Tag: Three 6 Mafia

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Calling the Bluff Music

Lord Infamous, Founding Member of Three 6 Mafia, Dies (Update)

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Three 6 Mafia co-founding member Ricky “Lord Infamous” Dunigan was found dead at his mother’s home in Memphis Friday night (December 20th). The rapper was 40 years old.

According to DJ Paul, Lord Infamous’ younger brother and fellow co-founder of Three 6 Mafia, the Memphis-bred artist died in his sleep from a heart attack. He was found by his mother slumped over her kitchen table.

A couple years before his passing, Lord Infamous experienced some health problems. In 2010, he suffered from a heart attack and stroke.

As a member of Three 6 Mafia, Lord Infamous sold millions of records and toured the world. He was popular for his distinct tongue-twisting delivery and dark content.

Prior to his death, he had the chance to reunite with his fellow Mafia members, minus Juicy J, under the moniker “Da Mafia 6ix.” The collective dropped their project 6ix Commandments in November.

Check out the visual to Da Mafia 6ix’s “Where’s Da Bud” below, which is one of the last videos Lord Infamous appeared in before his death.

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Calling the Bluff Music

Da Mafia 6ix: My Review of 6ix Commandments

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The original members of Three 6 Mafia, excluding Juicy J, have reincarnated themselves as “Da Mafia 6ix” and released one of the best mixtapes I’ve heard this year thus far: 6ix Commandments.

The mixtape begins with the bass-filled, DJ Paul-produced “Go Hard,” which features Shady Records signee Yelawolf. It’s a perfect way to start the project off. Over the hard-hitting track, the group delivers solid verses in a style that’s reminiscent to the way they did in the 90s.

But that appears to only be the beginning of a well put-together installment.

The track is followed by the dope boy-satisfying “Beacon N Blender” and the trunk rattling “Been Had Hard,” which is one of my favorite cuts on the mixtape.

The group also revisits their classic track “Break Da Law” on 6ix Commandments. The initial track was released nearly two decades ago, and since then there’s been several versions created but this is hands down one of the best I’ve heard. The transitions in the beat, samples, and turntable scratches are a perfect match for the group’s dark, horrorcore-esque verses.

Another highlight on the mixtape is “Murder On My Mind.” The track features underground Florida sensation SpaceGhostPurrp, Hypnotize Minds affiliate JGrxxn, and legendary, tongue-twisters Krayzie Bone and Bizzy Bone. Similar to other tracks on the mixtape, it incorporates samples of sounds that were used on Triple 6 records during their heyday. But there’s a refreshing feel to it that brings it up to speed, perfect for 2013.

The group reconnects with past Hypnotize Minds comrade Lil’ Wyte on the mixtape as well with the tracks “Betta Pray” and “Remember.” And Memphis rap legends 8 ball and M.J.G. make appearances on “Yean High.” Around the 3:40 mark of the song, it breaks down and transitions into a totally different beat that is doper than the original track it started with. It gives off that vintage, 90s feel that Hypnotize Minds is so popular for.

The project culminates with “Body Parts,” a multi-featured, nine-minute long track similar to the HCP posse cuts that fans could look forward to on every album released by Hypnotize Minds. Juicy J, who’s been pursuing his solo career through Wiz Khalifa’s Taylor Gang imprint lately, unexpectedly starts the track off with a savage verse in a style that’s relatively-similar to his Juice Man days. Past HCP members Kingpin Skinny Pimp and La Chat also appear on “Body Parts,” along with Project Pat, Lil Wyte, Houston underground legend Point Blank, JGrxxn, and Kokane and Locodunit—who are both artists on DJ Paul’s Scale-A-Ton label.

