It’s All About That Holiday Jam

Yo Yo Yo Kids “Presents” – Let’s face it — kids today are too fucking cool for Christmas. By the time they’re old enough for Kindergarten, they’re entirely over it. I mean, c’mon, it’s the same thing every year, and what do you think they are, babies? HELL NO! All of the elementary school students that I hang out with are hip, sophisticated pre-tweens, and they’re probably on to something when they tell me that Santa Claus and his elves are totally lame. That said, acquisition of material goods is never, ever, ever uncool, and so it’s still worth celebrating, or at least until the Wii is all set up.

Anyway, wide-eyed child-like joy is obviously out of the question, but Christmas music is permissible so long as it conveys the same sort of numbness and entitlement found in most contemporary post-Timbaland chart hits. Yo Yo Yo Kids hit just the right balance on “Presents.” The kids pay lip service to your typical secular Christmas iconography, but they couldn’t possibly sound more bored by your sentiment or unimpressed by the pageantry. A little girl raps in the same weirdly indifferent tone Fergie would reserve for advertising the merits of her lovely lady lumps, and it totally makes sense because it’s basically the same song. In either tune, the singer is just playing along with social norms in order to be compensated with expensive gifts, and she can barely conceal her motivations. It’s all just a means to an end. And there it is, the new holiday cheer: It’s Christmas, y’all. Let’s get it over with. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)