

By MICHAEL BRODEUR | May 6, 2008

Yea Big and Kid Static

This Sunday, a shitload of important reading-period assignments will go seriously undone at Tufts, when Chicagoan proto-hop masterminds Yea Big and Kid Static roll up on campus. Forget the termite treatment most underground rap teams seem intent on giving the fundamental structures of hip-hop — YB&KS seem more interested on upping the fun factor. This is good news for you, bad news for your sociology final. Catch them at the Oxfam Café with Rachel Macadamz, Awesome Brothers, and Peace Zone.

Yea Big + Kid Static, “DUCK, MOTHER FUCKERS!”
This righteous little quickie is taken from YB+KS’s homonymous full-length debut, which came out last October but has Hot Summer Jamz written all over it — along with some pretty awesome song titles. Example: “We’ve Built a Time Machine That Runs on Beats. We Shall Only Use It for Good.”

Yea Big, “RUN TO THE FACTS”
Mr. Big is highly prolific, highly mysterious, and possessed of a genre-hopping fearlessness you don’t ordinarily observe in the often beardstrokingly austere realm of indie hip-hop. Sometimes it even works, as in this mashy tweak of a track from squeaky LA art-rockers the Mae Shi.

Yea Big + Kid Static, “FROM BLOOMINGTON TO CHICAGO”
Another (slightly less successful) blend of Big’s boom-bap æsthetic with slightly overexcited artpunk, this rejiggering of the Bloomington (Indiana) band Rapider Than Horsepower comes from an edition of a scant 150 copies — which might be all the world really needs. Still, a good example of Big’s range and Static’s nice flow.

Oh Astro, “HELLO FUJI BOY”
From husband/wife team Hank Hofler and Jane Dowe (along with contributions from Yea Big) comes this highly illegal swirl of Lionel Ritchie’s “Hello,” Fujiya & Miyagi’s “Ankle Injuries,” Hot Chip’s “Boy From School,” and in this video, some seriously epileptic excerpts from The Lost Saucer. Just beauteous. Fake-song-of-the-year potential here.