STRAIT TO THE POINT: UGK – UGK 4 Life (2009)

Review By Michael Strait

I’d call this bittersweet, but that’d be inaccurate. This is bland.

Well, ain’t this a disappointment? Five albums, four of them brilliant, and then they had to go and release this. The best songs on here are merely pretty good, the worst is absolutely horrendous, and the majority – most offensively – are utterly dull, grey sludges that merely serve as a passable imitation of the UGK we know and love, convincing only from a distance. It’s a terribly anticlimactic end to a great career and a mightily sad obituary for one of the best rappers ever, especially since his posthumous verses here are probably the best part of the record. I’ve reviewed plenty of music much, much worse than this, but in terms of raw disappointment this one might just take the cake.

Still, it could be worse. At their very worst, UGK bottomed out at merely okay, and there’s only one song on this record (and, by extension, their career as a whole) that I’d be willing to describe as truly, totally godawful. That’s “Hard as Hell”, which is more a vehicle for major chord teenpop crooner Akon than it is a UGK song. Bun and Pimp’s verses try desperately to clamber out of the cloying mid-2000s pseudo-r&b muck (which all sounds especially pathetic, considering the record came out in 2009), but there’s nothing they can do next to Akon’s repulsive presence, and they are promptly pushed back under and drowned by his hideous, intolerable hook. It sounds more like a malicious parody of 00s pop rap than a real song, and it contains nothing of value whatsoever. The first time I listened to this album, I skipped it in horror after twenty seconds; the second time, I halved my speaker’s volume to make sure nobody else would hear it and assume I was enjoying it. If one must insist on owning this album, don’t bother with this one; delete it from your download queue before it even gets the chance to malign your hard drive.

There’s nothing else that bad on the record, but there ain’t much especially good, either. I’ll admit that “Da Game Been Good to Me” – the only hook from this album that ever springs unbidden to my mind, like the other great UGK hooks – comes kinda close, and it’s certainly very pleasant, but it sounds kinda like those various little tracks I devoted once line each to in my Underground Kingz review. Yeah, sure, it’s a good song, but does it hold up next to, say, anything on Super Tight? Of course it doesn’t. The only song that even comes close to that level on this record is “Swishas and Erb”, which has what may be the last great production Pimp C ever masterminded. There’s all those little atmospheric details Pimp loved – the distant, vaguely ominous horn sample; the barely-tangible piano notes flaring away at the edge of one’s consciousness like fireflies; the ghostly, soul-style backing vocals – together with a great bassline and a smooth, slinking hook. It’s a great song, but it’s still not as great as I’ve come to expect from UGK, and it’s not enough to make the album worth it when stacked up next to all the filler here.

That’s just what most of it is – stuffing! I can’t say very much about the vast majority of these songs, ‘cos really they’re all the same. Every song from “Everybody Wanna Ball” to “She Luv It” is the same, and none of them are better (or worse, I guess) than okay. They all have fairly boring, mediocre hooks, sorta decent funky beats, good (but not especially great) verses from Pimp C and forgettable verses from Bun B. None of them really achieve anything, and I get the impression none of them were made with any greater aspiration than simply being UGK songs. There’s none of the atmosphere, emotion, or buckets of fun UGK were capable of at their best here; it’s just a bunch of rap songs about, mostly, simply being UGK, and I don’t have much use for that.

This gets more explicit elsewhere. “Harry Asshole” is so direct and shameless an effort to get by on pure nostalgia that it’s almost nauseating, and I hate it on principle. It’s the instrumental to “I Left It Wet For You” (from Super Tight, remember?) with the infamous “hairy asshole” line from “Let Me See It” (from Dirty Money, remember?) thrown atop and repeated as a hook, and the end result feels rather Frankensteinian. It’s enjoyable enough on a musical level, since the instrumental to “I Left It Wet For You” is one of the best UGK ever made, but why wouldn’t I just listen to the original? What’s here that I’d miss – a Boosie verse? Eh…

The guest verses in general are usually disappointing, too. Snoop Dogg in 2009 was far, far removed from his glory days, and his feature on “Steel Your Mind” isn’t very good. Too $hort’s is better, but it’s hardly a showstopper. E-40 is great on Used to Be, but the various others are long past their prime, as is Big Gipp on “Purse Come First”. None of these songs are particularly good anyway – “Used to Be”, in fact, comes dangerously close to outright sucking – but the guest verses add an extra layer of temporal depression to the affair. Nobody is safe from time’s arrow, not even formerly great rappers like 8ball & MJG, and artistic death is inescapable.

Pimp C came close to escaping it – his verses, though not as memorable as usual, are indeed pretty good on this record – but he, alas, had rather bigger problems in the end. Death had to come for the Pimp in his sleep,  because if he had been awake I presume there would have been a fight. The lean killed him, as it has killed so many, including another just yesterday. I do think he deserved a better swan song than this, though. This ain’t a patch on a plaster on a cast on a bandage on UGK in their prime, and I do hope nobody in the world was ever introduced to them through this album or they might never have recovered. UGK are one of the brightest diamonds in hip-hop’s crown, and no amount of mediocre posthumous releases can dent the glory of the masterpieces they were once capable of. And besides, it could be worse – if you (like me) hold to the common belief that UGK were the Rolling Stones to Outkast’s Beatles, then we might have expected UGK to release a steadily worsening stream of absolute garbage for the rest of their careers, apparently drawing eternal life from the worthlessness of their music and continuing to ghoulishly churn it out until the eventual heat death of the universe. Death before dishonour, right?

 

 

STRAIT TO THE POINT: UGK – Underground Kingz (2007)

Review by: Michael Strait

Two hours of trillness might be a bit much for even the biggest UGK fan, but there’s a lot of great stuff in here.

