Travie McCoy
Travie McCoy
Travis Lazarus "Travie" McCoyis an American rapper and singer-songwriter. He is the co-founder and lead singer of the rap rock band Gym Class Heroes, in addition to having a solo career. McCoy became involved with punk rock scenes as a teenager. He formed the group Gym Class Heroes with childhood friend Matt McGinley, and after several line-up changes, the group was signed to Fueled by Ramen, and released their debut album...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionRapper
Date of Birth6 August 1981
CityGeneva, NY
CountryUnited States of America
Anyone who takes the craft of songwriting seriously I radiate towards. Spending time with Daryl Hall was a dream come true. I picked his brain a lot because Hall And Oats is timeless.
We didn't want to worry about the formula that has been implanted into our brains - this verse/pre-chorus/chorus format. When we were writing 'The Papercut Chronicles,' we had no idea about any of that. We didn't know how to count bars or how to write what's considered a well-formatted pop song.
I've been producing since the early stages of Gym Class Heroes. A lot of the songs on the first 'Papercut Chronicles' were actually beats that I made.
I'm proud I've been able to pay my rent doing what I love because I hate real jobs.
Being a kid during the '80s, I feel I didn't really get the full experience.
I'm on tour all the time, so I stop at thrift shops. The minute we hit a town, I'll have my assistant Googling thrift stores. I have him go check beforehand; then we go there.
I feel like a lot of people in the hip hop world don't take me seriously as a rapper, and I feel that first-and-foremost I came up as a rapper before I started singing. All a lot of people know from me is 'Cupid's Chokehold,' and they don't scratch the surface and see beyond that dude who sings the song about his girlfriend.
'Billionaire' is basically about, you know, like 'Brewster's Millions.' It's me talking about what would happen if I would somehow manage to become a billionaire. What would I do with the money? Don't get it wrong, I'm far from a billionaire. I think I just made it out the 'thousandaire' category.
With anything I do, it's hard to categorize it. With any project, I just go in and blindly start writing songs and then find out which way we want to go with it.
Pain is definitely a genius in his own right. 'Thr33 Ringz' is definitely one of my top 10 albums. It's one of those albums you listen to front-to-back.
'All In' is like the Giants motto, so I kind of took that, and I kind of used New York as the backdrop - how diehard New Yorkers are for their team. Me being a New Yorker, I just had to show my love for the city as well as my love for the New York Giants.
I think anything we do outside of Gym Class Heroes still falls under the Gym Class Heroes umbrella. There's really no method to the madness. With Gym Class, it's more of a democratic process, and when I'm working on solo stuff, it's just me, either working with producers or sitting in a room by myself. They balance and complement each other.
I took vocal lessons for the first time and actually learned a lot about using my voice as an instrument as opposed to just doing what I've always done and going by feeling. I'm still doing that, but I've learned a lot of tricks and how to manipulate and play with my voice a little bit.
No one in my circle calls me 'Travis.' Even my family, at a young age started calling me 'Travie.' So I want people to feel comfortable calling me 'Travie.' It's almost like inviting people in.