Three 6 Mafia are starting a reunion tour in March, and even though it's bittersweet that it won't include Lord Infamous and Koopsta Knicca, who died in 2013 and 2015 respectively, it's pretty cool that DJ Paul, Juicy J, Crunchy Black, Gangsta Boo, and HCP extended family like Project Pat, La Chat, and Lil Wyte will be back on the road. Three 6 are one of the greatest southern rap groups of all time and I feel like their legacy and influence has really aged well over the past decade.

Three 6 Mafia deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Big Bizness
2. Live By Yo Rep (B.O.N.E. Dis) featuring Kingpin Skinny Pimp and Playa Fly
3. Body Parts featuring Prophet Posse
4. Where's Da Bud
5. Gette'm Crunk
6. Anyone Out There
7. Whatcha Do
8. Are U Ready 4 Us featuring Dayton Family
9. Triple Six Clubhouse
10. When God Calls Time Out
11. Mafia N****z
12. Weak Azz Bitch featuring La Chat
13. I'm So Hi
14. Mafia featuring La Chat
15. Testin' My Gangsta
16. Put Cha D. In Her Mouth
17. Mosh Pit featuring Josey Scott
18. Half On A Sack
19. Don't Cha Get Mad featuring Lil Flip and Mr. Bigg
20. Roll With It featuring Project Pat
21. Hood Star featuring Lyfe Jennings

Tracks 1 and 2 from Mystic Stylez (1995)
Tracks 3, 4 and 5 from Chapter 1: The End (1996)
Tracks 6, 7 and 8 from Chapter 2: World Domination (1997)
Tracks 9 and 10 from CrazyNDaLazDayz by Tear Da Club Up Thugs (1999)
Tracks 11, 12 and 13 from When The Smoke Clears: Sixty 6, Sixty 1 (2000)
Track 14 from Choices: The Album (2001)
Tracks 15, 16 and 17 from Da Unbreakables (2003)
Tracks 18, 19 and 20 from Most Known Unknown (2005)
Track 21 from Last 2 Walk (2008)

Three 6 really refined and perfected their sound over the course of a decade, but it's kind of remarkable that it was pretty much there from the beginning, their signature snare drum sound doesn't slap as hard on Mystic Styles as it did on later albums but it was already there. And though they backed off on some of the satanic horrorcore shock value stuff over the years, they really created the blueprint for the more dark and aggressive strains of crunk and trap that eventually became mainstream. It's also fun to listen back and hear famous ideas in their infancy, like the opening bars of "Slob On My Knob" appearing over a year earlier on "Whatcha Do," and the first "yeah ho" loop popping up on "Mafia N****z," or the first versions of songs they kept doing sequels and remakes of for years like "Body Parts."

I didn't get into the various solo albums and affiliated groups and Underground compilations, with the exception of CrazyNDaLazDayz, which is essentially a Three 6 Mafia album that was credited to Tear Da Club Up Thugs in an attempt to capitalize on the popularity of the song "Tear Da Club Up." That album is pretty much canonically a Three 6 record, the group's then-core lineup basically doing their usual sound, it actually charted higher than any of their proper albums had at that point, and "Slob On My Knob" has become one of their most enduring songs, appearing on best-of comps like Most Known Hits. It's a top shelf album, too, "Triple Six Clubhouse" has one of my favorite mid-song beat switches in rap history, that and "When God Calls Time Out" are some of Lord Infamous's best solo tracks.

Some rap producers have repeatedly sampled different songs from the same artist, but I don't know if anybody's gotten more out of a particular artist's discography than Three 6 Mafia have gotten out of sampling Willie Hutch. Many rappers have sampled Hutch's soundtracks for The Mack and Foxy Brown, but there are so many great DJ Paul and Juicy J productions built on Hutch songs, including some of their most famous tracks like "Stay Fly" and "Int'l Players Anthem." So I included some lesser known Hutch-based tracks including "Testin' My Gangsta" (sampling "Theme Of The Mack," later used on the hit "Poppin' My Collar"), "Don't Cha Get Mad" (sampling "Sunshine Lady") and "Hood Star" (sampling "Color Her Sunshine," also used a year later on Rick Ross's "Rich Off Cocaine").

There's so many wildly entertaining songs on here, "Weak Azz Bitch" and "Mosh Pit" (featuring a "We Will Rock You" sample and Josey Scott of the Memphis nu metal band Saliva), the Bone Thugs dis that "Live By Yo Rep" that defined their early national profile, and maybe my favorite DJ Paul and Juicy J beat, "Mafia" from the Choices soundtrack (which, oddly, is labeled "Posse Song" on a lot of streaming services now).

One of the funny things about Three 6 Mafia is how the group kind of wound down out of attrition over the years: they had 6 members for much of the '90s, and then most of the members of the group kind of dropped out one by one from 2000 to 2006, until the group was pared down to the core duo of DJ Paul and Juicy J on their last album, Last 2 Walk. That album featured regrettable songs with Akon and Good Charlotte, and by the time Three 6 went inactive about a decade ago, they'd released a single featuring Tiesto, Flo Rida, Sean Kingston and were talking an album with collaborations with Slash and Rodney Jerkins, so it's probably for the best that the group went dormant. Juicy J had a good run as a sort of pop rap elder statesman and mentor to Wiz Khalifa, while DJ Paul returned to the group's underground roots with the spinoff group Da Mafia 6ix, and I'm glad those guys have decided to join forces again, only good can come of that.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 25, 2020 at 6:36 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.