Six months after their moment-on-the-verge has passed, this album is still frickin’ ridiculous. From the moment Jessibel implores in the intro that we should all “get lookin’ all cute”, the vibe here is all innocent hedonism and cleverness of a kind that hasn’t been hot since… well, since Jay-Z, but trust me, you’ll be way more blown away by a 17-year-old girl flipping ridiculous about all the different kinds of boys that hit on her (“Hey Mami”) than you’ve ever been by that washed-up former drug dealer. Drug dealer? What a tired cliché; trust me, party girls are the real gangstas anyway. “Here we go yo, live and direct / The prettiest girls who cash the most checks / Straight to the bank in cars, never walking / Lookin’ mad cute, cell phone talkin'” — no detectable shame in that game.
The chemistry between the beats and the rhymes is simply staggering. Matt and Fancy, the masterminds behind the whole scheme, have taken the deep bass and popping synths of 2 Live Crew and his Miami Bass progenitors (I’ll throw out the obligatory L’Trimm comparison only because their “Cars with the Boom” is at least as perfect as “Cameltoe” — something about teenage girls who rap. Damn!) and spiked it with a healthy dose of harder New York sounds from disco to house to New Wave. Add to that the wickedly retro spit game of the three girls (though mainly Jessibel), and you’ve got the perfect summer disc — and not just for summer ’03, but for summers sure to stretch into the foreseeable future. While it would’ve been amazing if this had taken over Hot 97, everyone who already knows about it should thank God it didn’t — as perfect as these tracks are, endless repetition on commercial radio still would’ve managed to ruin them in a matter of weeks.
Not that they wouldn’t have sounded right at home on nationwide radio. These days, hip-hop radio is playing “Hey Ya!”, “Milkshake”, and “Get Low” back to back to back, so old-school booty bass revisionism would’ve just been one more flavor in the spicy, rich pot. C’est la vie. At least we’ve got not just a dozen enduring party anthems, but a fully-realized album, with the girls and guys pulling off one feat in particular that’s become unheard of in hip-hop — the skits are not only concise and funny, they give true insight into what the group is all about — for better and for worse. After “Cameltoe”, when Jessibel busts into “How Loose is Your Goose” it’s for the pure joy of hearing her own voice. But when she suddenly freestyles “I know that you’re recording me / ‘Cause I can tell when you’re recording me!”, it’s a reminder that her teenage joy is in service not just to itself, but to two knowing producers. During a conversation about art for the album, Belinda says there should be a drawing of her as a mermaid, “‘Cause I can swim!” According to Jessibel, she prefers bunnies, “‘Cause they’re nice and . . . what again? Oh yeah, fluffy!” Then Kat chimes in with a somewhat forced me-too bit — “Can you draw horses?” — and you’re reminded of yet another intragroup dynamic; Kat’s four or five years older than the other two girls and from a quite different background, but obviously she wants to be down. These are anything but complaints — for all the excellence of the music, the fact that there’s more going on here only makes it better.
What history will likely conclude is that So Stylistic was part of a fusillade of infectious, danceable, but still unassailably “cool” music that has made it okay for hipsters to shake their asses again. And not in the sort of ironic Crue-pumping, fashion mullet-wearing manner that had been the norm for the few years before things slid into the equally insincere world of electroclash. Instead, the current crop of party-minded Williamsburgers all manage to make music that they seem to really mean. You’ve got a grip of people like LCD Soundsystem, both intelligent and sweaty, or the Rapture, pumping out passion, creativity, and funk in equal measure. For Fannypack, the phrase that pays is savage wit and unexpected tunes, along with a spoonful of sugar that helps it get down — no, scratch that. The sugar is the medicine, and if it weren’t such an expertly concocted confection, it would be saccharine. Instead, its, like, totally sweet.