Slow-Simmering Success

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Last time he in was in town, it was champagne and awards and awkward handshakes.

The price of burgeoning celebrity?

Hangovers, the occasional night in a Mexican jail and bumbling encounters with fellow pop stars.

In Vegas for the MTV Video Music Awards in September, Gym Class Heroes drummer Matt McGinley rubbed elbows with drunken starlets and fist fightin’ rockers, including sharing an uncomfortable moment with R&B chart-topper Ne-Yo.

“I went to give him a handshake, but he was giving me the pound, and then he switched it up just as I was switching it up, and then we were both like, ‘Awww dude, I’m sorry,’ ” McGinley recalls. “It was one of those super awkward moments. I’m no good at handshaking. I much prefer a firm stare down or something.”

Still, the night ultimately would be a successful one for this bunch, who took home Best New Artist honors.

“It’s kind of surreal, I think. We don’t even have our moon men yet,” McGinley says of the signature VMA trophies. “It takes a couple months to inscribe, I guess. Plus, they make it out of actual pieces of the moon, so that takes awhile, to take a bite of the moon and actually fabricate that material.”

It all capped a breakthrough year for this eclectic hip-hop band, whose fusion of a D.I.Y. punk rock ethos and loose, lovelorn raps earned them a gold record for their third disc, “As Cruel As School Children,” and a pair of hit singles.

“Our lives have changed,” McGinley says. “We’ve all moved out of our respective hometowns. We kind of started building the band when a lot of kids were going off to college and were moving out, and we never really got to experience that. I bought a house in New Jersey, and it was like my first time of really moving out of my mom’s house.”

Success was slow-simmering for this group of hip-hop misfits who first started making the rounds in the late ’90s. They have a sound rooted in bohemian rap — think early Black Eyed Peas, before Fergie and songs about butts — with towering frontman Travis McCoy dropping nimble, tongue-in-cheek rhymes rooted in the suburban experience.

He speaks of girls, not gats, professes a love of Hall & Oates more than 2Pac, and is backed by a band weaned on rock as much as rap.

From the onset, the band built its fan base in unlikely fashion for a hip-hop based group: They put themselves in front of rock and punk crowds rather than rap audiences, playing the Warped Tour, becoming tight with Fall Out Boy and letting the hip-hop audience slowly come to them.

“It was a very natural thing for us to play shows with anybody,” McGinley says. “Coming up, we would do a show with a feminist slam poet, and then the next weekend do a show with an angry metal band. It was always a very comfortable thing for us to be able to put ourselves in front of other audiences who weren’t necessarily there to see our type of music and convert them into our fans.”

In this way, the group has become something of a gateway act for rockers and punks outside the hip-hop community to challenge their assumptions about the genre.

“I’m sure that happens,” McGinley says. “Even for me, I think back to the first time I heard a band like Atmosphere. Slug was one of the first rappers where I was really deeply into his lyrics. I was like, ‘This is not the average, really aggressive, macho hip-hop that I’m used to hearing.’ I think we offer something a little bit different as well, in that same vein of crossing kids over to stuff they may not be as familiar with. Or a kid might take more of a chance on rap and check out Lupe Fiasco or something.”

What’s ensued is an increasingly diverse following for this bunch.

After years on the road, the group’s crowds are beginning to mirror the multicultural makeup of the band itself.

“I remember at Webster Hall in New York City on our headlining tour we did last spring, I walked up to the balcony and was looking down at the kids, and it was this crazy melting pot of ages and races and cultures,” McGinley recalls. “It was a really cool thing, to look down and see this crazy thugged-out dude standing right next to this young emo dude who’s next to this indie chick. It’s a really cool thing to be a part of something that would bring all these people together.”

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0476.