This is, as of writing, the longest album I’ve ever reviewed, and it really doesn’t need to be. The six-year wait between Dirty Money and this might’ve made the fans antsy, but that’s no excuse to deluge them in useless filler like “Take tha Hood Back” or “Stop-n-Go”. There’s also a large number of songs on this record that are good, but in a totally autopilot way – songs like “Tell Me How Ya Feel”, “Trill Niggas Don’t Die” and “Underground Kingz”, all of which have catchy hooks, nice basslines, great rapping and almost nothing to set them apart from each other. So many of these pile up in the second disc that listening to it ends up being a kind of exhausting experience, even though most of the songs aren’t really doing anything particularly wrong. The stretch from “Two Type of Bitches” to “Tell Me How Ya Feel” contains the occasional unusual feature – great verses from Dizzee Rascal(!) and Talib Kweli, the minimally-applied bass on “Candy”, the almost frighteningly weird prospect of Pimp C calling women “queens” on “Real Women” – but for the most part it’s the sort of music that’s much easier to zone out to and blankly enjoy than it is to think about. There’s nothing wrong with that, and it all sounds lovely, but it can’t help but seem a teeny bit like a step down in the face of some of the best stuff on this album. ‘Cos there is a lot of great stuff on this album, and if you condensed it all into one album it’d be up there with UGK’s best.

First, let’s deal with the elephant in the room. There are a lot of people on RYM who are perfectly willing to call “Int’l Players Anthem” the best song ever made, and I ain’t always willing to disagree. This is a song that really, truly transcends its sample, transforming it from a merely pretty great soul song into a bright, gleaming stretch for the heavens, eradicating any trace of flawed humanity and leaving only a brass riff that sounds as if it descended from Elysium with a chorus of angels. The first minute of this song is rather like a direct soul-injection of raw beauty and light, the beatless purity of the sample enveloping and swallowing Andre 3000 like some glittering elixir as he careens free-associatively through matters such as geography, spaceships and the moon, excitedly darting between metaphors in a way that shouldn’t hold together as beautifully as it does. His flow traces those strange rhythms only he can, stumbling about purposefully as if blinded by the light, off-kilter and gorgeously unpredictable. Never has a verse melded so perfectly with an instrumental as this one; it might be the best single minute in rap history.

The rest of the song is great too, of course, if not quite as iconic as that. DJ Paul and Juicy J have the sense to give each rapper different variations of the beat, throwing in bass and drums for Pimp C (whose abrasive verse is admittedly a little jarring after Andre’s, not that it really bothers me), looping one particularly triumphant segment for the opening of Bun’s adorable declarations of love and dropping everything but the bass and drums for substantial segments of Big Boi’s technical meanderings. That gives each verse its own particular sense of import, and transforms this from just another posse cut into one of the best rap songs ever made. UGK, Outkast and the Three 6 Mafia are three of the greatest musical groups of all time, but even I would never have expected a collaboration of theirs to end up being this good. This is a full, complete realisation of potential, and that’s a rare thing in music.

It’s exceedingly hard to follow that, of course, but Pimp C does his best. “Chrome Plated Woman” is one of only three songs on the album he produced entirely himself, and it’s one of his best productions ever. It’s one of the catchiest, funkiest and most propulsive grooves he ever came up with, and the bassline especially is one of the best in UGK’s discography. The hook, too, is just about impossible to get out of your head once you’ve heard it, as is Pimp C’s proud claim that he’s been “steady pimpin’ bitches through my website”. It’s a slice of raw, confident swagger that recalls the best moments on Super Tight, imparting just the smallest sliver of Pimp and Bun’s supreme self-belief onto the listener and thus momentarily transforming one’s world into a far wealthier, more successful and generally triller place.

Those are the best two songs on the record, for sure, but there’s still lots of great songs elsewhere. “Life Is 2009” overcomes its nonsensical title to be one of the most fun tracks on the record, with a great little popping guitar riff, a nice mirroring piano/bass motif and a memorably sleazy verse from the inimitably filthy Too $hort. “The Game Belongs To Me” has one of the most memorable hooks in UGK’s discography and a great, weirdly contrasting synth riff, as well as some of Pimp’s most charismatic proclamations of his own dominance. “They call me Mick Jagger, ‘cos I roll a lotta stooones!“, he sneers, turning what should be a lame pun into an irresistible boast by sheer force of will. “Like That (Remix)” has a sweeping, melodramatic string-based percussion that straight-up sounds like dirty, filthy money, complete with Bun B turning in his most impressively technical work since Ridin’ Dirty. Then there’s “Quit Hatin’ the South”, which has a nice descending guitar riff and a message I wholly support. The south really is the best region for hip-hop, and the sooner this myth of east coast supremacy is put to rest the better.

There’s a couple of great songs at the beginning of the second disc, too. “How Long Can It Last” is nearly seven minutes long, but it’s not at all a chore – I’d advise you to simply lie back and relax as the pleasant bravado and distant female vocal samples wash over you, assuming you aren’t moving your hips to the bass. “Still Ridin’ Dirty” is perhaps the most atmospheric song UGK ever made, with an ominously monolithic piano riff and big, expansive synths punctuated by reverby psychedelic guitar chords, sounding rather vaster than the cramped urban projects they’re rapping about. “Cocaine” is similar, complete with an amateur’s guide to the political, historical and social context of cocaine as a drug and a part of the economy courtesy of professor (as in, actual professor) Bun B, though Rick Ross’ verse does have a pretty weird and unpleasantly amateurish doubling effect that does the song no favours.

The rest of the songs here are mostly good, but not quite great, either because they just don’t have any real unique qualities (“Swishas and Doshas”, “Gravy”, “Heaven”), because they’re laden with the sorts of dated synths that seem kinda quaint in the post-trap era (“Grind Hard”, the original version of “Like That”), or because they’re “bonus tracks” (i.e they were included on the very first edition of the album, but shoved after the outro and called “bonus tracks” because they weren’t quite good enough for the main event). Of those, the version of “Int’l Players Anthem” with DJ Paul and Juicy J instead of Outkast is fun – definitely better suited to the clubs than the original – but not essential, and the chopped & screwed version is so poorly done as to be an unlistenable disgrace to the name of the late, great DJ Screw.

