NYLON - March 2009 - (Page 160) the the cool kids based in: Chicago Chuck Inglish and Mikey Rocks HOW DO YOU SEE HIP-HOP EVOLVING? HOW DID YOU TWO MEET? WE HEARD IT WAS ON MYSPACE WHEN MIKEY E-MAILED YOU ABOUT A BEAT. WHAT WAS YOUR LAST 9-TO-5 JOB? in a nutshell: Retro-smooth thumpers for the BMX crowd amanda blank based in: Philadelphia spin this: Their That’s Stupid mixtape and The Bake Sale EP. Their full-length CD, When Fish Ride Bicycles, arrives this spring. Chuck: It’s not gonna be this big cash cow everybody wants it to be. I don’t think it’s good that it’s becoming a free-for-all. Everybody thinks they can do it, since we’ve made it look easy. RAPPERS ARE NOW WEARING SKINNY JEANS AND GOLD CHAINS LIKE YOU. ARE YOU MAD SO MANY GROUPS MIMIC THE COOL KIDS? in a nutshell: Durrty verses from a broad who sounds like she could fight off a mugger That’s corny [laughs].” I don’t know how he convinced me, but I wrote “Bump.” I was scared, like, “Oh no, I don’t want people calling us the Black Eyed Peas.” WHAT CAN WE EXPECT FROM YOUR ALBUM? Yeah, but we knew a lot of the same people and listened to each other’s beats, so it was kinda like game recognizes game. We started making music and leaking the shit. WHY GIVE IT AWAY FOR FREE? We both worked at McDonald’s…. When they put out the Select Strips, Mikey used to keep ’em in his register drawer [to eat later]. WHAT’S YOUR BEST CAREER ADVICE? Love what you do, and have people you love around you while you’re doing it. spin this: “Bump” (from Spank Rock’s YoYoYoYoYo) and “DJ Play That Shit.” Her debut LP drops this spring. YOU STARTED RAPPING IN HIGH SCHOOL. WHY DID YOU WAIT UNTIL 2004 TO JOIN A HIP-HOP COLLECTIVE LIKE SPANK ROCK? No. It should bother them. Why not? We were not trying to get signed. We just liked making dope shit. I’m a big show-off [laughs], so my style is everywhere. But Lykke Li, M.I.A., and Santogold are on a couple songs.… The new album is pretty electronic, some songs are inspired by Depeche Mode and New Order. YOUR LYRICS ARE ALSO PRETTY RAUNCHY—WHY RHYME ABOUT SEX? asher roth based in: Morrisville, Pennsylvania in a nutshell: Cheeky musings from a swaggering suburbanite good sneakers. But I’m not going to lie, when I put them on, I feel like I have too much shoe on my foot. IS IT ANNOYING THAT YOU’RE CONSTANTLY COMPARED TO EMINEM? WHAT INSPIRES YOUR MUSIC? spin this: The Greenhouse Effect mixtape and “A Milli Remix,” his take on the Lil Wayne hit. His first album drops this spring. WHAT’S THE MOST UNASSUMING THING ABOUT YOU? My best friend Naeem [a.k.a. MC Spank Rock] asked me to rap on a song he was performing at a show, but I was like, “Hell no! I don’t wanna be the white-girl rapper I don’t know, maybe because I’m in my early twenties. It’s a big part of being young: You have a sex life. WHAT’S YOUR BEST SEX ADVICE? Um…I wear boat shoes. BUT YOU’RE A RAPPER! I can’t be bummed out about it, because he is the number-oneselling rap artist of all time. That’s just one of my battles: showing everybody who Asher Roth actually is, which is not Eminem’s longlost brother. WHO ARE YOUR INFLUENCES? Well, I’m just trying to move hip-hop forward and stop making this stuff kids can’t listen to…. You know for the past 10 years [rappers] have been talking about their jewels, their trucks, their guns, and their money—and no one gives a shit. YOU HAVE A SONG CALLED “I LOVE COLLEGE.” WHAT’S YOUR BEST ADVICE FOR OTHER COLLEGE STUDENTS? Go to class! Girls are innately better in bed, so maybe just know that. I mean, I appreciate Q-Tip, Mos Def, and Jay-Z. 160
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