FNMTV: Premieres from Gym Class Heroes, Solange Knowles and The Game

Any time a Shuggie Otis reference can appear on primetime MTV in 2008, something is right with the world. So I have to give a hearty thanks to Solange Knowles for an Otis name-drop during last night's FNMTV taping (which also featured debuts from Gym Class Heroes, the Game and a live set from emo scamps We the Kings) that will hopefully introduce the hormonal FNMTV audience to the best baby-makin' music the world has ever known. 

Solange's new video for "Sandcastle" is a warm, nostalgiac nod to '70s disco fashions and late '60s Stax sounds that will hopefully render Duffy fundamentally unnecessary in culture's quest to find a young R&B revivalist that can keep her act together.

Based off "Sandcastle" and Solange's recent single "I Decided" (and the great Freemasons remix of it), I have a sneaking suspicion that the "SoL-AngeL & the Hadley St. Dreams" album is going to be fantastic, but you would never guess that the slinky electro-funk of Destiny's Child came from the same bloodline. There's probably (no, certainly) sociocultural reasons why Solange's throwbacks just seem more believable than the scads of English roses doing the same thing right now, but any reclaiming here is implicit rather than overt -- the song's just an expert modern soul confection that makes me feel like roller skating. The video for "Sandcastle" is "Yellow Submarine"-inspired whimsical candy colors, and I love that she apparently has a skinny-tie hipster backing band that she completely ignores.

Unfortunately, the same summer-jam ambitions don't translate so well for Gym Class Heroes, even if Travis McCoy's recent whaling on some racial-invective-tossing Warped Tour attendee was warranted and righteous. "Cookie Jar" finds McCoy capitalizing on his Katy Perry cross-branding romance and unexpected radio success by ... purchasing the services of the Dream, who offers one of the most unremarkable examples of Euro-trance hip-hop I've heard in months, and that's counting that Chris Brown single. The Dream should not be allowed to do anything but remix Logic Pro drum loops for Rihanna, period. He swipes his chorus hook here directly from "Buy U a Drink," and it's way too early to be nostalgic for T-Pain. Gym Class Heroes need to make up their minds -- are they a hip-hop group or not? Otherwise they'll probably keep turning out weird half-gestures at R&B like "Girlfriend" or deeply avoidable food-sex-metaphor sub-Usher pap like this. That said, there are at least two cameos of T-shirts from the NYC hardcore band H20 in the video, and my inner 14-year-old Warped Tour grommet was most pleased. 

The Game, however, is back with a vengeance on "LAX" and is right now looking like the only Aftermath MC with a shred of credibility left in 2008 (save for Dre and the mythical "Detox," naturally). Remember when the "One Blood" extended remix hit a while back, and it was about 30 minutes long with a verse by anyone even briefly on the radio? Well, Game splits the difference here and gets Lil' Wayne, who by himself is the entirety of hip-hop radio today, to sing a shockingly mournful Auto-Tune chorus on new single "My Life." The song manages to make the fact that Game now lives in Glendale seem like a Homeric myth of escape and filial loyalty, and washes away all of his cop-impersonating and gun-in-a-school-zone shenanigans in one fell swoop. He's still comparing himself to people like, oh, Jesus and John Lennon (like he did with Nas and 2Pac on his last album), but here it's in a kind of existential doubt about the virtues of martyrdom that embodies Game at his best -- a messed-up web of contradictions and desperation that makes for riveting, necessary hip-hop.

This week's live act is the fifth-generation mall emo quartet We the Kings, about whom I have only this to say: their singer looks exactly like Lion-O. He'll probably appreciate the reference.

-- August Brown

FNMTV airs at 8 p.m. tonight

Travis McCoy photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images