Let’s see – what have I missed? Ah, yes – there’s “Next Up”, which is actually pretty great, ‘cos you have two of the best East Coast rappers of the 90s on the same song as Pimp and Bun, comparing and contrasting styles as they rap over a very basic beat. It’s an intriguing exercise and certainly pretty enjoyable, though it can’t help but seem like a bit of a step down from the other major posse cut on the record. “Shattered Dreams” features Pimp C doing the unthinkable and expressing sympathy and support for everyone from prostitutes to gay men, which certainly isn’t something I expected from the man who spent the opening track of this record accusing various modern rappers of being “homosexuals on the low”. And then, finally, we have “Living This Life”, a fairly pleasant journey through the guilty consciences of our two anti-villains as they reckon with the wrong they have done in their years spent hustling. It’s kind of a rote way to close out a gangsta rap album, but it’s still a good song, not to mention sadly bittersweet considering what became of Pimp C mere months after this album’s release.

I sure hope Pimp’s enjoying his time in the great Cadillac in the sky, ‘cos he deserves to after giving us this much great music. As far as swan songs go, this would’ve been a pretty good one – a few not-so-hot tracks, but a nonetheless mostly good, often great album that contains one or two of the finest things he ever did. In the end, though, it wasn’t his swan song – there’s one more UGK album left to come, and (spoiler alert!) it’s not their best. Nonetheless, I’ll get to it as soon as I can. In the meantime, do what y’all should have been doing the last few years and blast “Int’l Players Anthem” on repeat until you reach spiritual apotheosis. You owe it to yourself.

STRAIT TO THE POINT: UGK – Dirty Money (2001)

Review by: Michael Strait

A workmanlike success, which by UGK’s standards almost feels like a failure.

UGK’s first three albums were all released within a crisp six-year period, so the five-year hibernation between Ridin’ Dirty and Dirty Money must have felt agonizing for the fans. The intervening time wasn’t completely without activity, though, and two very important things happened in the couple of years before this album was released. The first, oft-referenced in discussions of this album, was Jay-Z’s decision to feature the duo on what would become one of his most iconic hits, complete with lush, party-ready production from the then-trendy Timbaland. The second, sometimes overlooked, was the presence of Bun and Pimp on the Three-6 Mafia’s similarly iconic single Sippin’ On Some Syrup, which didn’t chart nearly as high but was nonetheless present on an album that went platinum faster than you can blink. Now, I’m not one to assume, but considering Pimp C is the man who once boasted about having a “ten thousand dollar Link medallion hangin’ on a two thousand dollar shirt”, it perhaps isn’t too much of a stretch to imagine that he saw something persuasive, on some level, in these numbers. So he and Bun B set about making their first party rap album, and the results were… mmm… not as good as they’d hoped.

See, the problem is that Bun and Pimp just aren’t really cut out for party rapping. UGK’s rap style has always been mostly about the charisma, humour and storytelling, but party rap usually needs something a little different. If you wanna see how it should really be done, look no further than Juicy J and DJ Paul’s guest verses on “Like A Pimp”. Neither of them deliver any particularly memorable lines, but both of them have such precise rhythmic delivery and so much propulsive energy that the song becomes a grade-A banger regardless. Party rapping is, above all else, about the most musical aspects of rap vocals, and that just isn’t really in UGK’s wheelhouse. Pimp’s hook on the track is great, of course, and both of them deliver great verses, but in the end they’re just the wrong kind of great verses for the song, and it’s no surprise that neither it nor any of the other tracks on this album had any sort of longevity in the clubs. It exists between two worlds, a tad underwhelming on headphones and expensive soundsystems alike.

There are other problems here, too, some of them oddly specific. “Ain’t That a Bitch” has the best production on the record, turning B.B King’s “Chains and Things” (which would make a great UGK song title in itself, no?) into the rough aural equivalent of a cruise through the seedier end of a city in a gleaming cadillac, all cocky and sleazy and smooth; it’s also heavily censored on every single version of the album, reportedly because B.B. wasn’t happy with all the swearing and wouldn’t allow his song to be used otherwise. This not only deprives us of the gloriously southern way Pimp C pronounces the word “bitch” (which you can hear in the leaked uncensored version), but also makes Pimp and guest Devin the Dude’s verses near-incomprehensible and unpleasant to listen to. Bun B’s verse isn’t as curse-reliant as the others, and as such is still a delight – “I got a letter from the government the other day/ I opened and read it, it said: “F___ UGK!”” makes me chuckle just about every time – but on the whole it’s quite a depressing missed opportunity for what should have been an easy album highlight.

Don’t get me wrong: there ain’t an outright bad song on the record. “Gold Grill” is probably the closest they come, and its only real crime is that it’s just kinda dated, consisting as it does of the sorts of cheap glitzy synths that were really only in fashion for a few years in the early 00s. They’ve got a certain sleazeball charm, though, and the song is mostly perfectly fine, if a little disappointingly benign considering the guest features. That’s really the problem with the album as a whole – it’s all good, professional and well-made, and the rhythm component is almost uniformly excellent, but most of it is ultimately rather forgettable. “Choppin’ Blades” has a very catchy hook, which is good, ‘cos I usually can’t remember much else about the song when it’s over. Same goes for “Pimpin’ Ain’t No Illusion”, which does feature a pretty nice slimeball verse from Too $hort but is otherwise just another song. I’m running out of things to say here, actually – I enjoy this music just fine when I’m listening to it, but I’ll be fucked if I can recall anything specific about the tracks when they’re done.

