Gym Class Heroes

Video: Travie Performs with Estelle

Check the video of Travis of Gym Class Heroes performing with hot new British singer Estelle. The video is kind of a crappy bootleg kind of thing and it’s hard to see, but it was posted on Friends or Enemies on April 28th. According to the Gym Class Heroes Myspace page it was recorded on the evening of April 28th as well at the Highline Ballroom in New York City where Travie currently resides. I wasn’t even aware that Travie had a song with Estelle, so that is awesome for him. It’s definitely a great look for Travie because I have seen Estelle on a few of the top talk shows as of late including Jimmy Kimmel and Ellen, so she is definitely doing her thing. Her video “American Boy” with Kanye is also getting a lot of airplay on Much Music around these parts – and of course Kanye is one of the biggest music stars in the world right now.

Additionally, there are a bunch of new videos from the Fueled By Ramen thing on TRL and MTV from yesterday, which I reported about in an earlier blog. I couldn’t find any videos on the Friends or Enemies site with Gym Class Heroes, otherwise I would have posted it here as well. Hopefully something will pop up on Youtube soon before it gets removed for copyright violations. But if you want to go check out some of the other bands’ videos on Friends or Enemies, check out the link here.

For those who live in the States or get access to the American MTV, you may want to TiVo this one. Panic at the Disco will be stopping by MTV’s Total Request Live this Monday and they’ll be bringing a few friends along with them. Along with Gym Class Heroes, there will also be appearances by The Academy Is…, The Hush Sound and The Cab. This is definitely a good look for the Fueled By Ramen camp and all of the bands involved. According to the Fueled By Ramen site, there will be appearances by more bands on their roster including Phantom Planet and Cobra Starship. However, MTV is only advertising PATD, GCH, TAI, THS and The Cab, so who knows which bands are really scheduled to be on the show. However, Gym Class Heroes can definitely expect to see the boys back on TRL, especially with a new album to help promote to the masses.

While this is pretty short notice and chances now of being able to get to be part of the audience are probably slim to none, you can try by visiting this link on the MTV Web Site. It’s worth a shot to send a quick email if you live in the New York City area and could make the trip. The site cautions that all audience members must be between the ages of 16 and 24 and must provide their names, phone number, date and age. I guess 25 year-olds are considered too old.

At any rate, be sure to check out Gym Class Heroes this Monday on TRL.

Producer Omen is set to release an album called “Be the Judge”. He has just released one track, which will be appearing on the album titled “Overdose on Life”. The joint features MC’s Mickey Factz from the Bronx, Drake from Toronto and Travie from halfway in-between. It’s a hype track with a crazy synth beat, and definitely progressive. Travis is as lyrical as I have ever heard him and he is definitely in some good company. Mickey has quite a buzz around him I have noticed, with lots of hype on his Myspace and on Youtube and some collaborations with the likes of N.E.R.D. and Nalege of Kidz in the Hall. Look out for this dude. Drake is very well-known around these parts as well. I’m from Toronto and I actually heard a rumor that Drake was working with Dr. Dre, ghostwriting for possible material on the upcoming Detox album. Not sure how accurate that is, but I could definitely see it as a possibility simply because the dude has a nice flow. A lot of people recognize him as being a star in the new Degrassi series as well, though he has a lot of videos that get played on Much Music up here as well.

I checked out the track on Travie’s blog, which you can get to by clicking here. He just posted it on there a couple of days ago, though I know you can find it all over the web. Mickey Factz also has it on his Myspace page, which you can link to here.

According to news brief posted today on Hip-Hop DX, Gym Class Heroes will be performing at this summer’s Hot 97 Summer Jam, June 1st at the Giants Stadium. The radio station annouced full details on the concert this morning, which will feature some of the biggest names in hip-hop today and some crazy reunions. This is a massive event for Gym Class as they continue to break through the hip-hop side of the spectrum as they play to a packed Giants Stadium. I have posted the article written by Edwin Ortiz for Hip Hop DX, or you can check out the link to the actual page here.

It’s only April but things are already heating up for Summer.

During Angie Martinez’s radio show today, she announced Hot 97’s Summer Jam 2008 line-up. Headlining the night will be Kanye West and Lil Wayne, both present at last years Summer Jam. Lil Wayne was a headliner, while Kanye came on stage alongside Swizz Beatz’ to have a little beat battle.

Two-thirds of D-Block (Sheek Louch and Styles P) will perform sans Jadakiss, and NY’s own hip-hop/rock fusion group Gym Class Heroes have been confirmed as well. This will be their first Summer Jam performance.

