UGK - Ridin’ Dirty Music Album Reviews

Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today, we revisit Pimp C and Bun B’s 1996 masterpiece about a weekend in Houston that became a blueprint for soulful Southern rap. 

On December 4, 1995, Pimp C and DJ Screw sat in the parking lot of a Houston convenience store and began plotting for the night. After an uneasy first encounter at a local record store years prior, they’d become fast friends. Pimp, one half of the duo Underground Kingz, was the producer known for wild boasts and determination. Screw’s sound—a slowed-down drag of the world to a hallucinogenic crawl—engulfed the city.
The night was supposed to be about bullshittin’—slide to a neighborhood joint called Carrington’s with Lil’ Keke, a member of Screw’s famed Screwed Up Click outfit, party, and then record a version of a song Pimp had been working on. Inside the car, Pimp was bemused about life. Weeks prior, he was in Chicago on behalf of Jive Records, recording material for Underground Kingz’ then-untitled third album. None of it sounded good enough to compare to the group’s previous effort, 1994’s Super Tight. Even his mother, UGK’s manager Mama Wes, called the demos “boo-boo.”

But the two never made it to the studio to record. They never made it past Carrington’s. Instead, the two stopped to pick up styrofoam cups and Swisher Sweets to further activate the night. Screw and Pimp parked next to an undercover police officer outside of a convenience store neighboring Carrington’s. As the cop smelled the weed smoke in the air, he radioed for backup. Within moments, Pimp C and DJ Screw were in handcuffs and headed to the Harris County Jail. They bonded out two days later.

The arrest—coupled with a tragic house fire in Dallas four days later, claiming the lives of four children, including the son of UGK hypeman Bo-Bo Luchiano—became the basis for “One Day,” the peak and tone-setter of 1996’s Ridin’ Dirty. Pimp lamented on the child’s death as if it were his own son, questioning God with the fearlessness of a sinner (“Why you let these killas live and take my homeboy son away?”)

The base of Ridin’ Dirty aligns with the ethos of UGK as a whole: perseverance in the face of a mountain of unfortunate circumstances. At first, “One Day” didn’t even belong to UGK. The rumbling guitars that lurch like impending sorrow from the Isley Brothers’ “Ain’t I Been Good To You”—and Ronnie Spencer’s near-perfect Ronald Isley impression —was initially in the possession of Mr. 3-2, a Houston stalwart and Rap-A-Lot Records artist known city-wide. Before Snoop Dogg uttered, “We don’t love these hoes,” he learned it from 3-2. Before Roc-A-Fella crafted a posse cut in “1-900-Hustler” to highlight Freeway on The Dynasty: Roc La Familia, it belonged to 3-2 and Big Mike of the Convicts in “1-900-Dial-A-Crook.”

UGK’s other half, Bun B, was hesitant to rhyme over “One Day,” seeing that the song initially belonged to 3-2, and rhyming over a dirge of production like “One Day” disrupted the bouncy, even-keeled production UGK was known for. But, compelled by the belief that UGK needed a song that people felt, Bun relented and recorded a verse. He mourns over a friend lost to a “funky ass dice game” and sneers that the prison-industrial complex was nothing more than an endless cycle for Black men. 3-2 barely even raps: His voice contorts into a sullen waltz that moves between understanding the bleakness of his reality and seeking protection while navigating crack transactions and potential death. He considered himself a wayward soul since his mom kicked him out; he wanted a proper burial in his neighborhood right next to the gas station.

