Three 6 Mafia f/ Lyfe Jennings - "Hood Star" (mp3)

Although it'd be wrong or insincere to say that there isn't something depressing and distasteful about most of the things Three 6 Mafia has done since "Stay Fly" and their Oscar win seemed to put them in the best possible position they'd ever been in -- Adventures In Hollyhood, "Lolli Lolli (Pop That Body)," you know the drill -- it's important to point out that the recent turn of events isn't actually surprising at all. Three 6 have always felt like upwardly mobile opportunists who'd do anything to get a hit. If a song called "Tear Da Club Up" hits, call yourselves Tear Da Club Up Thugs for a while and ride that wave. Then write singles about pretty much any trend or accessory that's hot at the moment -- spinning rims, 2-way pagers, tongue rings, syrup, whatever. It was their awesome but fairly dark production aesthetic, and the fact that DJ Paul has one of the most unfriendly voices to grace radio airwaves even in the era of Southern rap, that kept the group seeming mysterious and cool even as they slowly came into the mainstream limelight year after year. They just finally got out into the light enough to realize they can be pretty goofy, too, and willing to herb themselves out for the worst possible TV projects and cheesy-ass attempted crossover singles.

So Last 2 Walk (or, as I came to refer to it during Three 6's race with Jennifer Hudson to see who could squander their Oscar momentum for longer, Last 2 Drop) isn't actually a big sellout record. It sounds like a lot of their old stuff, and if there's anything holding it back it's that the group was more fun to listen to when it was more than just the two producers rapping (although even on that front Project Pat and Lil Wyte and plenty of non-HCP rappers show up with guest verses). Hell, if you take the T-Pain impersonator off of "Lolli Lolli" it would probably sound like a lot of Three 6 club songs. I can't even really hate on the song with Good Charlotte since my first exposure from it was when my friend Skarr Akbar did a great track over the beat. Even the collab I expected to hate the most, the one with horrible skeezy hoarse-voiced pious R&B balladeer Lyfe Jennings, turned out to be one of my favorite tracks on the album. I've never been that hardcore into Three 6 to begin with, though, so it sounding just like their older albums doesn't actually go that far with me.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 14, 2008 at 8:53 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.