Menya were a

crunk Crunk is a subgenre of hip hop music that emerged in the early 1990s and gained mainstream success during the mid 2000s. Crunk is often up-tempo and one of Southern hip hop's more dance and club oriented subgenres. An archetypal crunk track freq ...

group formed in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

in 2007 by two musicians, known as "Coco Dame" and "Good Goose". That year, when both of them were undergraduates at

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...

, they saw M.I.A.,

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, and

Spank Rock Naeem Juwan, better known by his stage name Spank Rock, is an American rapper and songwriter from Baltimore. He rose to fame with his 2006 album ''YoYoYoYoYo'', which was produced by former group member Alex Epton (XXXChange). A harbinger of po ...

perform at that year's

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festival. Angie Ripe soon joined them, and contributed vocals to their debut release, ''The Ol' Reach Around''. They self-released two EPs (''The Ol' Reach Around'' and ''Puss Coital''), and a mixtape (''The Sleepover Series Vol. 1''), the first two in 2008 and the third on October 23, 2009. Their music is recorded in the members' bedrooms. ''The Ol' Reach Around'' was recorded between their college classes, at the studio where Good Goose was a production assistant. All three of the group's members were once students of well-known music critic

Robert Christgau Robert Thomas Christgau ( ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most well-known and influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and ...

, who teaches in the Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music at NYU. After Christgau was given a copy of ''The Ol' Reach Around'', which they had just recorded as a demo, he reviewed it favorably, giving it an A- and describing it as "the first of many student demos that I've eagerly played twice". He also said that he sent it to three of his editors, all of whom echoed his positive assessment of the EP. He also rated it the 18th best album of 2008 on his "Dean's List". Other critics have noted that Menya's music frequently centers on overtly sexual themes.

Discography

*''The Ol' Reach Around'' (2008) *''Puss Coital'' (2008) *''The Sleepover Series Vol. 1'' (2009)

References

Musical groups established in 2007 Musical groups from New York City American crunk groups 2007 establishments in New York City {{US-electronic-band-stub