“As far as Pimp and I are concerned, it’s the first real UGK album,” Bun would later tell journalist Sama’an Ashrawi on his The Nostalgia Mixtape podcast. “Ridin’ Dirty is, in our mind, the first actual complete thought of UGK as far as an album is concerned.” For four years and across two prior albums, the group fought with their label, Jive Records, and had bruises to show for it. There was a disconnect; UGK would rather the label send them studio equipment to record Ridin’ Dirty as opposed to a standard monetary advance. Dating back to their debut album, Too Hard To Swallow, UGK knew Jive for shady, underhanded business. The label reproduced songs behind Pimp’s back in order to avoid paying to clear samples. Grandiose album concepts were scrapped due to the label, once again, being fiscally conservative. Even when it came time for Ridin’ Dirty, Jive refused to make a video for either of the two proposed singles, “One Day” and “Fuck My Car,” or even ship them for radio airplay. By the time UGK shot a video for “Wood Wheel,” a single from the Rap-A-Lot compilation album RNDS in 1999, it had been five years since their last video for “It’s Supposed To Bubble.”

When Bun and Pimp first met KRS-One at the label’s New York offices in 1992, they came with a point to prove. KRS, long a protector of what hip-hop truly meant, felt that if the music wasn’t made within New York’s five boroughs, it wasn’t rap. And UGK, according to KRS, was country rap. Now, they were labelmates. Instead of a gracious embrace, UGK were met by a warning from KRS that came too late: Don’t sign to Jive. “We were happy for about 15 minutes and then … reality set in,” Bun would later tell journalist Matt Sonzala. “We never even had the chance to be disillusioned about having a record deal. We regretted it right after signing.” UGK weren’t commercial darlings, they were fixated squarely on making music for the people. But by sheer word of mouth, Ridin’ Dirty sold over 850,000 copies, earning UGK their first and only gold plaque. It gave the South, a region already galvanized by André 3000 at the 1995 Source Awards, a blueprint for how a soulful rap album could sound and feel.

The situation with Jive, the storm of emotion and strife internally affecting the group, would manifest itself into a moment of show and prove for UGK. No producer in the South felt more proudly about his creations than Pimp. The son of a trumpet player who eventually learned piano by ear, he went from performing in New York with his high school choir to using the Meters’ guitarist Leo Nocentelli as a session musician. Sampling records, from the Stax sound of Isaac Hayes to the psychedelic crawl of Bootsy Collins, from the groove of the Fatback Band to Wes Montgomery’s virtuoso guitar work, was as mutually important as the reality UGK conveyed in raps. After hearing Dr. Dre master the cinematic style of music production for N.W.A, it influenced Pimp to make every sound feel like a score to a film.

After the failed Chicago sessions at Jive’s Battery Studios, Pimp and Bun felt they needed to be home in order to fully embrace what Ridin’ Dirty was supposed to be. At the same time, the rush of creativity emanating from DJ Screw’s house made “home” feel like the center of the universe. In Screw, Pimp and Bun found a kindred spirit. UGK already spoke for Houston culture, crushing small aspects in car culture and laced cigarettes for their 1994 album Super Tight. The music had to align with the world they inhabited. Chapter 182: Ridin’ Dirty—a loose and free-wheeling tape of freestyles was the precursor to the album. Although Houston had wholesalers and marketplaces to pick up music, picking up Screw tapes was an entirely different journey. One had to personally drive to Screw’s house on the Southside of town, wait for his gate to be buzzed open around 7 p.m. and get their music. Pimp and Bun became further immortalized and endeared to Houston’s underground music culture rattling off rhymes about losing Eazy-E to AIDS, puffing their chests out with thick bravado, and echoing the slang that was wholly Houston and Southeast, Texas: slabs, barre, drank, grills, throwin’ up the deuce, comin’ dine, etc. Jive couldn’t understand the purpose of Screw music. As a middle finger to the label, the album version of Ridin’ Dirty is the glossiest version of a Screw tape ever imagined; a muggy and rich malaise of soul and everyman narratives.

A weekend in Houston became the underlying concept for Ridin’ Dirty. Pimp and Bun, seeing themselves already as established characters, worked around creations of partying, bombast, and reflection. The weight of “One Day” is guilt-ridden and remorseful. Inside the rolling thump of “Diamonds & Wood,” a lift from Bootsy Collins’ “Munchies For Your Love,” Pimp allowed his real-life drama with the mother of his son, Chad Butler II, to play out (“All we do now is fuck and fight”) and detail the frustration of family dynamics and faceless enemies. “I stopped smokin’ with them haters back in ’94,” he bluntly states. “Niggas talk a lot of shit in a safe place, I know cause he can’t look me eye-to-eye when he in my face.”

