-Obviously, the “Intro” is chilling. Pimp C rambling over flutters of stirring funk isn’t anything new, but knowing this is the last time a UGK album will have something like this is both devastating and exhilarating. That Pimp spits-out a “back from the dead” and even references “2009″ is well, wow. It’s you know, what the album’s going for with this surreal “Intro”, but it feels like Pimp showing up in a dream or from the heavens or something.
-I had a dream a few weeks ago that I was like kinda friendly with Pimp C and in the “next” part of the dream, I heard he died and I was standing there staring at his car. I placed my hands on the hood of the car and then walked away. Not sure what it meant, I think it was probably more about my friend Mike who died at the beginning of 2007–Pimp C died at the end of 2007 as I’m sure you know–but it’s about Pimp C too, who I miss as a musician and person(ality) as much as you can miss anybody you didn’t know personally. You have these real stupid but really-real wishes sometimes that dead people will drop down Mitch Albom For One More Day bullshit style and like just be like “What’s up dude?”. Somehow, “Intro” kinda allows that.
-But see, the thing about UGK 4 Life is it doesn’t even act like Pimp’s dead. It’s subtly but emphatically mentioned with the “Intro” and save for Snoop’s R.I.P shout on “Steal Your Mind”, probably left on just because it’d be shitty to remove it, there’s nothing about the album that feels “posthumous”. This is brilliant and fits along with the “we got the obvious, let’s move on” attitude UGK’s had since day one. The whole album’s a tribute, a final testament, and a bunch of other stuff…it doesn’t need shout-outs and tribute songs. Plus, Bun already did that on II Trill.
-”Still On My Grind”. Somehow soulful and R & B-ish and snarling, menacing Southern rap crunch at the same time. Those synths at the beginning are like that weird fucked-up machine that kills people in that one scene in Caligula or something. A great, no bullshit start to the album. A great start to this album especially, which is singularly focused on feeling like the early UGK shit while not forgetting about all the shit they’ve learned since The Southern Way EP.
-”Purse Comes First” is political and “conscious” and all that, but it gains it’s strength from being one of the only times that Pimp and Bun move away from talking about the G-Code and about girls and shit. It’s the opposite of Underground Kingz which declared their return and showed-off their versatility. This album isn’t concerned with impressing anybody.
-UGK 4 Life feels like Eightball & MJG’s In Our Lifetime Vol. 1.
-”The Pimp & The Bun” makes me tear-up more than a little.
-This is an R & B album, if not in genre, than in spirit. Besides an increased focus on soul-funk stacked up against quiet storm sounds and lots of sung hooks, it’s Pimp and Bun philosophizing on girls, sex, and love. I’m glad that everyone’s latched onto Pimp’s obsession with girls not shaving their pubes, because it’s a really smart and delightfully weird obsession on the album, showing up on “Everybody Wanna Ball” and “Harry Asshole”. It goes right along with their out-of-the-70s, O.G traditionalism, but it takes on deeper significance in 2009, less because it’s the right kind of hard-headed nostalgia, but because it’s such a smart–and mindful–rejection of the kind of hyper-clean, airbrushed, un-real sex and sexuality that’s taken over society and is especially glaring in hip-hop.
-Going along with this real, honest sense of sex is Pimp’s hilarious food/sex similes (chicken wings on “Still On The Grind”, corn on the cob and ribs on “She Luv It”). Same way he’s like sensitive to stuff like razor burns or the fact that girls’ assholes are hairy–that a great, throwaway detail from “Let Me See It” turned into a hook is brilliant–including (or like especially) strippers, does make sex seem properly messy and well, real. I talk about it in terms of comic books here and it’s the same thing on UGK 4 Life, not “dirty” and anything, but just you know, these are the weird details of fucking that need to be discussed the same way you know, Bun described what happens when you get shot (“you’ll be leakin’ out plasma and puss/Your mouth’ll fill up with foam”) on Underground Kingz’s “Gravy” or just the overall not so glamorous life UGK talk about. Bun’s celebration of a woman’s “feminine fat in the all the right places” on “Feelin’ You” or describing an especially stacked women as “look[ing] like Crumb drew her” on “Hard As Hell” fit right in with this too.
