It takes a special kind of music to induce fantasies about ideal forums for broadcast, and a particularly special kind of music to make that ideal forum a long string of cars snaking through New York City with windows open and bass knobs turned all the way up. That's the purview of Fannypack, a group of three young women and two male producers who peacock through party-jam sounds pulled from the past and recut for the future. The touchstones are easy to spot: early rap, sugary dancehall, jiggle-minded Miami booty bass. But Fannypack's whole is more than the sum of its parts.
That's partly due to range: The group's second album, See You Next Tuesday, claims ownership over too many different styles to be challenged as a pretender to any single one. It's also partly due to what can only be called sass: In "Seven One Eight," one of the Fannypack vocalists—a young white, brown, and black trio cherry-picked from the hip downtown club scene and a Brooklyn street mall—rides an easy vocal flow through lyrics seemingly tossed off at a good day's recess. The message is pure boast written in fanciful bubble letters, a snap to girls whose boyfriends bore/snore, and an invitation for all to "get rude in your Underoos." The playground vibe carries over into the music, which answers to a boisterous post-Neptunes groove made out of foreshortened reggae jumps, squeaky sneaker sounds, and a marching street band heard from a few blocks away.
That's the background for most of Tuesday, but Fannypack spins it in infectiously nuanced ways. "Pump That" angles a crusty crunk eye toward cars-go-boom Miami, while songs like "NuNu (Yeah, Yeah)" and "Twisted" spring into sweaty house-music speed. All the while, the Fannypackers trade lines and giggle through choruses like friends on the hunt for nothing more than fun. See You Next Tuesday is less an album than a soundtrack to the idea of summer in the city, where beats grow communal and domino slingers and jump-rope crews stay busy day and night.