Gym Class Heroes — As Cruel As School Children

When I first picked up this album, I had a pretty good idea of what to expect based solely on the Decaydance label: unthreatening pop-punk in the vein of Fall Out Boy and Panic! At The Disco. Needless to say, I was surprised when I pressed play and discovered that Gym Class Heroes are a rap group with live instrumentation. This surprise subsided, though, as lyrics about meeting girls on MySpace and being drunk at school spilled out of the speakers. With a slight emphasis on funk (a lot of the music sounds like it would be at home on a porno soundtrack), and elementary lyrics about cheerleaders and "lyric-biters," As Cruel As School Children is nothing more than hip-hop for the mallrat crowd.

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