Boosie Badazz Best Hits

[Dallas Themshirts]

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A list like this is impossible to compile without cutting clear essentials. Lil Boosie's discography is convoluted, distributed in a blur of official albums, collaborative records, mixtapes, and loosies. His appearances on Billboard are only a tip of the iceberg; "Zoom," for example, was Boosie's highest charting single, although it's not one of his best songs or especially illustrative of his abilities. But he's an artist with a deep discography that has yet to be sufficiently catalogued.

So take this as just a first step. There's plenty more to cover, like the Cash Money-referencing "I'm A Dog" or the autobiographical "Mercy." A list of ten tracks doesn't have room for his "Old School"-style salute to hip-hop influences (a worldview diverse enough to make room for Petey Pablo and Run-D.M.C.) "What About Me." Also missing: Smash guest spots like "The Way I Live," the fearsome Louisiana bounce of "We Out Chea," the ferocious early bars on "Livin What I'm Spittin," the empathic "Baby Momma." Or the righteous anger of "Fuck the Police." One minute he'd irreverently transform Jeezy's "Trapstar" into "They Dykin'" or appear on UGK's graphic "Harry Asshole." The next minute, he's singing the hook to a song of sincere, flawed vulnerability like "Ain't Comin Home Tonight."

The jokes will fly about how much attention we're giving a mere entertainer, but #factsonly, Boosie matters to a lot of people for a reason. He is an artist of both depth and range, one with a distinct, direct style. He calls his music "reality rap" instead of hip-hop. It means he has no use for abstraction. His verses do not contain fancy curlicues or intricate, baroque ornamentation. Embellishments and wordplay are kept to a minimum; directness at a premium.

If disco proved that the club could be an open, utopian space for people forced by society to the margins, hip-hop proved that dance music could just as easily be a stage for hypermasculine, macho theatrics and the ever-present threat of violence. Saying "Set It Off" sounds "barbed" feels like ungracious understatement. The record is a series of taunts and zero tolerance. Boosie's rhetorical target isn't the only one who's weak; it's his entire bloodline. "Your mama had more heart than your daddy bitch-ass/He ain't gon' set nothin off, that's who made you soft."

Although Boosie has made plenty of consistent projects, the line between the sound of his mixtapes and full albums was pretty negligible; "Set It Off" came from his '06 record Bad Azz, which also produced the medium-hit single "Zoom," and it's packed with the same brittle mid-'00s club sound that backs the bulk of his catalog.

Boosie first became a star with Baton Rouge crew Concentration Camp, but his career really took off with the founding of Trill ENT by Turk, Mel (Lil Phat's father), and Pimp C in the early 2000s. Pimp actually produced a series of records for Boosie during this era, the best of which is the country-sounding "Finger Fuckin," which has a more UGK-esque feel than the metallic textured tracks Boosie would gravitate to later. Driven by a single guitar figure and a harmonica, the song finds Boosie and his new partner Webbie in full rude boy mode; Boosie finishes up his verse rapping, "Finger-fuckin' lead to suckin', that's a rap star dream/Get my dick sucked on the freeway with vanilla whip cream."

A theory: there are no bad songs called "Trouble Man." No, this isn't a cover of Marvin Gaye's classic, although it belongs in the pantheon too. The sequel to Ghetto Stories, Gangsta Musik was another outing for Boosie and Webbie as a fierce Baton Rouge tag-team, although much as it would be throughout his career, Boosie narrowly dodged having a smash under his own name, as Webbie's creep anthem "Give Me That" ended up being the album's runaway hit.

But Boosie's work on the album stands up a bit better overall, particularly "Trouble Man." With twin blues guitar licks wrapping themselves around Boosie's vocals as he weaves a story, he wrestles with the contradictions of success and struggle, hopelessly reaching to escape the archetype he's filling, drawn inexorably towards his fate: "I tell my momma I'm gon' change but I'm gon' be the same/It's understood that I'm a trouble man."

Super Bad was a disappointment from a creative perspective. At the moment when his star seemed truly ascendant, the album was an uneven compromise packed with guest spots from Trill ENT's roster. The Super Bad mixtape released that same year seemed a more consistent release. But "Mind of a Maniac," with its haunted self-analysis (and a striking video featuring Boosie in a straightjacket with his eyelids turned inside-out), was a real moment of powerful, self-lacerating emotional tremors, rage directed inwards and outwards.

Boosie's music is, to use a cliche, raw and uncut. He treats his work as a fiercely authentic window into his experiences. He sees his art as a responsibility to be shouldered as much as a product of personal expression. Although he seems like a guy with an extremely low tolerance for equivocation and bullshit, there's a sincerity at the core of his project that keeps his art from being nihilistic. When his uncensored, unvarnished style hits on a particularly potent emotional truth, it can be devastating. For Boosie, there is no noise; only signal. Each word has its purpose, and no time is wasted. It makes it impossible to feel unmoved by "Betrayed," the kind of drama that makes Brutus and Caesar feel trivial.

