Let’s rewind to June of 2005. Me and the ska band I was in, Three Years Accident Free, were playing second stage supporting a pretty awesome band called Streetlight Manifesto. Being the respectful musicians that we were, we all watched the openers, there was an all black pop punk band called Whole Wheat Bread and this band called Gym Class Heroes. We all immediately assumed they were a generic ska band, I mean their name was Gym Class Heroes for God’s sake. But we went in to see them, and when their front man was a flashy dressed black guy inked out with gauged ears, we were all a bit taken aback. And when they started playing what they did was blow my mind. It was like catchy rock music with a charismatic MC as their front man. I bought their CD The Papercut Chronicles, bumped it a whole lot and pimped it out to anyone who liked good music. Some months later I was at Best Buy and I noticed they had a new CD, and after saying, “They sell this unknown band at Best Buy?” I bought it, and it was just as kick ass as their first. And then a few months later their track “Cupid’s Chokehold” got re-recorded and released as a cheesy love song single and it blew up. Now, a year and some change after they had their big hit, Gym Class Heroes have released The Quilt, and having that “I opened for you when you were unknown!” mentality, I eagerly bought it, and to put it bluntly, they’ve fallen from their graces.
The album starts with “Guilty as Charged,” a pretty catchy piece complete with a horn section and featuring R&B singer Estelle. The song is a welcome introduction, kind of saying “Hey people we’re gonna do something different but still be funky.” The next track, “Drnk Txt Rmeo” is yet another chronicle of front man Travis McCoy’s escapades with the ladies, and by this time around it seems kind of tired. Busta Rhymes hops on the next song “Peace Sign/Index Down” in an effort to add hip hop credibility to the group. And they fail. The song is repetitive and throws obscenities around like they have no meaning. Busta is one of the most innovative rappers around, his flow is by far one of the most intricate in the game, and yet in this track we see him dropping the F bomb and spitting lines like he’s just another mainstream rapper. The next two tracks, “Like Father Like Son” and “Blinded by the Sun” are two standouts, even though the latter is yet another song about girls. McCoy is downright bad ass when he spits “I called but you ignored it when you kissed him in the hallway. / Call me crazy, call me odd, call me what you want to. / But Karma is a bitch, I pray to god she always haunts you.” And the chorus, although repetitive, is very singable, regardless of the fact that the boys recruit Fall Out Boy’s Patrick Stump to sing another 80’s line. On “Like Father” we see McCoy go back into his past, avoiding his somewhat over the top metaphors and just spitting lyrics that hit the spot.
And while “Like Father” and “Blinded” are two high points, the next two tracks are by far the most annoying. “Catch Me If You Can” is a completely pretentious track where McCoy analyzes his youth, making rhymes about Hungry Hungry Hippos and other ridiculous nostalgia pieces. If you like listening to music and going, “Wow, that’s cool that he references a toy I played with when I was a kid!” then you may like the track, but it’s tough to take an MC seriously when he tries to seem legitimate while rapping about these things. “Cookie Jar” is an absolute disgrace to the band to be blunt. Featuring a guest appearance from current 15 minutes of fame cash-er The Dream, the song is another repetitive track about Travis’ problems with infidelity, and it’s blatant metaphor is so corny, especially when you have a T-Pain knockoff repeating the chorus, “I like girls / They like me…I want to be faithful / But I can’t keep my hands out the cookie jar.” Wow, I wonder what he means by that? The next track, “Live a Little” is another highlight, the now overbearing McCoy isn’t even on the track, as guitarist Disashi Lumumba-Kasongo sings a catchy pop song. The problem with it is that the group wants to clearly succeed as a power in hip-hop, and returning to their alternative routes doesn’t do them much good. The next few songs play off like typical Gym Class tracks, decent, but nothing particularly interesting. Oh and guess what? They bring the Dream back to sing a song called “Kissin’ Ears” and guess what it’s about?
The album ends on a decent note, the track “Home” feels like it belongs on Papercut and Lumumba-Kasongo’s second front-man track “No Place to Run” is another fun pop track with nicely layered pianos that don’t make you shake your head like on “Cookie Jar.” The last track “Coming Clean” is another perfectly good track, McCoy ends the album on a forgivable note, but yet again, he’s writing to a girl about something he may have done that would hurt her.
So all in all Gym Class Heroes make a perfectly listen-able album with The Quilt. The problem is that they have so much talent listenable just isn’t enough. McCoy is one of the most innovative rappers alive, he used to make tracks that picked out emo bands, or talked about how he was seduced by a teacher, or even about such heavy subjects as the unfair treatment of homosexuals. What happened to that Travis? And what happened to the simple band jams that we heard on Papercut Chronicles? The title seems to imply that the album is indeed like a quilt, sewn together from pieces of different things, but aside from a small handful of tracks, the entire album sounds the same. Maybe Gym Class Heroes were better as one of those bands guys like me opened for. I think the fame has gotten to their heads.
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