All in all, 6ix Commandments, to me, is more than a solid effort from the group that had everybody screaming “Tear Da Club Up!” and sippin’ on sizzurp back in the day. It’s a reminder of who is responsible for that crunk, dark, and 808-ridden sound that’s been embraced by so many up-and-coming rap artists and producers these days. Gangsta Boo, Koopsta Knicca, Lord Infamous, Crunchy Black, and DJ Paul all contribute some of the best verses I’ve heard from them in recent years. And the mixtape’s production, primarily provided by DJ Paul, is pretty much flawless in comparison to the bulk of mixtapes that have entered my eardrums lately.

The only thing that doesn’t sit well with me is the promotion of satanism on the project. As a youngster, I was more impressionable and idolized the group, so the countless references of “666” and other satanic remarks were overlooked easily. Now an adult and more in-tune with my mind and spirit, it’s hard for me to act oblivious to things like that. But what do you expect from members once a part of a Platinum-selling group known as Three 6 Mafia?

Aside from disliking some of the content on 6ix Commandments, I think the mixtape is jammin’. And although your opinion may differ from mine, I think one thing that all listeners can agree to is that this is a solid release from the bulk of one of rap music’s most prolific, trendsetting, and prosperous groups. The mixtape is unquestionably worth checking out and serves as an awesome reestablishment for Three 6 Mafia Da Mafia 6ix.

Check out the video for Da Mafia 6ix’s “Go Hard” below.

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Music Music Features

Black and Wyte

With their much anticipated post-Oscar follow-up album Last 2 Walk delayed until December, Three 6 Mafia masterminds DJ Paul and Juicy J are keeping their Hypnotize Minds empire afloat with a couple of recent satellite releases: Lil Wyte’s The One and Only and Crunchy Black’s From Me to You, both produced by the Three 6 duo.

The One and Only is the third studio album from Wyte, the group’s pale-skinned, Frayser-bred protégé, and the first since 2004’s Phinally Phamous.

Wyte is actually Hypnotize Minds’ most polished MC, if not its most thoughtful lyricist. (That title would go to fellow “Bay Area” product Frayser Boy.) Lil Wyte spits with a sure, rapid flow, best heard here on “That’s What’s Up,” where he explodes at the outset: “I was born a good ole Southern boy with money up on my mind/Took a thought turned it into a rhyme/And now I do this shit all the time/Purple lean in my cup, I go with a blunt and dro up in my mouth/And I feel Pimp C. and Bun B. when say y’all need to quit hatin’ on the South.”

The regionalism on that verse locates Wyte’s anger and defiance in something specific and identifiable, but the rest of The One and Only doesn’t fare as well. It showcases an MC almost completely devoid of humor. Wyte’s celebrated patrons have been lightening up of late, but their charge seems to be overcompensating for his skin color by constantly proving how hard he is. By contrast, Houston rap honky Paul Wall gets to crack jokes, and a sense of humor was always one of Eminem’s greatest gifts.

The single “I Got Dat Candy” is a transparent attempt at piggy-backing on Wall-style auto anthems like “Drive Slow” and “Sittin’ Sideways.” Where Wall delights in his candy-coated conspicuous consumption, however, Wyte is compelled to turn even a boast about a Life Saver-colored car into a growling act of menace.

This relentless aggression wears you down when it never seems to be about anything except the artist’s (perceived) personal aggrievement. The production is solid but doesn’t exhibit the growth Three 6 has shown on their own recent releases. Paul and J are presumably saving any new “Stay Fly”s for their own forthcoming album. And though the vocal flow is more than solid, the sameness — in tone and content — gets tiresome.

If Lil Wyte is seemingly a valued member of the Hypnotize Minds camp — one whom Paul and J are grooming for a breakthrough — the same can’t be said for Crunchy Black. Long a sinister, mysterious sidekick in Three 6 proper, Crunchy Black was the first casualty of the group’s post-Oscar success, parting ways with the group due to a disagreement over finances and the direction of Crunchy’s solo career.

As such, Crunchy Black had little say over the release of From Me to You, which was apparently pulled together by Paul and J from recordings Crunchy made while still in the duo’s good graces. Crunchy’s own self-directed solo effort is expected in the coming year.