R&B acts will be well represented also. T-Pain, Ray J, Rihanna, Yung Berg and The Dream will take the stage where we could possibly see collaborations of their hit singles. Also announced was a special reunited performance from Public Enemy. Of course, we can expect several other guest appearances on stage as we saw last year (which included Diddy, Keyshia Cole, Lil’ Kim and Bone Thugs).

Presale tickets are already available at ticketmaster.com. Hot 97’s Summer Jam will take place June 1st at Giants Stadium.

Reported By Edwin Ortiz

The past week and a bit has seen some updates on Travie’s Blog including a bunch of new videos and news. Most recently, he put a shot of him and his cousin Tyga as well as a link to a brand new article written about Tyga on the MTV site. The article talks about Tyga’s video shoot and the future of his career as well as a bit about his relationship with cousin Travis. There’s some video footage as well. Check out the article on the MTV site here.

There’s some new shots of him sporting a Duck Down hoodie where he mentions something about being Duck Down, which is of course the legendary label that released Boot Camp Clik material. Some of their stuff from the early ‘90s is some of the most classic underground hip-hop ever including early Black Moon and the first Smiff N Wessun album. Travie is featured on the new Kidz in the Hall album, who are signed to Duck Down, which explains that. Travie also posted a pretty disturbing video of himself wearing one of the creepiest masks I have ever seen. I copied the video below so you can see what I’m talking about. He put up a mixtape of new stuff he’s listening to including new ones from Snoop, Lil’ Wayne and CoFlow as well as new pics of him and Johnny Cupcakes and himself getting some new tats. Something for the ladies too (lol) as he displays his new boxers given to him by Johnny Cupcakes himself. And I think that’s where I last left off with the last Travie’s Blog updates. Go check out his site from the link above and take a peek at one of the sickest videos I have ever seen below.


For my Little White Dove…. from Travie McCoy on Vimeo.


BrutalPhotos.com recently posted a new gallery of Gym Class Heroes photos. The photos were taken on April 13th while doing their college stint at Washington College and were just posted on the site a few days ago. There are 25 new pictures in total of all the guys and of course lots of Travie as in the thumbnail above. The pics are nicely lit as the girl who runs Brutal Photos does a nice job of capturing the live atmosphere and close shots of the band. Check out the entire photo gallery by clicking here. If you want to check out the Brutal Photos Myspace page, you can check that out by clicking here.

She’s got lots of great photo galleries of Fall Out Boy, New Found Glory, Emery, My Chemical Romance, Cobra Starship, Avenged Sevenfold, August Burns Red, Atreyu, Every Time I Die, Taking Back Sunday, Plain White T’s, New York Dolls, Him, Matt Costa, From First To Last, Senses Fail, Paramore, Simple Plan and the list goes on. The Gym Class Heroes gallery is one of the newer collections, but she’s even got a more recent gallery from an Avril Lavigne concert on April 15th at the Patriot Center. Apparently this photographer is only 18 years-old, but from the looks of things she has a bright future in photography and is definitely getting some good opportunities to take great, up-close shots of some big name acts. Go check out the Myspace page and the GCH gallery from the links above.

The band recently posted another video on Friends or Enemies of them goofing around during soundcheck. Not sure what city the video was filmed in, but it’s an outdoor amphitheatre kind of venue. Travie starts off by singing a little song. At first I couldn’t remember what song it was, though I know I knew it. Then I realized it was by K-OS, who Travie and the rest of Gym Class are apparently big fans of considering. I just found out a couple of weeks ago that K-OS will be making an appearance on the upcoming GCH album along with of course Busta Rhymes and others. Being from Toronto, I’m proud of my homegrown Canadian talent and never realized that K-OS was that popular south of the border. If you ever want to check out some dope K-OS shit, look for his track with the Rascalz and Barrington Levey from back in the day. I can’t remember the exact name of the song right now, but you could probably find it on Youtube as well because I know there’s a video for it. For those who don’t know, the Rascalz are a legendary Vancouver hip-hop duo still going strong today. Look up “Soul Obligation” in Youtube from them as well.

Anyway, enough of my shameless promotion of Canadian hip-hop. After the sung K-OS intro by Travie in the video, the band and the camera man (not sure who is filming, though he has a high-pitched laugh) spend a good portion of the time laughing at Disashi’s pants. Check out the video below:

Karmaloop is showing love to Gym Class Heroes once again with a brand new interview with Travie conducted by DJ Clinton Sparks alongside Pusha of Clipse. At first it seems as though Sparks is trying to catch Travie with his foot in his mouth as he asks him if he’s a fan of the Clipse. He says he is and he continues to ask Travie to name one line in any Clipse song. But Travie doesn’t slip as he says the Hell Hath No Fury album gets play in the GCH tour bus constantly. I’m pretty sure this was filmed at the Magic fashion tradeshow earlier this year in Vegas, where I know Travis was in attendance. The first part of this interview is all about upcoming music the two have got going on (Travie talks a bit about Cool and Dre doing production on the upcoming GCH album) and the second part of the interview is mostly about fashion. Later on Clinton asks about Pusha and Travie’s “booty game” since they’ve gotten fame and television airplay, obviously trying to shake things up in the interview.