OK, so Lil Phat's line ("She cooks, she cleans, never smells like onion rings") steals the show on Webbie, Phat, and Boosie's 2007 smash "Independent." But the song's charismatic center is Boosie, the star who's earned his region's most devoted following. A top ten single, this was Boosie's highest-charting moment, a massive pop culture breakthrough for one of the genre's most hardcore exports. It also flies in the face of conventional wisdom about gangster rap's treatment of women (even if the rest of their catalog, well, doesn't).

Shoulders. Chest. Pants. Shoes. The banger to end all bangers, the remix of Foxx's "Wipe Me Down" was a national dance smash, joining "Independent" in the Billboard Top 40 and giving every other novelty dance single a run for its money with a verse that ranks among Boosie's best, even when compared with his soul-searching, serious material.

"Wipe Me Down" has an effortless effervescence, coasting from verse to verse without wearing out its welcome. While a swift bounce beat from Mouse on Tha Track hums along like a new engine, Boosie opens by spelling out his name, jokes about redbones stealing his underwear, and brags about choking on a pound of purple and being famous like the Ninja Turtles. And, of course, the best reality rap brag of all time: "Fresh fade, fresh J's, on the corner playing spades/I'm a ordinary person but I'm paid."

Boosie is one year older than I am, and although we've led obviously different lives, it is startling to be reminded of this fact, in the little flickers of timeline overlap; his mention of being "Famous like the Ninja Turtles" in "Wipe Me Down," for example (because, obviously, he'd be too old for Power Rangers, and too young for He-Man). Or on "Top to the Bottom," when he mentions the artists who inspired him, quoting Biggie: "It was all a dream, I used to write raps in my notebook/A baby G trynna walk like Eazy E/Tupac was the shit to me, in my front room trynna sing Jodeci..." He goes on to talk about watching Menace To Society.

got yall this how its. trill ent had 3 ceos mel turk & pimpc. when pimp c died r.i.p but anyway when he died it became justthem two. its was said that mel took webbie under his wing and turktook boosie under his. Welll mel also happens to be lil phats daddyso of course he gone want his son to shine. The beef intial startedbecause of that supabad cd boosie submitted his album to trill entand mel let lil phat get on always every song without boosiepermission. Ok also if yall didnt know the dude boosie alwaystalkin bout in his songs marlo mike happens to be boosie allegedhitman. but to really summarize boosie wasnt getting his money frmtrill so he started badazz ent and stop making songs for trill.Thats why if yuh hear a new trill cd with boosie his verse old butanyway marlo mike has said to kill about 7 people including boosiesbestfriend bleek. Which was said to be an accident because he wasaiming for the other dude in the car. And the sad thing is Marlomike aint but 17 & Phat 18 and its also said that phat f*ckedone of boosie babymamas. And the dude crashed two of boosieswhips.

The 21st and 22nd albums from E-40 continue the pattern he's adopted since leaving Warner Bros. in 2009: Flood the streets with product. It is great and it is overlong, and its 28 songs shouldn't be consumed in one setting. Generous to a fault, he makes room for both Dej Loaf, who delivers a killer verse on "Baddest in the Building," and T-Pain, who croons out an Auto-Tune chorus for "Red Cup." 40 raps effectively on "Programmin'" about coming up in Vallejo's streets ("cutting the grass, no time to play with toys"); but just as often he'll crank up the slaps and bug out on "Straight Mobbin'" and "Bass Rocks." There are the stabbing funk keyboards of "707," and an odd but heartfelt interpolation of Chic's disco chestnut "I Want Your Love" for "Give Me Love." He's an O.G., the "Same Since 88," but "Choices (Yup)" proves he can be just as innovative as any New Bay upstart. In short, Sharp on All Corners is E-40 with no filters, and it shouldn't be any other way. M.R.

Together, Royce Da 5'9" and DJ Premier are responsible for some great lyrical rap music: From 2002's "Boom" to 2004's "Hip-Hop" to 2008's "Shake This," the duo often bring out the best in each other. But they've never done a full project together until now, and while PRhyme is not apt to do as much damage as it would have a decade earlier, it's nonetheless one of 2014's most electrifying rap full-lengths. At only nine tracks, it moves in, hits hard, and leaves you wanting more. Premo's beats are Nineties hip-hop head comfort food, but Royce approaches his writing and rapping with the hunger of a 20-year-old aiming for his first blog post. Although its target demo is now on the other side of 30, the saturated ranks of younger stars makes an album like this stand out, one where a Jay Electronica verse moves with more force than the slate of 2014 rookies getting quadruple the attention. D.D.

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