From Me to You is, like all Hypnotize Minds product, produced by Paul and J, its 11 new tracks filled out with five “screwed” remixes, which slow down tracks already on the album.

As an MC, Crunchy is either incompetent or an acquired-taste original, depending on your perspective, and I find myself coming around to the latter. Though long a Three 6 bit player, he’s responsible for the most artfully frightening moment in the Three 6 catalog with his unnervingly amoral sing-songy essay on “the money and power” to close out Project Pat’s single “Don’t Save Her.” If nothing else, Crunchy’s flow is, like Lil Wyte’s quick-lipped aggression, a worthy aural change of pace from the typical Three 6-style chanted vocals.

Unfortunately, there’s nothing on From Me to You that matches the gravity of Crunchy’s “Don’t Save Her” verse or even the colorfulness of his persona.

The opening “Do Da Crunchy Black” is, sadly, not really the gangsta-walk instructional the title suggests. I had visions of a local counterpart to “The Humpty Dance” until the song opened with a humorless call-and-response where groups of men and women hector each other. (“You can have that bitch/I don’t love that bitch,” etc. Not exactly as fun as getting busy in a Burger King bathroom.)

On the other hand, Crunchy Black does use the song as a vehicle to promise to “act a fool” on behalf of his hometown. Unfortunately, most of the city’s political class has beat him to it. Quit slipping in the game, Crunchy!

Nor is “Black on Black” the daring, envelope-pushing, critical self-examination the title suggests. It’s just a description — I think — of his ride. No candy colors for Crunchy, unless black licorice counts. At least he’s more original than Lil Wyte in this regard.

Elsewhere, From Me to You amounts to a depressingly limited vision of the boundaries of the artist’s self-described lifestyle, detailing his drug habits (“Three Different Kinds of Weed”), sexual proclivities (“Suck on the Straw”), relationships with women (“I play bitches for these riches/I’m tryin’ get whatever I can out these bitches,” from “I Play Bitches,” which seems to be a heartwarming tale of turning an abused woman into a prostitute), and other extracurricular activities (lashing out at “Snitchin’ Azz Bitches,” potentially with his “Twin 45s”).

Judging by these releases, maybe Three 6 really does need some new artists, as they themselves suggest on the “Outro” to The One and Only, or at least to hurry up with Last 2 Walk.

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Opinion Viewpoint

It’s a Rap

“Back in the days our parents used to take care of us/Look at ’em now/They even f*****’ scared of us.” — Notorious B.I.G., “Things Done Changed”

Let it never be forgotten that, in the beginning, hip-hop documented the disintegration of the community that created it. It did not cause this disintegration.

The messy dissolution of the civil rights movement. The crack epidemic. Government disinvestment. White flight. These are the things that ravaged urban communities across the country. In the beginning, so-called gangsta rap merely reported from the rubble.

But, over the past decade or so, it’s become impossible for even thoughtful fans of the music not to acknowledge how this relationship between culture and community has evolved. In recent years, too much hip-hop has at best exploited and at its too-frequent worst exacerbated the problems it once merely detailed.

Now topics such as gun violence, drug dealing, and the degradation of women have become rote accoutrements for many emerging rappers, akin to ripped jeans and frizzy hair for ’80s metal bands, albeit with a real-world downside for artists, listeners, and innocent bystanders alike.

As Memphis celebrates the 50th anniversary of Stax, it’s unbearably easy to see the juxtaposition between a music that served its community and one that largely preys on it. Things done changed.

“You scream obscenity/But it’s publicity that you want.” — Geto Boys, “We Can’t Be Stopped”

This is an important topic, but the reason it’s on the minds of Memphians is a little Don Imus and a lot Commercial Appeal columnist Wendi Thomas, who raised a familiar stink last month about local rappers Three 6 Mafia performing at the Beale Street Music Fest. This felt like a publicity ploy for the CA, one made worse by the ridiculous sidebar — a call to action against Memphis In May — that accompanied Thomas’ April 22nd column.

