Boyz Will Be Boyz, Despite Flap Over Ads

It’s 8:17 in the morning and you’re on the air with the slimmer half of 2 Fat Mexicanz. “Yo, yo, yo! What’s up?!?” 24-year-old Eric Vidal shouts into the mike. “Speedy, a.k.a. Funkmouth, is in the house. What you doin’, Funkmouth?”

“I’m chillin’,” replies Funkmouth. Also known as Speedy Mercado, he is the Baka Boyz’ new sidekick. “Just hangin’ with the man, Eric V!”

Or something like that. Unless you speak hip-hop, it’s hard to keep up with the Baka Boyz, the “2 Fat Mexicanz” of billboard fame. Baka, incidentally, is pronounced BAKE-ah, a tribute to the Vidal brothers’ hometown, Bakersfield.

On this day, Eric’s 21-year-old brother Nick, the more voluble and, at 247 pounds, the more voluminous half of 2 Fat Mexicanz, was out tending to personal matters. But that isn’t what Eric V tells his listeners.

“He had to get his stomach pumped! He got a couple of burritos stuck in there!”

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You know what they say: Boyz will be boyz. Their fans expect nothing less. Although many people don’t appreciate their sense of humor, the Baka Boyz are a phenomenon. Thanks to their irreverent house party style, KPWR, the Burbank-based station better known as Power 106, zoomed from No. 9 to No. 5 in the mornings in the L.A. market in the most recent quarterly Arbitron ratings. Their listeners are mostly young adults and teen-agers; surveys show their audience to be 63% Latino, 12% African American and the remaining 25% white, Asian and “other.”

All of this must irritate people who’ve been offended by the Baka Boyz billboard campaign. Perhaps you’ve seen the ads that boldly feature the “2 Fat Mexicanz” slogan and the Vidal brothers posing in the buff. In one ad, Eric covers his derriere with a pepperoni pizza, while Nick shields himself with the box it came in. The biggest ruckus was caused by an ad that showed the brothers eating pizza while sitting on toilets.

To the charge of bad taste, Power 106 quickly pleaded no contest, replacing the toilet ads with one showing the Baka Boyz holding a surfboard. But station management and the Boyz resisted the allegation, made in dozens of letters and a protest outside their Burbank studio, that the ads promote negative stereotypes.

“Yes, listen to the Baka Boyz, 2 Fat Mexicanz,” wrote Al Reyes, executive director of the California Chicano News Media Assn. “And let’s dredge up old movie and literary images of the fat, jolly and lazy Mexican.” Other critics likened the Baka Boyz to such stereotypes as Stepin Fetchit and Jose Jimenez.

Power 106 management couldn’t have been surprised that some folks were shocked by an ad campaign designed to be shocking. On the other hand, the Baka Boyz had been using the “2 Fat Mexicanz” slogan for 18 months, long before they secured the plum morning assignment, and nobody said shame on you. Nor was there any protest that this 72,000-watt station employs a promotional spot in which the booming voice of an announcer describes the Baka Boyz as “72,000 pounds of fat Mexican power!” Nor was there concern that a nickname the brothers use for each other, “Fatback,” is a play on a familiar slur . “A fatback is someone who can pinch fat on his back,” Eric explains, smiling.

The difference is that a billboard, unlike a radio frequency, can’t be tuned out. It’s up there, like it or not.

The dispute exposed a generation gap. Michelle Mercer, the 27-year-old program director for Power 106, expressed surprise that so many critics seemed to read “fat” as implying laziness and stupidity. Activists talked about the harmful impacts on young Latinos, but some seemed so oblivious to youth culture that they thought the trendy spelling of “boyz” and “Mexicanz” implied illiteracy. Yo, professor! Ever hear of “Boyz N the Hood”?

For the Baka Boyz, it’s a happy coincidence that “phat,” pronounced “fat,” is high praise, sort of like “cool.” Mercer, in fact, wanted the billboards to say “2 Phat Mexicanz.” The Vidal brothers knew better. Their style is self-deprecating, not hipper than thou.

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But grown-ups will be grown-ups, so in a kind of compromise, the offending billboards soon will be altered to say “2 Fat Proud Mexicanz.” After discussions with the Hispanic Media Coalition, a group that combats negative stereotypes, Power 106 agreed to the changes.

This doesn’t mean, however, that the Baka Boyz are planning any makeovers, because they know their success is rooted in something deeper than billboards.

A few years ago, they were teen-agers who hustled ads to buy air time for their own hip-hop show on a 35-watt station in Bakersfield. Lazy? Stupid? The terms that come to mind are ambitious, hard-working, bold, savvy. It’s just that the Baka Boyz would rather give the credit to pizza and burritos.