The memorable moments here are mostly courtesy of Pimp C, who is being his usual lovably ridiculous self. He raps about sex, cars, and drugs in that way only he can, delivering each boast as if he is preaching universal truths. His very first verse on the album contains the words “Got a young brown stallion/ And she 20 years old/ When she pop it from the back/ You see that hairy asshole”, a set of lines only he could deliver as confidently as he does (though I do wonder if anyone got around to telling him what “stallion” means afterwards). Elsewhere, he proudly gloats that he “Put my dick up in her spahhn/ I done blew yo bitch mahhnd“, straining anatomical credulity in a way I’m perfectly happy to accept. Bun B, sadly, is back to a rather subordinate role on most of this album – his technical skill level decreased a tad over the five years since Ridin’ Dirty, and in terms of charisma there’s no way he can compete with, for example, the way Pimp raps “Take it off, chick, bend over, let me see it/ If you lookin’ for a trill-type figure, let me be it”. I spend most of his verses decently entertained, but not enraptured, much like with most of the guest verses here. Big Gipp, Eightball & MJG, Devin the Dude and (I guess) C-note are all good or great rappers, but they suffer from the same problem as Bun and Pimp do here: they just don’t really fit over this kind of music, and all their verses all end up sounding kinda similar, drowned under the party beats.

The last three tracks here are listed as “bonus tracks”, which makes no sense to me since 1) they came by default with the original edition of the album and 2) they aren’t noticeably different in either style or quality from the ones that preceded them. The beat on “Holdin’ Na” is kinda cool in its minimalism, being almost all rhythm and very little treble, and “PA Nigga” is composed mostly of cool synths that sound kinda like they belong in an old-school video game. Yeah… uh… I can’t really think of anything else to say about this album. I guess I’ll finish up by saying I don’t really agree with the people who knock this for lacking Ridin’ Dirty‘s introspective self-consciousness, since Super Tight (with the possible exception of “Stoned Junkee” if you’re feeling generous) didn’t have that either and was still a masterpiece. But a masterpiece this ain’t, and it’s got far more to do with UGK being straight-up out of their element than with a lack of conscious rhymes. It’s still very far from bad, of course, because UGK out of their element is still UGK, but I doubt I’ll be returning to this album very much after I publish this review. Don’t worry too much, though – there’s life in the old pimps yet, and we’ll get to it soon.

STRAIT TO THE POINT: UGK – Ridin’ Dirty (1996)

Review by: Michael Strait:

Another masterwork, though a markedly different one.

I said before that Super Tight is the rare masterpiece unconcerned with being dark, deep or thought-provoking, and that was one of the reasons I loved it. It should stand to reason, then, that I’d be disappointed by Ridin’ Dirty. This is just the sort of rap album journalists love most: it’s a dark, dour and paranoid tour through the grimy, poorly-lit streets most Americans like to pretend don’t exist, with lots of poignant lyrics about mortality, futility and fear. Indeed, unlike the prior effort it’s primarily lyric-focused, with the production this time taking a backseat in order to give the duo room. It’s no wonder that it’s by far the most-rated UGK album on RYM, and part of me kinda wants to complain about that. But the fact of the matter is that this album really deserves all the praise it’s ever received. It’s one of the best albums ever made, and if I had to pick a UGK album to tout as their masterpiece this one would probably (just barely) edge out Super Tight. Nineties hip-hop was without question one of the greatest eras of the popular music age, and this right here is the best of the best.

If it has a flaw, it’s a fairly traditional one: it’s definitely a little frontloaded, and there’s a steady – if gradual and not perfectly consistent – trend downwards in quality from the first song to the last. The title track is the only song on the album that I consistently can’t recall much about without listening to it again, and the immediately preceding “Good Stuff” is definitely one of the album’s weakest cuts. The hook is still catchy and the rapping is still stellar, but on an album this good my expectations are higher than that. It’d be a highlight on most albums, but here? Well, let’s just look at some of the competition, shall we?

“One Day” is the opener (not counting that intro, of course), and it’s one of the best songs ever made. It owes a lot to the Isley Brothers’ original, but it’s a different sort of masterpiece, far simpler and heftier in its emotional impact. Ronnie Spencer transforms the wryly regretful remarks from the original into a soft wail of despair and quiet mortal terror, and 3-2’s opening couplet remains, for me, one of the most instantly memorable and desperately sad moments in rap history. “Mama put me out at only fourteen/ so I started selling crack cocaine and codeine,” he says, totally matter-of-fact and free from any embellishment. Bun B and Pimp C spend most of their verses waxing beautifully lyrical about the same horror, and Pimp C’s verse in particular is absolutely gorgeous – “AK loader as I get swallowed under city lights” might be some of my favourite rap imagery ever – but nothing they spit really matches the raw impact of that couplet. Bun B really does try, though: “I remember being eight deep off in Chucky crib/ Lettin’ us act bad, not givin’ a fuck what we did/ When we lost him, I knew the world was comin’ to the end/ And I had to quit lettin’ the Devil push me to a sin.”

Of course, he never does get round to quitting that; he’s pulled back into the same old brutality by the next song. I used to struggle with “One Day”‘s presence on this album, unable to reconcile its bleak regret with the proud evil that followed, but after a while I realized you couldn’t have the one without the other; the various evil deeds and brutal tales that follow draw their power from what “One Day” tells us about their inevitable conclusion. Musically it’s gorgeous, of course; the Isley Brothers were geniuses, and Pimp C’s deft little finishing touches – the barely-audible, possibly synthesised backing vocals mimicking the chord progression; the characteristically excellent drum patterns – are lovely. But the real meat of the song is in the pall of gloom it throws over all the accomplishments and victories the two of them detail over the rest of the album, and the air of crushing mortal inevitability it bestows upon all their most violent boasts. What goes around comes around; one who lives by the gun must die by the gun. There is no happy ending to this story.

