Composer: UGK
Conductor: UGK
Label: Jive
Release Date: 2009-04-08
Rated: NONE
Genre: Recording
Released more than a year after Pimp C was found dead in a West Hollywood hotel, hit-and-miss UGK 4 Life, the duo’s probable last act, isn’t a masterpiece, but it’s a fitting conclusion. First proper song “Still on the Grind” reiterates what Pimp C’s “back from the dead” intro made explicit. The fuzzed-out guitars and Raheem DeVaughn’s syrupy vocals are less raw than UGK’s earliest work, but Bun and Pimp are still all business. “Purse Come First” muddles a standard hook line — “dick is a commodity, bitch” — with Pimp C’s five-percenter conspiracies and Bun B’s decrying of The Da Vinci Code. Even Snoop Dog and a killer futuristic funk can’t make up for the creepy misogyny in “Steal Your Mind,” and the fetishist’s “don’t shave it” plea in “Harry Asshole” is just plain wrong. “Hard as Hell” commits the most heinous Auto-Tune offense yet: helping Akon sing about his raging boner. Closer “Da Game Been Good to Me,” equally smooth and vicious, makes a better denouement, even if the boast, coming from a man who watched his career take off from inside a jail cell and died four months after dropping his best-selling album to date, is too hard to swallow.
