Y.N.RichKids are the anti-Lil Mouse

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Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Boom! / Music Y.N.RichKids are the anti-Lil Mouse

Posted By Miles Raymer on 08.15.12 at 01:40 PM

Y.N.RichKids

Recently a video by a 13-year-old Chicago rapper named Lil Mouse went viral, not because the song is particularly eccentric or compellingly listenable but because there's a 13-year-old kid rapping about shooting people and taking drugs—and because, given the production values, there were obviously adults abetting the making of the song and video. You don't have to be Tipper Gore to find the situation upsetting. A lot of people are holding it up as an indictment of an entire generation/demographic/genre, which I can't get behind, but as a display of dumbness on the part of grown people who are ostensibly responsible for a human child, it definitely makes me want to facepalm in a very sad way.

If the air has seemed a little tainted with bad vibes since Lil Mouse blew up, though, the even more recent viral explosion of the song "Hot Cheetos & Takis" by a group called Y.N.RichKids is a fresh, snack-food-scented breeze that's swept away the bummer-ness and replaced it with a hyperactive joie de vivre—which more than justifies the track's place in Videogum's always amazing collection of summer jams. I'll admit that it's nice to see a bunch of kids rapping about age-appropriate subjects like riding bikes and paying for snacks with your own money (baller!), even though wholesomeness is usually at the bottom of the list of things I want out of a song. But even more than that, I love how every one of the million or so kids in the group goes insanely hard on his or her verse. Especially the kid who is obviously the Ol' Dirty Bastard of the group.

Check out the video after the jump. And be prepared to be singing the song to yourself for the rest of the week.