The album as a whole is way more minor key and downbeat than the last one. Super Tight was exuberant and maximalist, but this is reserved and minimalist, and even the most whimsical stuff on here wouldn’t fit on the former album. “Fuck My Car” is the silliest song on the album and perhaps the only one free from any trace of existential dread, but the instrumental is positively dour and refined next to the great big brass bands of Super Tight. The bass riff is the only real motif here, and it’s not really drawing attention to itself; instead, it’s content to lounge about in the back, allowing a whole array of minimal production details to fill the song out. There’s the occasional piano stab, some brief slices of psychedelic guitar, and the occasional fog of synth strings hovering about at the edge; the whole thing is definitely funky and energetic, but it stops just short of being outright fun. Evidently Pimp wasn’t as comfortable with this production style as he was with his earlier maximalism, ‘cos more than half the tracks here (excluding the intro and outro) are produced by other people, and “Fuck My Car” is one.

So is “3 in the Mornin'”, which may just be my favourite instrumental work in UGK’s discography. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a song more perfectly capture the essence of its title, actually – that slow, distant, booming bass, those bare textural guitars, that barely-noticeable piano note and that soft percussion all add up to a song that very much distills the essence of sitting in a tranquil daze deep in the night. The hook fits in perfectly, drifting ephemerally across the beat like a lazy fog, daring you to take notice of how faintly unsettled it sounds. This is just about the only cut on the album that’s really, definitively more about the music than the rapping, so much so that I didn’t even notice the guest feature on this track until about my fifth listen or so. The verses are great, I guess, but it’s difficult to pay attention when the instruments are painting such a vivid atmosphere.

“Murder”, meanwhile, is the opposite. The song is primarily built around a simple, metronomic keyboard riff, and while it’s backed up with Pimp C’s usual little production details (what sounds like some sort of distant vocal riot, a whistle sample, a deftly-placed record scratch) the song really exists as a showcase for what might be the best verses in either of their careers. The general consensus seems to be that Bun B’s verse is better, and it’s certainly some of the most impressive rhyming I’ve ever heard in my life. “Now I done ripped out my Barrelli/ Flyin’ through yo Pelle Pelle and/ Some smelly red jelly is drippin’ out of ya belly/ Servin’ ’em like a Deli, jumped on my cellular telli” is probably the best moment, but the whole verse is nothing but endlessly shifting multisyllabic rhymes, and it’s always faintly astonishing to listen to. But as great as it is, the UGK lines I see people quoting most often elsewhere are always from Pimp C’s verse here: “If I told ya cocaine numbers, you would think I was lyin’/ Young niggas 22, is talkin’ bout they retirin'”, or, of course, the immortal “I’m still Pimp C, bitch, so what the fuck is up?/ Puttin’ powder on the street, ‘cos I got big fuckin’ nuts!” That was always Pimp’s gift; he could never match Bun B for technical proficiency, but he had an innate talent for writing great and instantly memorable quotables, and this song is full of them. “South Texas, motherfucker, that’s where I stay/ Gettin’ money from yo bitches every goddamn day!”

It’s one of many boasts that hangs under the shadow of “One Day”, sounding more paranoid and insecure than it otherwise would. “Diamonds & Wood” is full of those, too. It’s one of the smoothest grooves in the group’s discography, with lovely guitar licks and a bassline lifted from another classic funk masterpiece, and at first Pimp’s lyrics seem like the usual set of bellicose gloating one would expect over such luxury. Pay closer attention, however, and one notices that the posture is much more defensive than usual. “I flip down the Ave., you know I’m looking tight/ These jealous niggas looking at me and my car so shife/ Wanna take my life, and wanna jack, but I see all through that/ Never let these bitch niggas take what’s mine, nigga, never do that.” The usual narratives about jealousy and success are undercut with a paranoid sense of constant vulnerability, and suddenly Pimp’s triumphal posturing doesn’t seem quite as fun as it used to. His final verse dips into the sort of self-medicating depression that wouldn’t become normal in street rap for another twenty years or so: “I see the jealousy and hating, and the wicked ways/ We all lost children, praisin’ paper, smoking our life away/ Got to the point where I could not decipher day from night/ She say she love me, but all we do now is fuck and fight.” He calls it “The other side of selling dope, and out there running the streets”, but one starts to wonder whether he really believes it’s worth it. After all, what’s the point of all these material gains if they come with enough paranoia and guilt to keep you from enjoying them?

That paranoia runs through and taints almost everything here. Even “Pinky Ring”, with its silly (if very catchy) chorus about “fly women and fancy thangs”, trades in paranoia and mistrust of the mostly misogynistic kind, although Bun B brings in some traditional drug-dealer paranoia (“Mashin’ from the scene, almost crashin’, flashin’/ Cop lights keep a playa dashin'”) to flesh the scene out a little. “That’s Why I Carry” is, of course, far more explicit, with its squealing whistle-synth, worried piano chords, otherworldly synths and ghostly vocal samples underlying some real viciousness. Bun B is the villain of the narrative here, but he’s very well aware of how quickly the tables could turn. “Jackers in the dark alley waited on/ The fool comin’ out the gamblin’ shack/ Pistol to his back, took 4 ounces of crack, and a fat doja sack”, he says, almost perfectly mirroring the deed he described himself doing earlier in the same verse.

That’s nothing, though, compared to the brutalities and monstrosities described in “Touched”. There’s a great bassline and lovely, minimally-applied organs, but the meat of the song is in Bun B and Pimp C descending to the lowest levels of villainy they have yet traversed. “Bitch, your old man talkin’ to me like I’m in school/ He don’t know I hang with killers, we’ll erase that fool/ Wouldn’t give a fuck about him, but he came to my son/ If you think that I’m that nigga, then you picked the wrong one”, says Pimp, reminding me of a particularly tragic scene in The Wire. This is the one time it’s impossible to find Pimp’s villainy fun or entertaining; he’s just being a real, total asshole, having abandoned any respect for his elders and any moral centre he may once have had, fully embracing the most sordid end of human nature and wallowing angrily in it. The song is most famous for Bun B’s opening lines (oft-quoted, including by Jay-Z), but it’s Pimp C’s raging maliciousness that always gets me about this song. “Nigga I’m hangin’ out the truck, b-buck buck/ Hit your nigga in the leg, hit your bitch in the gut”, he sneers, having already killed the man to whom he’s referring and now killing his loved ones for what appears to be no reason. It’s a rather sobering reminder that, for lots of people on the streets, this sort of villainy isn’t the fun diversion it is for us listeners; there are people who must daily navigate the environments in which these predators roam, and it’s not a joke to them.

