For the past dozen years, Flobots has mixed Indie Rock and Hip Hop with a chemist’s precision to create an engaging and adrenalized hybrid that has attracted fans from both ends of its creative spectrum. Although Flobots began in Denver in 2005 with its self-released debut EP Platypus, frontman Jamie “Jonny 5” Laurie actually experimented with the Indie Rock/Hip Hop recipe five years earlier with producer Farhad “Yahktoe” Ebrahimi and a band under the name Jonny 5 + Yak. Forming in 2000, the project released the album Onomatopoeia the following year but almost immediately fell apart.
In 2005, Laurie assembled a new band featuring MC/vocalist Stephen “Brer Rabbit” Brackett and drummer Kenny “KennyO” Ortiz and dubbed the aggregation Flobots. Platypus became a local success and Flobots’ profile rose accordingly, so the group immediately set to work on a sophomore release, 2007’s Fight with Tools, its full-length debut. In fairly short order, Flobots became one of the most popular bands in Colorado, with their track “Handlebars” earning regular airplay.
The local success led to a major-label record deal. In 2008, Universal Records reissued Fight with Tools and “Handlebars” was again a hit, reaching No. 3 on Billboard’s Modern Rock Tracks chart.
Over the past decade, Flobots has released a trio of albums — 2010’s Survival Story (its last album for Universal), 2012’s The Circle in the Square (its first with renowned indie Shanachie) and last year’s Noenemies (the band’s first self-released album since the original issue of Fight With Tools) — and seen the defection of most of the band outside of the core of Laurie, Brackett and Ortiz. From the start, Flobots has been concerned with social and political activism, holding rallies and raising awareness about immigration reform, climate change and a host of other relevant causes, and Noenemies was, at its heart, a protest album highlighting those causes. The group’s politically focused song “Pray” was released on the day of Trump’s inauguration.
Flobots and “Handlebars” were thrust back into the limelight last month when disgraced YouTuber Logan Paul rewrote the band’s biggest hit, a song that accentuated Flobots’ hope for human potential, as a crass objectification of women. On Twitter, the band called his rewrite “rampant misogyny and tone def douchebaggery,” and even recorded a response track, “Handle Your Bars.” Paul countered by pretending not to know who Flobots were. If this is a flame war, Flobots is working with a flamethrower and Paul has a book of soggy matches. Stay tuned for updates.
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This article appears in Jan 17-24, 2018.