This isn’t the first time Travie has appeared on Karmaloop TV, as he did a Cribs-style thing with them at the beginning of ’08 where he showed off his then-new Manhattan apartment. Karmaloop also followed the entire band around before and after a performance for a feature they did on them a while back.

The new interview with Travie and Pusha is in two parts. I posted them both below:

If you’ve seen Travie’s blog lately, you’ll notice he just posted the official, official brand new video for his cousin Tyga’s single “Coconut Juice”. Of course I told you before about the behind the scenes footage and making of the video and that Travie would be making an appearance as they guy who loans Tyga his house for a weekend. Check that footage out here with a small appearance by Travie.

The video is pretty cool as Travie takes off at the beginning and of course another cameo by Pete Wentz. What was kept pretty secret is the cameo appearance from Lil’ Wayne (as you may have heard Tyga will also be making an appearance on the upcoming Lil’ Wayne album The Carter III), so that is sure to get some attention to anyone unfamiliar with Tyga. You can also check out the Wayne track featuring Tyga if you search for it on Youtube. When Travie returns back home towards the end of the “Coconut Juice” video he spits his few lines, though this is definitely centered around the catchy hook to get radio and TV attention. And the track is definitely infectious and this is the perfect time for its release – definitely intended to be listened to during the summer, in your whip, at parties or by the pool. I am especially curious to see how well this track takes off on a mainstream level and I’m gonna enjoy sitting back and watching Tyga blow up.

Check out the video here:

Tyga Coconut Juice Music Video


The student newspaper of UCAB, The Flat Hat, posted a pretty in-depth review of their recent concert last Wednesday. The article was posted on April 4th and can be checked out by clicking here. Author Genice Phillips did an amazing job covering all aspects of the spring concert including chatting with audience members and talking in-depth about all the opening acts. Tyga kicked things off, and as the review mentions he invites the some of the crowd up onstage during his performance. The article also gave him a bit of press about his upcoming album and the fact he will be appearing on The Carter III. The second opening act was Kidz in the Hall, a new group signed to the legendary Duck Down Records. Third was I Am The Avalanche who brought the rock portion to the show. All three seem to be perfect to set the stage for GCH, who of course combine a bit of both. It is especially good considering many people in attendance may not be too familiar with Gym Class considering it’s a school concert. It is a good way to ease the crowd into the headlining act with a nice blend of openers. Apparently, the crowd was not overly huge and started “trickling in” about midway through the evening. The review of the Gym Class set is pretty funny as well. This is a nice, long and in-depth review of their show. Go check it out by clicking the link above and leave some comments to let ‘em know you stopped by.

As I told you in an earlier post, a good friend of Gym Class Heroes and fashion designer Johnny Cupcakes recently met up with the band while on tour in Chicago. He posted on his blog that while they were hanging out, he mentioned to the band that considering so many people throw articles of clothing onstage during the band’s performance of “Clothes Off” that all of the clothing should be donated to goodwill. I’m not sure what happened with the clothes before, but the band figured it was a good idea. Johnny posted on his blog that the band would be donating all clothing from now on.

Well, Travie made a brand new video posted on Friends or Enemies where he encourages all those within throwing-range to throw their clothes onstage from now on as the band vows that they will all be donated to a good cause so they can get to the people who may actually really need them. As Travie says in the video, is encouraging all people to get “butt ass naked” with Gym Class Heroes and throw more clothes on stage and get “more naked”. Considering the amount of girls the band draws, I’m sure there will be lots of bras and panties donated. But hey, you don’t need to go to a GCH show to donate clothing to needy folks, you can do so at any time – and I’m sure you got some ragged old stuff stored away in your closet somewhere.

Check out the video below if you want to check it out.

Sixshot.com recently posted a pretty cool interview with Tyga on their site. He talks a bit about Travie saying that things really started to blow up for him once Travie got involved and really got behind him to help promote his music. He says Travie showed him a “whole other lifestyle” and brought him up onstage to crowd sizes he had never been in front of before which helped give him a taste of the spotlight and hungry for more. Travie has definitely been behind his cousin 100% to help spread his name and of course is featured in the new “Coconut Juice” video. I recently posted some video footage of the “Coconut Juice” video shoot which you can check out by clicking here.

