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FANNYPACK IS IN STYLE a Be ready for some naughty but oh-so-nice kinder-booty. fa Published in PRESS Magazine April 2004
Once upon a time, a Fannypack used to be that a device worn around the waist by dorky suburban tourists to hold their extra rolls of film and sunscreen. Things change, though and believe it or not, what was once regarded as the tackiest of accessories is now associated with the epitome of cool as a couple of guy hip-hop DJs and a trio of New York girls from Brooklyn came together and created music dripping in old-school flavor coupled with a distinctly modern edge to come up with a giggly and pink booty-bag of wiggly electronica and super-stylized commercial candy-floss of hip-pop.
A fashionably interracial group quintet, the New York booty-bass band Fannypack is composed of singers Jessibel Suthiwong, Belinda Lovell and Cat Martell, three sassy and incredibly chic streetwise Brooklyn girls just oozing with urban style, and beat makers "Big Black" Matt Goias and Fancy.
The story started simply enough. The “masterminds” behind Fannypack, the two New York nightlife personalities and DJs, Fancy and Big Black Matt who both had a passion to spin the music they love but who felt shackled by the tastes of New York clubbers who continually requested mainstream hip-hop or Top 40, thought it would be fun to form a hip-hop group. They had the chops and connections, but there was one problem: they wanted to form a girl group. Luckily, the pair crossed paths with aspiring DJ, Cat, and Jessibel, who was hanging out at Brooklyn's Fulton Mall. When Jessibel brought in her gym-class buddy, rapper Belinda, FannyPack was born and the rest is history as the group signed a recording contract with Tommy Boy Records, who found in its hands an overnight sensation with the retro club banger So Stylistic, Fannypack’s debut album and the recording company’s latest release in a long and worthy line of party animals.
Deflating all the blowup-doll fantasies in booty music and replacing them with real live girls complete with devilishly cherubic attitudes, the girly nucleus of the band is headed by 17-year-old, Jessibel Suthiwong. Half Puerto Rican and half Thai, the booming personality of the group who never fails to speak exactly what’s on her mind is a high school senior who works extremely hard in school and hopes to one day be a psychologist. 16-year-old Belinda, whose family originally hails from the West Indian island of Trinidad is half black and half Indian and is a studio whiz known to nail raps in two takes. Last but not the least is Cat, a 21-year-old Brooklyn resident of Irish descent who has just recently graduated from Boston University. Also quite the DJ, she occasionally spins Rock N Soul at NYC hipster parties, and her taste for the sped up booty antics are heavily reflected on Fannypack’s So Stylistic LP.
With a fondness for rap rather than pop, the members of Fannypack are as eclectic and far-reaching as their music, lives, and travels. With teenage attitude, a fresh style and seriously slammin' retro dance beats incorporated in their lyrics that are frequently laugh-out-loud funny, their brand of music is streetwise, self-aware and clever, that is far from the overdone, sappy rantings on topics that real teenagers don’t know about. They rap in high voices about their daily life, from handbags, to muffins, to toast, to music, to dancing, to hangin out, to partying, to boys and to Fannypack's greatness, revealing the truth that most teenage girls are indeed far from being angels.
A multi-dimensional album, Fannypack’s Stylistic is one long sugar rush of 17 aural riots where every track is as catchy as a horrid disease, showcasing the mega-fresh marriage of electronic booty bass hip hop flavor and dance hall, dance floor, club music sensibilities. Recalling an era when music was fun and lyrics were more than an itemization of a rapper's net worth, the trio's dance-happy debut, So Stylistic throws in all the irony and frustration of the world, resulting to a compacted and impressive seventeen tracks that is as clever as it is cute, as serious as it is sexy and as eclectic as it is elastic.
Filled with kitsch, ultra-simple music, girly vocals and chatter, and stripped down hip-hop rhythms straight out of a groove box, Matt Goias and Fancy shaped the songs around the girls' gabfests, and So Stylistic captures a bunch of talky tracks including one in which Jessibel makes fun of Fancy's shirt and Cat gets called a hippopotamus-ass. Though this album delivers a sound that is so ostentatiously lightweight and “fun,” where gestures made toward high-school-confidential street authenticity may even come across as so phony, it also comes with a real musical sensibility at work with unorganic beats that are so stylized and so pre-calculated, making many of the tracks are exceptionally catchy, and you just can’t help but bop along with them.
Snaking synthesizer lines above beats borrowed from salsa, disco, Miami 1980s electro, and lite funk, So Stylistic showcases a number of groovy little singles that evidently stand out. An old-school meets nu-school party jam that is as infectious as it is funny, “Cameltoe,” the catchy and lewd single that talks about the universally accepted term for the crease(s) of a woman's front bum as seen through the material of pants that are WAY too tight, scored the trio a huge US novelty hit in summer 2003. "Hey Mami," the obligatory buzz-off to scrubby guys has some deconstructed Latin piano tinkling over a super-jumpy beat and some of that pervasive big bass. "Things," is a nice mid-album diversion where they sample the Yeah Yeah Yeah's as they talk about their likes and dislikes: yes to parties, candy, shopping and boys, no to school and bad weather. "So Stylistic," the razor-sharp title track has the slinky darkness of the Push It-style electro lead with some itchy and scratchy techno and provides a perfect backdrop for some Friday-night glamour-girl proclamation while the fruity punchline of the bass on “Sugar Daddy” would easily satisfy those seeking to hear something funky.
With insanely catchy, beats and lyrical attitude, listeners would find Fannypack keeping it light and keeping it real, while cranking out fun little songs in So Stylistic, this debut album of bouncy, perky, and sugary hip-pop party music where enthusiastic bunny-girl singers bring through their infectious grooves the lesser known sounds of freestyle, dance hall, booty-bass and merengue to the mainstream.
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