Fannypack

The funny girls of FannyPack -- Jessibel, Cat and Belinda -- may already be known to some
of you as the trio that chirps, "Fix yourself, girl!/You got a camel toe!" They aren't so much
a hip-hop group as the Bow Wow Wow of bass music. On So Stylistic, FannyPack deliver
spit wads of speaker-wrecking low-end, tweaked vocoder vocals, cheesy early-Eighties
synth riffs -- and that's just the title track.The group uses every ridiculous rhyth... More >

In good Svengali-group fashion, they run out of material before they run out of concept, but not by much. From Belinda finding a quarter to Jessibel getting her mom to wake her up for gym, the found skits are set up by the scripted intro that climaxes, "Let's get famous. Let's get famous! LET'S GET FAMOUS!" That's the dream, and until a lawyer examines their royalty statements, it'll be all they want and the least they deserve. Three thin voices rap-sing-chant over the same bare-bones electro that sophisticates equate with two-headed dildos and black leatherette. But here, it intensifies the toughness, naïveté, moralism, sentimentality, ambition, ebullience, and sex drive all high school girls know but few have the sass to project and none have forged into art, especially with a Brooklyn accent. Imagine "I Know What Boys Like," which you remember, combined with L'Trimm, who you should look up. Both are on the mix CD their handlers sent out to beguile the press. I sure bit. (Grade: A-)