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Underground Kingz is the best-produced album of the year by miles - incredibly lush country-rap, with the best collection of soul samples since Blueprint, partly 'cause that Southern style seems so fresh in kind of the same way the Kanye/Just stuff did in 01. I mean, the loop in Int'l Players Anthem! It's hard to think of another rap record where the beats are actually beautiful, and not just (but still!) banging or poppy or grimy or whatever.
And the rapping is stellar - Bun is as good as ever, and Pimp raps like he's afraid people think of him as the group's Flava Flav. I hate to say this, but since it turned out this way, it makes a great epitaph for him; pretty much every time his verses kick in it brings you back to the song, like, what is this?! And he still has enough straight charisma to sell you something as potentially wrong as Chrome Plated Woman. Plus, they really bring out the best in all their guest artists, and it kind of makes me think of Bun as almost like rap's Ric Flair, in that part of his talent is making less talented collaborators look phenomenal. Shit, Rick Ross sounds like he can rap here! (I mean, I like him but don't think anyone considers him a hot lyricist.)
That said, this is basically unlistenable unless you have a real high tolerance for calling women bitches, and general rap misogyny. It's heavy enough to bother me sometimes, and I thought I had made my peace with that ages ago. It reaches a kind of nadir on Two Types of Bitch, with an unbelievably lame spoken coda by Pimpin Ken that just goes forever. Even they seem to know it was a bit shitty, 'cause they follow it with a meh women-are-ok-really number with conscious schlub Kweli.
On the other hand, I think over the course of the record they do some pretty cool reflexive shit with their pimp/hustler personas - it certainly works better for me, in more or less the same vein, than Jay saying he would have rapped like Common if there was money in it. I'm thinking of stuff like Bun's verse on How Long Can It Last, which in some ways treads familiar territory, but still:
People think hustling is cool, or hustling is live
They don't understand hustlers only hustling to survive
They wish they lived in the burbs
They wishes they didn't have to hang
Out on corners of low-income housing projects and slang...
It's one of the tightest double-CDs I know - there are only maybe five tracks I normally skip (the aforementioned, and a couple of misjudged Jazze Pha numbers - although one of those Jazze tracks sounds magic when I'm real drunk). I am also constitutionally incapable of not loving a record with a song called 'Life Is 2009 ft. Too $hort' (number 2 pop moment of the year: the beat to this kicks in, an instantly recognisable switched up version of the Too $hort classic, and Bun flips the original verse: 'I remember how it all began/I used to sling dirty raps to my eastside fans...' Beaten only by 'it's Britney, bitches').
Once more, RIP Pimp C. |
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