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Heroes' 'Chokehold' On Music Is Hard To Define

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By ERIN CARLSON, The Associated Press

Published: October 26, 2007

NEW YORK - Gym Class Heroes frontman Travis McCoy was half-flattered, half-annoyed when his band won the best new artist trophy at the MTV Video Music Awards last month.

'It was really cool,' he says of the Heroes' victory over the likes of Amy Winehouse and Carrie Underwood. 'But I mean, in a sense, it was kind of a little bit interesting, because of the fact that we've been a band for 10 years.'

After years under the radar, Gym Class Heroes has emerged as this year's breakout band. And McCoy, 26, the charismatic rapper-singer and goofy star of the music video of the group's huge single 'Cupid's Chokehold,' has gotten plenty of attention. He is the Pete Wentz of the quartet, more of a camera ham than guitarist Disashi Lumumba-Kasongo, bassist Eric Roberts and drummer Matt McGinley.

The Heroes watched their profile rise after 'Chokehold' hit the radio last year. The undeniably catchy song eventually reached No. 4 on Billboard's 'Hot 100.'

It first appeared on the band's 2005 album, 'The Papercut Chronicles,' and was featured again on the follow-up disc, 'As Cruel As School Children,' first released in July 2006 and reissued several months later with 'Chokehold' as an additional track.

When asked for his take on the song's popularity, McCoy shrugs and says simply: 'I don't know. You have to ask the people that.'

'We try not to analyze our music too much,' he explains. 'Us not doing that kinda gives us the freedom to make the music we want as opposed to drawing ourselves in a certain category.'

The group, which blends diverse musical styles including hip hop and emo-rock, began in the '90s after McCoy and McGinley bonded during gym class at their high school in Geneva, N.Y., near Rochester in upstate's scenic Finger Lakes region. They added Lumumba-Kasongo and Roberts a few years ago.

McCoy gets a kick out of people who try to define the Heroes.

'They've called us emo hip hop,' he says. 'They've called us alternative hip hop, they've called us hip hop and rock. Whatever makes it easier for them to categorize us, so be it. I just laugh at a lot of 'em. I always thought we were a country-western band.'

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