E-Mail This Article to a Friend Novelty numbers (continued)

All of this would have been but an interesting exercise if "Cameltoe" and "Hey Mami" hadn’t charmed their way onto the mainstream hip-hop airwaves — making So Stylistic, with the possible exception of a few songs on Missy Elliott’s last two albums, the only commercially viable expression of hip-hop nostalgia in recent memory. "For us to be sitting at Hot 97 was the ultimate, ultimate compliment," says Goias. "Because I’m not a person who goes, ‘Oh, the public is so stupid, they only like the lowest common denominator.’ That’s a cop-out that untalented underground cats will say because they don’t know how to make a good song. There are so many underground rapper guys that are like . . . [he imitates the carteroid-artery-busting, thesaurus-wrecking flow of anonymous backpacker MC]. And that’s great, and if you wrote it down, it would be terrific literature to see your perfect couplets and your extended metaphors. But you know what? It’s a stupid song. Because it’s bad. And sometimes you don’t need that in your music. Sometimes music is ‘Louie Louie,’ and ‘Louie Louie’ is like three notes. It’s harder to make fun, stupid music. I mean, if it’s so easy to make ‘Louie Louie,’ go make one.

"Don’t get me wrong, I love Sun Ra and John Coltrane and a lot of really weird stuff. But as a person who is making music, when you sit down and try to make fun stuff? It’s hard, dude. It’s a pain in the ass. And for us to be validated by New York hip-hop kids and the secretaries in Queens and the kids on the block in Brooklyn — that to me is the highest possible honor."

Of course, in post-electroclash New York City, FannyPack have had the best of both worlds — like Justin Timberlake and OutKast, they’re as much loved by indie-rock kids as they are by hip-hop’s proletariat. "My day job before this was in marketing," Goias says. "I know the hipster guys. They’re easy, dude. If you put on the right outfit and get in the right magazine and have the right logo, they like you. It has nothing to do with the music. And all those kids in Williamsburg who are into electroclash and stuff — it’s like the guys who used to think punk rock was trendy and cool mixed with people who used to think dance music and raving was trendy and cool, and now they live in the same neighborhood in Brooklyn. Because of the radio play that we got, we get booked in some places that trendy hipster people — even though I know we’re pretty trendy to a lot of people, I guess — we get booked in places that those kinds of bands never get booked. We got a gig at Foxwoods once. It was all these total guido people, which I love, and then 40 total hipster weirdos who drove to Foxwoods from Boston. And I so get off on that whole idea — here we are in the cheesiest place in the world, and it’s like ‘Ah-hah! I made you come here!’ It’s the same thing with the name: ‘Ah-hah! Dude, I made you say FannyPack!’ "

It goes without saying that novelty isn’t a dirty word in the FannyPack camp. "Some of my favorite songs of all time are novelties," Goias explains. "I mean, name another Laid Back song. The thing that’s very heavy with me and the girls is that So Stylistic is this thing we did on Fancy’s couch while drinking El Presidente beer and eating Twizzlers. We wrote these songs in like eight seconds, sitting in Fancy’s bedroom. The girls recorded them in his closet. And like last week we were in Helsinki — we’re next to Russia, and there’s people singing along to this thing we did in Fancy’s closet. And the girls know this isn’t going to last forever. We’re probably going to do a [new] record now and then tour and then that’s it. Jessibel is applying to colleges. I tell them that you have to think of it as a job at some point, and I always have to remind myself, too, like, well, I could be working at McDonald’s. So we’re very grateful."

And they’re already a half-dozen songs into their next album. "This is gonna sound so gay, but we found the FannyPack sound, sort of," says Goias. The key, he says, was a steady tempo of 150 bpm. "It’s a tempo where it can be crazy-get up-go-nuts booty, and it can also be really laid-back-crunk-dirty-straight-up hip-hop. This time we don’t have to trick Tommy Boy into a dance record."

FannyPack perform this Friday, February 27, at Matrix, 275 Tremont Street in the Theater District; call (617) 931-2000 or (617) 542-4077.