It’s an unusually low moment for either of them, and it seems that they aren’t completely free from any wounds on their conscience. Pimp C spends most of “Hi Life” ruminating on what a dismal mistake it was to get himself stuck in this world. “What ya want me to do?”, he asks at one point, apropos of nothing; “It’s like somebody cut my throat.” It’s not clear exactly what he’s referring to, but considering the general horror, terror, paranoia and mortality he’s been telling us about all across the album, I think I can guess the general gist. “Hi Life” is a great song in general, with its wonderful backing vocals, restrained guitars and sadly ironic hook, but I do think it could probably have been placed better in the album. It tracks closely enough with “One Day”‘s themes that it’d make a great penultimate track, closing the album out on a sort of emotional bookend. As it stands, the album effectively ends with the aforementioned title track before fading out with a lovely nine-minute instrumental jam by Pimp’s band, drowning the album’s horrors in a sea of relaxed, smoky barroom vibes as Pimp lays back and gives some recognition to his fellow Southern rappers. UGK were never very good at album closers, but in the absence of a proper one this will certainly do. Besides, it gives one space to think about the implications of the record one just listened to.

There is, after all, a lot to think about here. That’s why the journalists love this album so much, see, and alas, it’s why I love it too. I’m generally opposed to outright conscious hip-hop, but albums like this are more my speed. UGK never condescend to me on this record, and they certainly never preach; they just tell stories about the places they came from, boast about their successes and happily relay tales of murdering and brutalizing their enemies, and they let the listener come to their own conclusions about what it all means. That, to me, will always be the point of the best gangsta rap: it tells the story of the streets from the perspective of the villains, making it clear that there are no heroes in the picture and inviting you to picture yourself as one of the innocent civilians victimized in the lyrics. If Super Tight was an album about having a great time being a very bad human being, then this is an album about having a downright terrible time being a monster, yet finding oneself trapped and being unable to extricate oneself from steadily worsening moral degradation. That’s far from UGK’s usual style, so it’s almost a shame that this ended up being their most acclaimed album, but what can I say? A masterpiece is a masterpiece, and UGK brought this fate upon themselves by making one of the best albums in hip-hop history.

This is, in fact, the second time in a row they’ve done that, which is pretty much astonishing. Hip-hop isn’t a genre that tends to value consistency, but UGK beat the odds and made two effortless masterpieces in a row. This, sadly, is the end of their peak; there aren’t any more best-album-ever contenders in their discography from here on out, though there’s still a lot of good music to cover and I’ll enjoy doing it over the next few weeks. In the meantime, do yourself a favour and listen to this album repeatedly. It belongs in anyone’s library.

STRAIT TO THE POINT: UGK – Too Hard To Swallow (1992)

Review by: Michael Strait:

I wish I was in dixie, hooray, hooray…

In general, great rappers and rap groups follow a different trajectory to great rock bands. The latter – before the turn of the millennium, at least – usually began with a few promising EPs, got started in earnest with an endearingly amateurish debut album, spiralled off in all sorts of lovely artistic directions for ten-to-twenty years and then finally spent the last ten-to-infinite years of their careers churning out utter garbage to pay the bills. The rappers, meanwhile, usually start their career with a mindblowing, undeniably brilliant debut album, occasionally manage one or two good-to-great followups, and usually spend the rest of their careers spiralling downwards into an infinitely dark pit of artistic debasement and (if they’re lucky) celebrity drama.

UGK were a rare thing: they were a great rap group that behaved rather more like a great rock group. After a couple of portentously brilliant (and HIGHLY juvenile) EPs, the underbudgeted, underpromoted and underappreciated debut album came along right on schedule. Armed with almost nothing but a few drum machines, a whole lot of charisma and a few no-name sound engineers, the best duo in rap history embarked on a quest that would end up casting a sonic shadow the South still dances under to this day. The idea of the South as a distinct force within the rigid geographic genre system of hip-hop existed only spottily, and certainly far below the mainstream, before this album; these days, the omnipresent South has handily conquered the entire East Coast and Midwest, bending them backwards into the sonic paradigm you can ultimately trace right back here, to Pimp C.

Pimp C, man! I fucking love Pimp C. One of the most talented men ever to inhabit the world of hip-hop, for real. Rappers pretend that they live and die by the words they spit, but what really makes or breaks a rapper is charisma, and on that front nobody will ever best Pimp C. Even here, not yet twenty years old, he’s brimming with a magnetic bravado that is absolutely delightful and completely impossible to ignore. “Cocaine in the Back of the Ride” isn’t one of the best songs on the album (which is saying a lot, really, ‘cos it’d be a highlight on many albums), but it’s made mesmerizing by the unstoppable force of his sheer self-belief, and the tangible delight he projects whenever he’s on the mic always brings the biggest grin to my face. The lines “Got more dope than a pharmacy, ho/ Got a job for the city, bitch, I’m shoveling snow” don’t look particularly special on paper, but he delivers them as if they are irresistible proof of his own utter supremacy over everyone else in the human race, and I’m having so much fun that I feel like agreeing. Bun B gets some funny lines on the song, too – “Little kids on the corner, steady grabbin they nuts/ Sayin, ‘I wish I was Bun when I grow the fuck up!'” – but on the whole, the song belongs to Pimp C, and it’s mostly the same story with the record as a whole.

