Pimp C
Pimpalation
Rap-A-Lot
2006
C+



joy is a rarely summoned emotion in rap. And Pimp C, one-half of South Texas gutter-sunset bards UGK, isn’t exactly a proponent of unfettered bliss. Even when he wore a purple varsity jacket emblazoned with “Drank University” in his partner Bun-B’s “Get Throwed” music video, he tempered his South Texas swagger with slurred threats. Like few others of his talent, though, Pimp C has the street resume to back up his grizzled gangster dandy act.

Take his recent incarceration, for instance. After falling behind in his community service for a prior gun charge, Pimp went to jail for real. Only released from the pen late last year, Pimp C charges out of his cell with pockets stuffed with comrades (Trae, Chamillionaire, and Slim Thug all punch their respective clocks in guest appearances) and handfuls of recycled Ridin’ Dirty tropes: bitches can’t be trusted, hi-hats are to be abused, and work simply has to keep moving. At its best, Pimpalation, his second solo album and first post-incarceration disc, smells like a stanky great uncle to refined, label-shaped hunks of dank—Trill, Thug Matrimony, Urban Legend. Pimp C never raps alone, each song is Mason-Dixon-meeting—an eager Jody Breeze splitting time with Jazzie Pha, a reclusive Chamillionaire divvying up bars with Trae.

Pimpalation has too many boring stretches to be truly memorable, yet too many serpentine corner narratives—“Rock 4 Rock” and its caustic Geto Boys (!) turns—to be disposable. Suddenly discerning, Pimp C beseeches rappers to “turn that monkey-ass record off / You embarrassin’ us.” The quiet pangs of responsibility don’t crop up often, if only because Pimpalation mostly bullies with a loose limbed, stringy sense of energy.

Pimp C’s rehashed (about half of the album’s hooks are jacked from Ridin’ Dirty verses) and good-natured taunts (“I see ya’ lips quivering but I don’t hear nothin’”) struggle against the album’s pithy stretches—the garbled “The Honey” to a grinding “Get Ya Mind Right.” But as soon as the album gets any force behind it, it’s sundered by cranky, acrid sex-jams (“Cheat on Ya Man”) or drawn out block parties.

No one expects Pimp to craft a truly lasting solo disc—eyes are looking to 2007 and the reported UGK reunion album. Pimpalation only really gives Pimp C one solo playground anyway. It’s there, on the Tom Petty-sampling “Free,” that we see him preaching the most important universal truth he’s learned thus far: “But I still don't believe the pen is no place for no man!”



Reviewed by: Evan McGarvey
Reviewed on: 2006-09-19
Comments (0)

 
Today on Stylus
Reviews
October 31st, 2007
Features
October 31st, 2007
Recently on Stylus
Reviews
October 30th, 2007
October 29th, 2007
Features
October 30th, 2007
October 29th, 2007
Recent Music Reviews
Recent Movie Reviews