The behind-the-scenes footage features some interviews with Tyga as well as some quick shots of Travie and Pete Wentz. It also shows some of the video premise, which is basically Travie going away on tour and leaving his mansion to Tyga, who throws a massive pool party full of chicks in thongs. Wish I was there.

I was also really surprised to hear that Tyga will appear on the new Lil’ Wayne album The Carter III, which is probably one of the most anticipated hip-hop albums in the past several years. That’s amazing for the dude because his career is going to take off like crazy once that record drops. The album is inevitably going to sell crazy numbers, which is also going to equal big money for little Tyga. Check out the full interview at Sixshot by clicking here.

Legendary fashion designer/artist/entrepreneur recently put a blog post up on his site after meeting up with Gym Class Heroes last weekend. Johnny Cupcakes is known for owning a few stores which feature a lot of his own clothing and accessory designs. Johnny has been friends with Gym Class Heroes since before the band really blew up and met back up with them, as he outlines in his blog. He also posted some cool shots hanging out with the band on his site (link located above). According to his blog, Johnny also went on tour with GCH last year for all of their west coast dates. He talks about some of the times they had and posted a picture of Travie’s own Johnny Cupcakes tattoo that he got while on tour with him. Sounds like an amazing time and what I really love about GCH is that they never seem to forget who their friends are, even with all of their recent fame. Part of the band’s appeal is their ability to stay grounded, and I have talked about it before, but when I got to interview Travis about a year back he was incredibly humble and down-to-earth. It actually seemed as though he wanted to talk to me, even if perhaps he didn’t, considering how much press he has to do.

Johnny also talks about how he got the idea to donate all the clothes that get thrown up on stage during “Clothes Off” to goodwill. Apparently, that’s what the band is going to do from now on, which is a really good idea. It was even talked about in a recent article about the band, which is sure to help spread their positivism as well as get more people involved in donating for a good cause. Go check out Johnny Cupcakes.

I you haven’t visited Travie’s Blog yet this month, he’s put quite a few posts up since the end of March. Looks like he invested in a sick blue Jerry chain that’s completely off the wall. Click the link above and go check that out if you haven’t seen it yet. There’s also a cool picture of him getting some (more) ink done from his friend Craig Beasley. He also posted the link in case you want to check out more of Craig’s work at TheArtofCraigBeasley.com. He also put up a bunch of pics with himself and his daughter as well as teaching himself how to fly a kite. He also posted a couple of live pics, and under one he quoted Sean P, one of my personal favorite rappers out of the legendary Boot Camp Clik. I suppose Travie is officially Duck Down Certified since he will be appearing on the upcoming Kidz in the Hall album on Duck Down Records. I heard some previews of the next Kidz album and it sounds pretty crazy – very reminiscent of the Cool Kids. Travie is also doing something new where he posts his mixtapes for viewers to check out. His latest, posted on April 8th, features old and new tracks from the likes of Mario feat. Lil’ Wayne, Gnarls Barkley, D’Angelo, Jodeci, the legendary Fat Boys and composer Danny Elfman. The mixtape thing is a pretty cool way of sharing what you’ve been listening to lately as well as showing love to friends with music.

As part of their Spring Fling concert series, Gym Class Heroes were recently featured in the school paper The Daily Colonial after their performance at GW. The article ran earlier this week. It’s not all that interesting, but apparently Travie is still getting bras thrown at him by audience members. Check out the entire article from the Daily Colonial here:

GW students and friends sang, danced, and jumped along Saturday night to the hour and a half long set by Gym Class Heroes, this year’s Spring Fling headlining act.

The performance included some of the band’s most popular songs such as “Cupid’s Chokehold” and “Clothes Off”, as well as some new material from their upcoming album “The Quilt.”

During their performance of “Clothes Off,” the band asked the crowd to throw their clothing onto the stage for the collection to later be given to charity. Most of the donations were t-shirts, including many of the free lime green “fling it” shirts given to Spring Fling attendees. But lead singer Travis McCoy also happily displayed a black bra that landed among the clothes on stage.

Though lead guitarist Disashi Lumumba-Kasongo, 25, lamented that the band’s last visit to Washington “sucked,” he explained the importance of a performance like Saturday’s.

“I think it’s good to get it out there,” said Lumumba-Kasongo, who attended Cornell University. “It’s good to reconnect with the college audience and let them know that we were in the same position ourselves.”

“I want people to know that if you follow your heart,” he said, “and put in a little bit of work, you’ll be where you want to be.”