But I’m getting sidetracked. Pimp C’s rapping on this album is absolutely wonderful, but it wasn’t what I was talking about earlier. The influence of Pimp C’s delivery-over-lyrics rapping style on later generations of Southern rappers can’t be overstated, but his production style is what really made the South what it has been ever since. His drum programming, for one, was already head-and-shoulders above what most producers from the other two regions were doing at the time, and presaged the way Southern producers would mess around with all sorts of intricate drum patterns in later years. His drums on “Short Texas” wash and willow around the sampled Funkadelic beat like they’re made of some sort of liquid, more texture than percussion, melting away for much of the song only to reappear when most impactful. The drums on “Use Me Up” are mostly just a recreation of the original, but the sounds he’s found are deeply satisfying, and the little dots of synthetic vibraslap are a lovely addition. Both these songs are generally really great – the former in particular has this awesome siren sample that pushes it to real great heights – but the real standout on the first half is the eternal classic “Pocket Full of Stones”.

“Pocket Full of Stones” is, for real, one of the best straight hip-hop songs ever made, and it’d make this an essential album even if the rest was mediocre (which it isn’t). That laid-back, subtly intricate drum pattern is one of the best on the album, and the sample usage is some of the best in the world. Just listen to the downbeat peal of the saxophone in the chorus; it’s gorgeous, and all the more impressive considering that it used to be the triumphal opening to a whimsical LL Cool J song. The minimal bass & keyboard samples give the whole thing an underlying atmosphere of reserved cool, but there’s just a hint of distant paranoia in there, too. That’s an excellent context for the story the two of them are so vividly telling on top of it, which is as full of memorable, funny lines – “fuck black Caesar, niggas call me black Trump!” – as it is of substance. The first two verses are, of course, absolutely iconic, but the pair keep my attention through the whole thing, encapsulating the appeal of gangsta rap so perfectly that they just about render the rest of it redundant. The six minutes never feels too long; if anything, it sometimes doesn’t feel long enough. That effortlessly cool, atmospheric groove is something I could get lost in forever, especially if Bun B and Pimp C are providing narration.

The other big highlight on this record is “Feel Like I’m The One Who’s Doin’ Dope”, on which Bun B isn’t present at all. One might, therefore, expect it to be a whimsical pile of charismatic jokes and hilarious one-liners, like the immediately following “I’m So Bad” (which is mostly about autofellatio, although it’s probably metaphorical). One would, however, be very wrong: this is one of the most harrowing hip-hop narratives ever rapped, and the fact that it’s all eventually revealed to be a dream somehow doesn’t do much to dampen the impact. Pimp C spends a lot of time in his lyrics portraying himself as a remorseless killer, but it’s rare that he examines the consequences of the life he lives in as much detail as he does here. He inches over into horrorcore territory on the second verse – ejaculating upon the corpse of the woman you’ve just raped and murdered is some real Lord Infamous shit – but its placement in the escalating tragic-villainous narrative makes it more impactful than even the darkest rap that ever wafted out from the dungeons of Memphis. The squelchy bass keys – played by Pimp himself – are a nicely filthy finishing touch.

There ain’t a bad song on here, actually. Bun B wasn’t at his best yet, so his solo tracks are perhaps the least memorable of the bunch, but they’re still immaculately produced – particularly “976-Bun B”, which has the best bassline on the album and one of those gorgeous sampled female wails of the kind you usually find in UK Garage. “Cramping My Style” is of a piece with Ice Cube’s “It’s a Man’s World”, featuring a female rapper trading combative verses with Bun B; it’s not a career highlight, but it’s amusing and pleasant while it lasts, and the soul sample is lovely. “It’s Too Hard To Swallow” is just a great slice of classic gangsta rap boasting over a perfectly laid-back, chill instrumental section that sounds like it was borrowed right out of a 70s soul track, even though – according to the liner notes – there aren’t actually any samples on this track at all. And then there’s the opener, which features what TVtropes might call Pimp C’s Establishing Character Moment: “I didn’t do ya girl but your sister was alright/ Took her to my homeboy’s caddy last night/ […] Now everybody in the world/ Know that your sister is a nasty little girl!”. His mocking goblin grin is audible, and the bassline that falls in behind him as he delivers it pushes it to a level of amusing catharsis that really shouldn’t be possible with such a juvenile sex boast. The remix of it that ends the album is a bit of an anticlimactic way to close out, but it’s a good remix; it’s all druggy and psychedelic, and it just sounds so trill, like it’s made from some sort of otherworldly gold.

Of course, UGK would only get more trill from here on out, but this album is nonetheless excellent on its own terms. No hip-hop collection is complete without it, I’d say, especially if you – like me – accept the obvious supremacy of Southern hip-hop over all other forms. We’re dealing with a top-tier group here, folks, and even their shaky, amateurish debut is head-and-shoulders above most of the music in the world.

STRAIT TO THE POINT: UGK – Super Tight… (1994)

Review by: Michael Strait

Simple, homemade goodness. An unassuming masterwork.

Wikipedia tells me Too Hard To Swallow has sold a total of 370,000 copies since release. I’ve no way of knowing when all those sales took place or how much money the duo made from each one, but it’s clear something had changed by the time they released Super Tight. Whatever money they made from their debut wasn’t wasted; the production is clearer and brighter, the live band fuller and more skilled, and the samples rarer this time around. Pimp C finally had the means to match his talent, and he promptly set about creating the sorts of lush, rich and detailed arrangements that would make his soul and funk idols proud. The end result is an album that feels rather like bathing in a room made mostly of gold, perhaps adorned with diamonds, while sipping some expensive liquor; it’s luxurious, and profoundly fun to listen to.