If the paper itself, as opposed to Thomas as a columnist, wants to confront this topic, perhaps it could start by grappling with the cultural content of the music in its arts coverage, something the paper’s music writers have long shied away from.

I find myself feeling very protective of hip-hop these days, but less in opposition to detractors such as Thomas — whose outrage I sympathize with but who, for my tastes, is too uninterested in aesthetics and too willing to conflate “lewd” with truly brutal — than to white defenders of the music whose arguments fit too neatly with what I suppose our president would call “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” These defenses range from naive comparisons of the most heinous rap lyrics to old-time rock-and-roll transgressions to condescending dismissals that are usually a variation on “What do you expect? It’s rap music.”

“I started thinking, how many souls hip-hop has affected/How many dead folks this art resurrected/How many nations this culture connected.” — Common, “The 6th Sense”

The notion that art merely reflects reality is a liberal truism. But it isn’t always true. I think the culture that people consume — especially young people — has a significant impact on their attitudes and behaviors. It’s an active, not just reactive, force. It matters. It’s important.

I love hip-hop: At its peak, it was every bit the rival of the Harlem Renaissance or the soul explosion of the ’60s as a cultural movement, and even now the cartoon idea of hip-hop that most non-fans (and too many alleged fans) carry around with them vastly understates the diversity and richness of the genre. But hip-hop has taken a damaging turn over the past decade, one whose negative impact on real lives is so momentous that it demands to be addressed.

So I’m glad this conversation is taking place regardless of how it got started. I just wish the debate would expand beyond the finger-wagging opponents, targeted artists, and profiteering apologists who dominate the discussion. The people who most need to engage in this dialogue are hip-hop fans themselves.

The largest audience for rap music now, according to most studies, is white — people who generally do not have their reality reflected by the music, if the music reflects any kind of reality at all. These listeners would be wise to investigate their own attraction to the music; their own investment in a cultural model — the black man as badass outlaw hero — that robs the subject of his humanity and feeds the submerged, in many cases unrecognized, battery of racial biases that white listeners bring to the music.

There’s a parasitic relationship here that listeners need to think — and talk — more about. That’s a start.

Chris Herrington is the Flyer‘s film and music editor.

Categories
News The Fly-By

The Cheat Sheet

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Three teenagers are charged with using a homemade bomb — apparently a bottle filled with gunpowder — to blow up a portable toilet at a construction site in Eads. They are nabbed when a neighbor’s video surveillance system catches them in the act. Police say parts of the toilet are blown more than 300 feet away. They don’t say what parts, and we don’t want to know.

Despite all the hype, Three 6 Mafia put on a rather clean show at the Memphis In May Music Fest. In fact, the only real problems came from the showbiz veterans. Iggy Pop launches into a typically profanity-laced show, and “a whole lotta shaking going on” takes place during Jerry Lee Lewis’ performance — but in front of the stage instead of on it, when rowdy festivalgoers start fighting.

Greg Cravens

A group of police officers admit they met after hours to arrange illegal shakedowns of drug dealers. The cops told fellow officers they were all going to choir practice. And everyone believed them? Well, the whole “stang” operation, as they called it, fell apart when one of the officers “sang” to federal prosecutors.

Zookeepers have artificially inseminated the panda Ya Ya and are now monitoring her every action to see if she’s pregnant. Apparently it’s hard to tell, so 24-hour video surveillance will help them determine any changes in what The Commercial Appeal describes as “her usual habits of bamboo eating, sleeping, and relieving herself.” Sounds like a nice life.

Acting MLGW president Rick Masson decides that former president Joseph Lee and former vice president Odell Horton won’t get severance pay. And taxpayers won’t have to pay Lee’s legal fees. That’s a welcome surprise. Call us jaded, but we had already prepared ourselves to see those things listed as line items on our next utility bill.

