Although in his mid-20s, rapper Travis McCoy perfectly captures the seriocomic frustration of a brighter-than-average adolescent male on the third album by this alternative hip-hop quartet.
The foundation for the groovy music–which references not only Prince and Funkadelic but Burt Bacharach and Philly-style soul–is built on live bass, drums, guitars and keyboards.
The CD was released by the vanity label overseen by Pete Wentz of the pop-punk Fall Out Boy; that band’s lead singer, Patrick Stump, co-produced the recording. Gym Class Heroes have toured and shared the stage with such alternative rock acts as The Academy Is … , whose frontman William Beckett, croons the chorus on “7 Weeks.”
Although McCoy spends most of the album in lovelorn/horndog mode–the epitome of which is “New Friend Request,” in which unrequited love is updated for the MySpace age–he accomplishes this without any allusions to pimping or hos.
He also tackles a few other subjects, such as on the opener “The Queen and I,” in which his protagonist expresses deep concern for a girlfriend’s alcoholism. Ten songs in, McCoy finally picks up the hip-hop battle cudgel on “Biters Block” (featuring guest rapper Speech), which serves as a great example of how he maintains an abstract indie-rap flow while slipping into a harder style like that of Kanye West or Jay-Z.
This article appears in Sep 28 – Oct 4, 2006.
