gym class heroes? more like wack ass zeroes

So the other day, I briefly went off about how wack Gym Class Heroes are and then I thought "Man, I'm being pretty harsh to some dudes who are just trying to make some hip-hop." Then I slapped myself for the thought and continued on with the notion that Gym Class Heroes are the worst thing to happen to hip-hop since Raven-Symone's rap record and Benzino.

Their clusterfuck of a debut album "The Papercut Chronicles" has one passable song ("Papercuts"), the rest of it is just garbage. There's no way around it. That "clever" song "Taxi Driver" -- which uses emo band names as lyrics -- is blatant rip off of GZA's 1995 single "Labels," in which Genius chastises the record industry by dropping label names.

Schleprock's flow (if you can call it that) is similar to Shifty Shellshock of Crazy Town, so my comparison isn't completely unwarranted. In fact there's a lot of that the two have in common.

* Both use "live" instrumentation, but at least Crazy Town had a DJ. Gym Class Heroes won't even give some young turntable buck a chance to shine. Maybe they're afraid of being outdone.

* Both are found in the "rock" section. This goes back to a debate at Easy Street when Tanya, one of the buyers at the store, kept putting "The Papercut Chronicles" in rock, so I took it upon myself to move it to hip-hop. She got fed up with this so she put a note under the album's information instructing that it go in rock. Former manager Michael and I were perplexed so we called Fueled by Ramen (Wack Ass Zeroes label) and asked them where the album should be filed. Sure enough, they said "rock." See, Gym Class Heroes can't even be considered hip-hop by their own fucking label, not unlike Crazy Town.

* Shifty Shellshock has a bunch of tattoos, some of which were part of some weird CGI shit in the "Butterfly" video. Schleprock also has a bunch of tattoos and I'm sure once they start getting some of that Fall Out Boy money, then it's just a matter of time before star tattoos start flying around like x-wings in their goddamn videos.

* They both suck.

I figured that to these junior high emo hipster kids, who wouldn't know a good hip-hop record if Erick Sermon hit them with a haymaker, probably own three rap CDs: Missy's "Under Construction," Kanye West's "Late Registration," and this shit. But seriously, Gym Class Heroes is lowering the bar even further and people who couldn't tell you the difference between "Follow the Leader" and "The Funky Headhunter" will have this fucked up version of hip-hop as a sad reference point.