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News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall

Wendi’s City

Commercial Appeal columnist Wendi Thomas is to be commended for her noble attempt to rescue the city of Memphis from all the terrible plagues that have descended upon it. Thomas, turning her pen against hip-hop, the true source of all harm, has called for a boycott of North Memphis’ Three 6 Mafia. After all, it was DJ Paul who taught residents of the Hurt Village housing projects how to smoke crack back in 1983. It was his partner, Juicy J, who convinced all local banks to pull their branches from Memphis’ poor black neighborhoods while Three 6 alum Gangsta Boo worked a deal to bring in more predatory lenders. It should be pointed out that Three 6 had almost nothing to do with spreading the fetid garbage that litters the streets of South Memphis. That work was accomplished by Orange Mound’s DJ Squeaky with a little assistance from Al Kapone and II Black. According to an anonymous source, the master plan for filthifying Memphis was originally developed by Project Pat in the early ’90s, based on his firm conviction that if our once paradisiacal city becomes a truly shitty place to grow up in, then the next generation of rappers will bust positive-themed rhymes about Jesus, butterflies, and how to treat a lady.

Arkansas Follies

The following letter was printed in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on April 16th: “You may have noticed that March of this year was … the hottest March since the beginning of the last century. … As you know, Daylight Saving Time started almost a month early this year. You would think that members of Congress would have considered the warming effect that an extra hour of daylight would have on our climate.”

The letter, a bit of satire written by prankster attorney Connie M. Meskiman, accused liberals in Congress of trying to fool people into believing in global warming. It ran in the ADG‘s Letters to the Editor section under the presumably misspelled headline “Daylight Exacerbates Warning.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall

Hard Again

Three 6 Mafia isn’t getting a lot of love for their new MTV reality show Adventures in HollyHood. “I guess everyone has to have a moment like this, a real soul-destroying glimpse at a favorite artist losing the plot and making terrible decisions for even worse reasons,” Tom Breihan wrote in an article for The Village Voice titled “Let’s Never Mention the Three 6 Mafia Reality Show Again.”

“Since their shocking Oscar win last year, they’ve grabbed every crass mass-exposure opportunity that’s come their way, popping up on My Super Sweet 16 and Studio 60 and every other TV show that would have them,” Breihan continued on his way to declaring HollyHood a modern-day Beverly Hillbillies. “But it’s still tough for me to describe just how much despair and humiliation I felt watching last night’s premiere. … If you’ve ever admired anything about this group, do yourself a favor and forget that it exists.”

Writing for online site Blogcritics, Memphis media critic Richard Thompson was even less kind. “You’re just supposed to sit there jaw-dropped … and just listen to the music, [and] see these ‘gangstas’ sambos dance, go crazy and pimp themselves — for Hollywood.” Yowch!

Pau Wow

According to AOL Sports, Pau Gasol really, really, really wants out of Memphis. “What I’m not going to do is stay on a team that’s just in the hands of God,” Gasol told the Spanish news media. “I have to think about another direction and playing for another team.” Clearly Pau is under a fairly common delusion: He’s not the first person to mistake Jerry West for God.

Categories
Music Music Features

Back in the Game

In the ’60s, Martin Luther King Jr.’s battle cry was “Free at last”; that same decade, Bob Dylan famously proclaimed, “I shall be released.” For Memphis rapper Patrick “Project Pat” Houston, who just wrapped up three years in a federal penitentiary on a concealed-weapons charge, the words are just as potent and, perhaps, even more urgent: “Tell your old man I ain’t going back to jail,” he states on the opening track of Crook By Da Book: The Fed Story, his long-awaited, first post-prison release.

Listen to Crook By Da Book and you’ll quickly realize that Project Pat is hardly reformed — a self-described “North Memphis monster,” he’s as full of braggadocio as ever, writing songs called “Cocaine” and sagely rapping urban nursery rhymes like “This nigga got popped/With a whole lotta bullets in his head, in his head” — yet his newfound perspective impacts his songwriting.

