CD: "As Cruel As School Children" by Gym Class Heroes; Fueled by Ramen Records

Style: Rap/rock

My take: Gym Class Heroes — playing Pipeline Cafe on Wednesday — are the lone knights of rap living in the emo and indie-rock kingdom of Fueled by Ramen records, a label with bands such as This Providence, Forgive Durden and Cute Is What We Aim For under contract.

The band's most recent CD came out last summer — the sophomore studio effort "As Cruel As School Children." The solid rap album definitely has more than a pop-rock glaze. In the time between recording this and the debut "The Papercut Chronicles," the Heroes learned how to shift between and meld the two genres.

Best track: The current single "Clothes Off!" It's a prime example of the commercial marriage between Travis McCoy's witty, strong words and sugarcoated music. And Fall Out Boy's Patrick Stump voicing the chorus is another huge bargaining chip.

Stump also appears on "Cupid's Chokehold," a hopelessly catchy love song dedicated to a girl so enchanting the singer would give up the sun for her and assign her a special ringtone. As McCoy says, "If that ain't love/I don't know what is."

As good as those songs are, you can't shake the irony when listening to other tunes such as "Biter's Block," a nearly four-minute diss against mainstream rappers bragging about their greatness they all seemingly copy each other.

Clever lines such as "Go join the army/And be the best you can be/Give new meaning to blowing up overseas" that strike a chord with fans jaded by the homogenous hip-hop acts plaguing Top 40 radio lose bite when a rock artist appears on a rap track — a trick used since the days of Run-DMC's "Walk this Way."

"New Friend Request," about an Internet romance started on MySpace, is easily the biggest downswing in the album. The sentiments are certainly pop-culture relevant but do little more than generate a few laughs before ultimately dating the song. Sure, lines such as "All my money's on the latter/this is not a LOL matter" provide comic relief, intentional or not, but are these jokes going to be funny when the Internet fad fades?

But that's not to dismiss the band's songwriting altogether. "Viva La White Girl," part interracial love story, part paean to cocaine, is an interestingly touching song, helped more by McCoy's vocals. Substance abuse is also the centerpiece of "The Queen and I," an uptempo, danceable track about the singer's girlfriend's troubles with alcohol. There hasn't been such a deceptively fun-to-listen-to song since the Goo Goo Dolls released "Slide."

"As Cruel As School Children" is as good as poppy rap-rock can get for now, so take a listen.

Jeremy Castillo, who received an associate of arts degree from Windward Community College, is a student at the University of Idaho.