It was never about outright wordplay with Pimp—pointed directness with clarity was his calling as a rapper. He left his complexity for his production. Armed with N.O. Joe, the New Orleans-born producer who had helmed much of the bleak psychodrama of Scarface’s The Diary, Pimp dug deeper in his already chaotic mind to live up to the likes of Hayes and Curtis Mayfield. Smoke D, a UGK affiliate serving time in a Mississippi prison for manslaughter, operates as the album’s unsuspecting guide, offering comedy and reality in various interludes through jailhouse recordings. Bumpy funk transitions were layered underneath flippant guitar work for “Pinky Ring,” horror style piano stabs underscore the late-night creep of “3 In The Mornin.” Mellow guitar licks and drums pump through “Touched” where Bun indirectly gifts JAY-Z the basis for a story he’d use later (“Now once upon a time not too long ago...”). The mutated bassline of Detroit funk band the Brides of Funkenstein’s “Smoke Signals” was shifted around for “Murder,” morphing the track into the most sinister, yet defiant UGK record of all.

“I’m still Pimp C bitch, so what the fuck is up?” Pimp would declare on “Murder.” It’s tough, a merciless downhill jaunt of chaos where no one was safe. Pimp’s verse, rooted in the idea of bringing the outside world to UGK’s close proximity, is among the all-time hardest opening verses in rap. Discussions of cocaine prices and slinging dope quickly destroyed the myth that the group were just characters you heard on CD or cassette. Bun and Pimp didn’t want to exude the fantasy of mafioso kingpins in the vein of JAY-Z, Raekwon, or The Notorious B.I.G. Songs like “Cocaine in the Back of the Ride” and “Pocket Full of Stones” granted humanity and consequence to a trade New York made feel flamboyant; an elaborate con.

When Pro Tools evolved in the mid-1990s, it allowed artists to take a short cut in the studio and punch in vocals to help speed up the recording process. Ridin’ Dirty is the first album in hip-hop to ever use it, according to Bun. While recording his “Murder” verse with N.O. Joe, Bun woke up from sitting at the control panel, exhausted from a prior night of partying. With the reel still going, he began building a world with easy identifiers (“Well it’s Bun B bitch, and I’m the king of movin’ chickens”) and continued as if he were one man going up against 15 years worth of criticism about the South not having rappers. For nearly two minutes, Bun displays the nimbleness he picked up from ciphers with 3-2 and Chapter 182: double entendres and metered stacking of one-liners and demolishing everything within sight. He found pockets like this often, namely for “They Down With Us,” a 2000 romp with Scarface on top of Boogie Down Productions’ “I’m Still #1.” When he was done with the verse, Bun exited the booth and fell asleep; an implausible verse finished in one take.

Ridin’ Dirty never comes back to the ridiculous highs of its first two songs, or the ruminative “Diamonds & Wood” or “Hi-Life.” But its heart remains central to what UGK means as a whole, to a region once cast aside and now is at the forefront. They wouldn’t have a chance to deliver a proper follow-up until 11 years later due to Pimp C spending a large bulk of his final years in prison. They also never truly got the recognition they richly deserved from their label, and were too stubborn to allow industry politics to swallow them whole. Anger from watching a label attempt to sabotage and hijack their identity and regional disrespect were the anchors of UGK’s greatest work, and only they could give the levity it needed.
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About Wanni Arachchige Udara Madusanka Perera

Hey, I'm Perera! I will try to give you technology reviews(mobile,gadgets,smart watch & other technology things), Automobiles, News and entertainment for built up your knowledge.
UGK - Ridin’ Dirty Music Album Reviews UGK - Ridin’ Dirty Music Album Reviews Reviewed by Wanni Arachchige Udara Madusanka Perera on August 16, 2020 Rating: 5

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