It helps that both of them were, by this point, exceptional rappers. I think I still prefer Pimp C – his charisma is still just irresistible – but Bun B’s early clunkiness is mostly gone by now, and his technical skills are really starting to take off. “I Left It Wet for You” is excellent in just about every regard – the smugly rising bassline; the mocking, whispered chorus; the refined, tasteful percussion – but the exuberance of Bun B’s rhyming in the final verse is probably the highlight. It’s the sound of a man who is utterly, shamelessly aware of his superiority, showing it off not because he’s insecure but because he just finds it fun to do so. He’s not yet at his peak – that’d come next album – but he is nonetheless great all across the album. Though I gotta say, man – “suckin’ dick while I’m takin’ shits”? Really, dude? That’s disgusting.

I’m not actually entirely sure which song I’d nominate as the best on here, because they’re all almost equally excellent. “It’s Supposed to Bubble” – one of the few wholly sample-based songs on the record, though you wouldn’t be able to tell at first blush – might be it; it’s probably one of my favourite hip-hop songs ever made, and definitely one of the happiest, most pleasant songs in my library. It’s just the sort of warm, sunlit, pleasantly happy hip-hop I could never imagine coming from anywhere else in the country in the 90s, even if Pimp C’s declaration that he “don’t fuck around no more with that gahd damn drank” is a little sad in hindsight. The lead-in to the chorus is perfect, and Bun B’s contentedly meaningless repetition of “it just be like that sometimes” is just the sort of thing that sticks in one’s head forever. One could, maybe, pick hairs about the morality of creating such a pleasantly summery song about the benefits of getting rich off of violent drug deals, but hey – at least they aren’t rapping about “fuckin’ a bitch while her baby’s suckin’ dick” anymore, right?

“Pocket Full of Stones, Pt. 2” is also on the shortlist for favourites. If the original was a reserved, slightly paranoid tour through the urban Texas streets, this one is an exuberant romp right across them, with bouncy funk organs and impeccable basslines providing the foundation for Pimp and Bun’s celebratory braggadocio. Pimp, in particular, is absolutely undeniable right from the beginning; he is so clearly and so obviously having so much fun dealing drugs that it becomes kinda funny to listen to him insist that he “don’t wanna do it, but a nigga gotta eat”. His attention to detail as a producer is similarly excellent – the wordless, possibly sampled (or perhaps simply synthesised) male background vocals that repeat regularly throughout the track are difficult to notice at first, but they serve the essential purpose of filling the song out just that little bit more, pushing it from merely luxurious to gloriously decadent. Speaking of which: those horns that come in on the chorus, heralding Pimp C’s pocket full of stones as if they made him emperor of the universe… oh man, I love this song.

Man, I keep wondering which song I should talk about next – they’re all so good. How about “Pussy Got Me Dizzy”? It takes a shitton of charisma to rap the words “I got some high school pussy, and you know it’s the lick/ ‘Cos every day, after school, she be ridin’ my dick” and make me like it, but Pimp C can pull it off. He is endlessly capable of making the worst, most reprehensible sort of villainy sound incredibly fun, and the big squelchy bass synths running under his verse certainly help. The horns in the chorus do, indeed, sound properly dizzy, as does the the little whiny whistle-synth that spirals tauntingly around them. Bun B’s verse is, as usual when he raps about sex, absolutely hilarious and completely disgusting, so I won’t quote any of it here, although I will say that I very much hope it wasn’t based on too many real life experiences. The final guest verse seems a tad forgettable after the duo’s verses, but you really shouldn’t hold that against it – it’s not 3-2’s fault his friends happen to be two of the most memorable rappers of all time.

Then there’s “Stoned Junkee”, the longest song on the album and for sure one of the best. A bassline that climbs for the sun, clawing its way out of the muck, as the organs collapse atop it; a pounding, lazy drumbeat, echoey and huge; a distant guitar, soloing away into space like some Funkadelic odyssey; and, above all, Bun B and Pimp C, painstakingly painting their sordid pictures of life under the needle. And then there’s “Protect & Serve”, one of the best anti-police polemics in rap’s long and storied history of them, eclipsing the NWA song it samples in both raw rage and musical mastery. The conflicting piano & synth riffs complement each other perfectly in their contrast, and the bass synths are as satisfying as usual. How about “Feds In Town”, with its glittery, glowing synths and perfect bassline – and those perfect little samples, one of some distant car horns and one of a fuzzy record scratch, that make the whole thing feel so much more complete? Or how about “Underground”, which has one of the catchiest and most iconic hooks the duo ever made, not to mention one of Pimp C’s most irresistible grooves?

Like I said – it’s all brilliant. The intro, “Return”, is among my favourite opening tracks in hip-hop history, making the duo’s philosophy clear right away and containing one of Bun B’s most entertaining verses. “Niggas steady catchin lead to the head, I never aim for the chest/ Muthafuckas sportin bulletproof vests!” he exclaims, with an air of something resembling grievance at the sheer audacity of these motherfuckers to dare take precautions against being killed by vengeful rappers. It’s great, as is “Front, Back and Side to Side”, which I occasionally misremember as boring because it’s ever-so-slightly weaker than its immediately surrounding tracks. But it’s the absolute opposite of boring, with that lovely textural ostinato popping through the verses and that immaculately smooth instrumental arrangement. If I have a complaint with this record, it’s that the closer, while great, isn’t one of the absolute best tracks on the album, and is perhaps a kind of anticlimactic way to close out such a stupendously good record. Still, the sample is great, the descending piano riff is possibly greater, and Bun B’s threats to rip out my spine are just priceless.

I’m always very happy to discover a masterpiece that’s neither a tour through the mind of a depressed, mentally unstable genius nor a great big artistic statement designed to be fawned over by the music press. This is an album about having a damn good time being a very bad human being, and it just so happens that it’s one of the best albums ever made. This level of consistent quality is a seriously rare thing, and the fact that it’s not the last time UGK would pull it off is what makes them one of the best groups that have ever put music to wax. If anything, I’m almost dreading reviewing their next album, ‘cos it’s just as good as this one and I’m just gonna feel straight-up weird having nothing bad to say about an album two weeks in a row. First world problems, right?