You Can't Buy Class: shut up stella is my shit

By: John Conroy

Shut Up Stella is a trio of friends who cut their teeth on the L.A. dance and MTV video circuits. Tomboyish rapper Fan_3, enigmatic bombshell Jessie Malakouti, and consummate surfer chick Kristen Wagner started writing music together in 2005 as an antidote to what they heard on the radio every day. "We wanted to make music listenable again," says Fan_3. "And somebody needed to counter this Paris/Lindsay bullshit."

What sets the group apart from the status quo is their wide range of musical influences. The combination of Fan_3s hip hop background, Kristens SoCal rock and Jessie's singer-songwriter world gives their music a refreshingly unique and surprisingly catchy edge, as if someone laced a Linkin Park and Sublime sandwich with a healthy dose of Bananarama. "Our sound is like nothing else out there," says Jessie. "But it's where music is headed, a mash-up of rock, pop, and hip hop."

The group's collective creative vision is firmly grounded in the honesty that can only come from writing their own songs. This makes Shut Up Stella in many ways the voice of a gen

eration that hasnt been heard. "A lot of popular artists right now are simply mouthpieces for a bunch of 45 year-old songwriters to speak to young people," says Kristen. "Well, we are our audience. We've got our own point of view, and we write about things people our age can relate to."

Their distinct point of view is what binds the band together, but its what the girls individual personalities bring to their music that makes it all click. The introspective Jessie is all about raw emotional honesty. Fan_3 is loose and playful, a walking rhyme who provides a dose of the abstract and an at times brutal sense of humor. Kristens irrepressible energy is the sonic shot in the arm, and her pragmatism bridges their different styles. Together they have found a common voice that transcends easy definition but is undeniably addictive, like all great music.

These girls were phenomenal! Unfortunately, Epic dropped them before their album could be released. I first discovered this group because I had been a fan of fan_3 since her days with Disney (before she was dropped by them for her pot usage, etc) and was seeing what she was up to- ta da! All of the girls have gone on to do their separate projects.