-That this really sophisticated and fucking honest celebration of women is interchanged so easily with lots of talk about getting your dick sucked and pussy and all that doesn’t negate the so-called “smart” stuff, it gives it more power. Respecting and celebrating women in a way that rejects the worst and weirdest aspects of our culture, but still you know, wanting to fuck and get some head is some more complex, real-er “respect” than ignoring those urges/wants and pretending they don’t exist because then you know, you’re “sensitive”.
-Love the really strange but perfect way UGK 4 Life’s sequenced. Early, up, up, up soul tracks followed by Pimp’s “7th Street Interlude”, a bunch of killer tracks with guests in the middle, then Bun’s “Texas Ave. Interlude”, then the doesn’t-fit-anywhere “Hard as Hell”, the perfect last track “Da Game Been Good To Me” (even more perfect somehow for feeling a bit unfinished, like a fairly clean demo or something?), and Bun’s hyper-sincere “Outro”.
-Oh yeah, “Hard As Hell”. Don’t care if Pimp wanted it on the album, it’s something of a bummer, especially so close to the end of the last UGK record. Pimp and Bun really destroy the verses here though and if Akon didn’t sing the chorus like it isn’t kind of absurd and funny, the song would work. T-Pain could’ve pulled this shit off. Akon’s just singing about his boner.
-”Used To Be”. Wow. The parallel to “Still On the Grind” in terms of just being a barreling monster of a track that still feels warm and soulful somehow? In the past, UGK are doing one or the other, but they bring their sounds and personas together on this album in a way they never have before. A perfect last album in that sense.
More than a multi-racial sea of exuberant Obama supporters standing proud (or just as appropriately wilding out), more than John Lewis’ pensive cameo, more than just the existence of this epic victory lap rap from Young Jeezy, it’s the about-to-cry sincerity of Bun B’s face that makes the “My President” video.
‘Stress’ by Justice off †: I love Justice the way I love my Nike Vintage Runners as like an example of hipster douchebag effrontery so extreme it becomes great again. And like those vintage runners,’†’ is great enough that its context or fans or what it may or may not represent just stop mattering. Justice are the great part of the French, the side that realized that Jerry Lewis is really fucking funny and that Poe can’t really write well but his stuff is really interesting and smart in its own way…more Derrida than Foucault, more Barthes than Baudelaire…you know??!!.jpg --> )
‘Top Drop Dyne Remix’ by UGK off Underground Kingz: This is the version of ‘Top Drop Dyne’ that follows-up disc 1’s closer ‘Trill Niggaz Never Die’, I just put it through Cool Edit and turned it into its own track. It’s representative of how dense and overwhelming ‘Underground Kingz’ can be: When a track like this is relegated to a hidden track at the end of the first disc, you made a fucking solid album. The number of Southern rap tracks that use clean-ish like near-hair metal guitars must be entering triple digits, but it doesn’t really get old and its one of the more non-soul samples that generally succeeds.
“One day you’re here, and the next day you’re gone…”; 2007 is fucked the fuck up. On the personal tip, the year started with the suicide of a best friend and the year sorta kinda ending on the death of Pimp C is uh, a little devastating. I woke up about an hour ago to see a few e-mails from friends (and some readers!) about Pimp’s death and then saw it plastered all over the rap-focused feeds on my iGoogle page. I mention this because this info-age way of learning of the news- not even from a television- did nothing to lessen the weird feelings and shock that fucking Pimp C from UGK is dead.
“My world’s a trip, you can ask Bun B bitch, I ain’t no liar
But first thing’s fucking first: We’re all going to die of Staph infections! Are you ready??
-‘Best Buy’ has the CD for $9.99 and the “exclusive” edition with a DVD for $12.99. Even though the DVD isn’t really worth three bucks I had to buy it. The DVD is actually nice, the documentary is well-done and you get video for ‘The Game Belongs To Me’ and ‘Int’l Players Anthem’. The main nerd appeal of this version however, is the old-style double-disc case; you know, that extra thick one that ‘Life After Death’ or ‘Sign O The Times’ comes in? The CD is also an “enhanced CD” and when you put it on your computer, this little icon of the cover shows. I don’t know if it was on purpose, it had to be sort of, but it’s all this nerded-out rap nostalgia. Like its 1997 and I’m accessing the enhanced content of ‘Forever’ and going through the virtual Wu Mansion…
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