With slick production, commercially minded songcraft, and a tabloid-grabbing bassist, Chicago's Fall Out Boy rose to the forefront of emo-pop in the mid-2000s. The band's four members first came together in suburban Wilmette, a bedroom community just 14 miles north of the Windy City, around 2001. Vocalist/guitarist Patrick Stump, bassist/lyricist Pete Wentz, drummer Andrew Hurley, and guitarist Joe Trohman had all been in and out of various units connected to Chicago's underground hardcore scene. Most notably, Hurley drummed for Racetraitor, the furiously political metalcore outfit whose brief output was both a rallying point and sticking point within the hardcore community. As Fall Out Boy, the quartet used the unbridled intensity of hardcore as a foundation for melody-drenched pop-punk, with a heavy debt to the emo scene. They debuted with a self-released demo in 2001, following it up in May 2002 with a split LP (issued on the Uprising label) that also featured Project Rocket, for which Hurley also drummed. The band remained with the label for the release of a mini-LP, Fall Out Boy's Evening Out with Your Girl, but a bidding war of sorts was already in full swing.