Although “Purple,” with Beanie Sigel, is just an update on Three 6 Mafia’s “Sippin’ on Some Syrup,” “Raised in the Projects” is as celebratory as it is reflective, detailing Pat’s Horatio Alger story as set in modern-day Memphis. “Crack a Head” and “Tell Tell Tell (Stop Snitchin’),” which features verses from Lyfe Jennings, Young Jeezy, and Mr. Bigg, further outline the code of the streets, while the cartoonish “Good Googly Moogly,” “I Like,” and “Cause I’m a Playa,” with Pimp C, reinforce his image as a sexual satyr.

Like his New Orleans counterpart, the late, great Soulja Slim, Project Pat has indubitably lived the life he sings about. With his younger brother, Three 6 Mafia co-founder Jordan “Juicy J” Houston, and two other siblings, he was raised by a single mother in a North Memphis housing project where shootings and drug deals were just part of the landscape. Before he celebrated his 13th birthday, he was pulling capers; by the release date of his first album, 1999’s Ghetty Green, he’d served four years on two separate robbery charges.

But at the time of his last arrest, on January 19, 2001, when he was pulled over on New Allen Road with two pistols stored under the seat of his Cadillac Escalade, Project Pat was approaching bona-fide stardom. Ghetty Green and its follow-up, Murderers & Robbers, were valid underground hits; Mista Don’t Play: Everythangs Workin’, which was released in the interim between his arrest and his incarceration, went double-platinum, while singles like “Don’t Save Her” and “Chickenhead” made him a household name in the rap world.

Project Pat was released in late ’05, just in time to see his little brother win an Academy Award for “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” and to appear in Three 6’s video for “Poppin’ My Collar.” He spent several months in a halfway house and worked at a temp agency before being deemed sufficiently rehabilitated by his parole officer. In magazines ranging from Murder Dog to DonDiva, he began formulating the groundwork for his comeback, and, as soon as he could, he reentered the recording studio.

The question is, now that Project Pat has resumed talking the talk, will he continue to walk the walk? Judging by the way they’ve parlayed their popularity into celebrity appearances on TV shows such as The Simple Life, Entourage, and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Juicy J and his Three 6 compatriot DJ Paul have learned how to differentiate their roles as Hollywood entertainers from their hardcore street personas, unlike other rappers such as the foolhardy C-Murder, who was sentenced to life in prison after shooting someone in a Louisiana nightclub three years ago.

Life does have a tendency to imitate art, but according to recent interviews, Project Pat’s eager to put his past behind him — he’s just determined to do it on his own terms, not because of a court-ordered sanction. “It could all end while you’re trying to get your buck,” he soberly advises his fans on “How It Goes in the Gutta,” a grim guide to the underbelly of the city that most of us seldom see.

“Letter from Birmingham Jail” it’s not, but Crook By Da Book sure sounds good.

Where Are They Now?

An update on other onetime members of the Three 6 Mafia empire.

For many local rappers, Three 6 Mafia’s Hypnotize Minds Posse has been both a boon and the bane of their existence. Co-founder Lord Infamous recently resurfaced on local radio promoting a comeback, while former cohort Koopsta Knicca has used the local nightly news as a platform to launch business allegations against DJ Paul and Juicy J. Mr. Del, who left the group after becoming a Christian, released The Future on Holy South Records last year. Gangsta Boo, the first female member of the posse, currently splits her time between Memphis and Atlanta. Her replacement, La Chat, who made her reputation via her ferocious put-downs on Project Pat’s “Chickenhead,” dropped a new album, Bad Influence, last week. Meanwhile, Crunchy Black, the last rapper to get divorced from the group, celebrated the release of his own solo album, Crunchtime, at the Gibson Music Showcase last month.