December 04, 2007 @ 2:43 pm

Kingdom Come

by: Chris Ryan

On the cusp of UGK's last album, Underground Kingz, CHRIS RYAN met with the Houston hip hop powerhouses. From VIBE's February 2007 issue. RIP Pimp C.

UGK photographed by Nicolas Wagner for VIBE on November 9, 2006, at NoHo Studios in NYC.

Fabolous' eyes are lit up like a Christmas tree.

Though the anonymously dressed man standing in his dressing room doorway doesn't really notice, Fab is suffering from a severe case of fandom.

"Congratulations!" Fab says a little awkwardly, apropos of nothing in particular.

"Thanks, family," replies Chad "Pimp C" Butler - impossibly muted, impossibly cool - before strolling off just as quietly.

UGK, photographed by Nicola­s Wagner for VIBE on November 9, 2006, at NoHo Studios in NYC.

Everyone is gathered at CBS Studios in New York to tape a special episode of BET's 106 & Park. It's called 106 & Jay: The Hova Takeover, and it's shaping up to be yet another tribute to the career of Shawn Carter, this time to coincide with his "unretirement" album, Kingdom Come (Def Jam). Like Jay-Z, UGK, consisting of Pimp C and Bernard "Bun B" Freeman, also has a comeback album, Underground Kingz (Jive), releasing at the end of February. It's not just the first true UGK album since 2001's Dirty Money (Jive), it's the first real project - The Sweet James Jones Stories and Pimpalation (both Rap-A-Lot) aside - Pimp C has made since his release from Walls Unit in Huntsville, Texas, over a year ago. The chances, though, of a This Is Your Life homage for UGK, Southern rap pioneers more respected than purchased, are slim. That said, the duo, having flown in from Houston for the occasion, will do its best, sales-wise and acclaim-wise, with this album.

When they arrive to rehearse their performance of Jay-Z's 1999 "Big Pimpin'," the song that put them on the national radar, Jay-Z and Memphis Bleek are onstage, taking "I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me)" out for a walk. It's a rare experience to see an artist like Jay practicing his craft in such an informal fashion, but the run-through is trumped by UGK's arrival. Excitement ripples through the room, and faces turn away from the stage to take in the spectacle of visiting, reunited royalty. Both Nas and Pharrell, whose attention h­ad been locked on Jay, step away for an audience with UGK. For maybe the only time all night, all eyes are not on Hov.


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Being considered ahead­ of one's time is o­ften a death sentence for an artist's career. It's an indicator that you're a pioneer and a relic at the same time. UGK is the exception that proves this rule. Somehow Pimp and Bun, over the course of a nearly twenty-year career, have had a profound influence on the generation that followed them while still being relevant in the present moment.

But it takes work. In the downtime between rehearsal and performance, amid calls for BlackBerry chargers and painstaking diamond-studded-neckpiece inspections swirling around him, Pimp C, 33, is trying to tell a story. Mac PowerBook open, he displays a harvest of recordings, all in various stages of being mixed and mastered into the final sequence of UGK's ambitious new double album.

Kingz is a kind of musical amusement park, with thrills for all comers. There are tracks with the classic UGK sound, most notably "Live This Life" - five-plus minutes of hustler-on-the-edge-of-a-nervous-breakdown. Bun says he can barely listen to it, calling it "too sad." It's Pimp's favorite track. The album also features songs that make a case for UGK's future: the duo assuredly tackles the Swizz Beatz–produced, air-horn-laden fire hazard "Hit the Block." "2 Kind of Bitches" finds the Port Arthur, Texas, stalwarts looking far beyond their zip code, pairing with UK grime phenom and longtime UGK fan Dizzee Rascal.

The album plays to the strengths of Bun, a master of the subtleties of emceeing - complex rhyme patterns, varying internal rhythms and cadences - and Pimp, a swaggering wordsmith who's also given the group its widely imitated, laconic, strolling Texas sound. But both of them treat Kingz like Pimp's opus. "It's a tribute," says Bun, 33, long the group's ambassador and public voice, "to Pimp's talents as a producer, an engineer, a rapper, and his ability to orchestrate something on this level."

"I want to give people something to actually hold," Pimp says. "Nothing sticks anymore. You cop a mixtape, you forget about it. This is something to spend time with. I'm trying to bring back the feeling that an album is something you commit to, not just some shit you have for a minute."

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After meeting in high school, UGK made their debut in 1988, ­hip hop's belle epoque, with the independently released The Southern Way (Big Tyme). Though they hailed from the Gulf town of Port Arthur, Texas, the duo made Houston their base of operations. For several years after their first album, they remained a regional phenomenon, accruing devoted fans and laying the groundwork for the then fledgling Houston hip hop scene. In 1992, Jive Records signed UGK to a five-album deal and released the raw, fresh-off-the-block Too Hard Too Swallow. 

After that came 1994's Super Tight, followed by 1996's Ridin' Dirty, a landmark of hardcore rap, a turning point in the history of Southern hip hop, and a lasting testament to the duo's creative vision. Over signature Pimp C productions, the duo depicted a world in which surface-level affection for material things - crisp clothes and kitted-out cars - barely masked a reality haunted by death and depression. This is what UGK sounds like, and it's the blueprint from which they, and much of the rest of Houston, have been working ever since. 

Following the success of the gold-selling Ridin', Bun and Pimp's star continued to climb. 2000 was a banner year for them, as they appeared on both Jay-Z's "Big Pimpin'" and the Three 6 Mafia hit "Sippin' on Some Syrup." But 2001's Dirty Money, a respectable album that suffered due to problems at the label, failed to capitalize on the wave of popularity. And then, in January 2002, Pimp was jailed for violating the community service terms of his parole -"A technicality," he says - from a 2000 aggravated assault conviction for flashing a gun during a disagreement at a mall with a woman. He'll remain on parole until December 2009.

It was a tough time to be away from the scene he helped cultivate. Houston became a rap powerhouse, with new stars like Paul Wall, Chamillionaire, and Slim Thug, and as hip hop began to skew increasingly Southern, UGK became scene forefathers. Forced to go it alone, Bun B became an in-demand solo act. There was 2005's gold-certified Trill (Rap-A-Lot), and since 2002, he's been featured as a guest on over a hundred records - including Beyonce's VH1-friendly "Check on It," Young Jeezy's street anthem "Over Here," and Webbie's surprise hit "Gimme That." Bun also turned "Free Pimp C" into a rallying cry, keeping his partner's name alive in almost every rhyme. 

But though Bun used his charm and skill to stay relevant, the scene was shifting around him. Listening to Ridin' Dirty and Dirty Money now, the stark contrast between UGK's dark, reflective records and the comparatively stress-free sounds of contemporary Houston artists is evident. While they could never be accused of lacking due respect to UGK, the platinum-selling Wall and Jones have translated much of UGK's musical and lyrical vocabulary into a palatable, aspirational sound - rich with candy paint and platinum grills but lacking UGK's pathos, the pain behind the shine. 

For Bun, the difference is generational. "I'm a child of Chuck D.," he says. "And Chuck D. taught me, 'Quit smiling. We ain't won shit yet.'"

Winning, though, is very much on the group's mind as they reenter the public consciousness. "You want to be able to control how you're remembered," Bun says, speaking about the possibility of re-signing with Jive - Kingz is the last album they owe the label - with an eye toward most every artist's dream of owning the masters of their recordings. In the meanwhile, they act as both teachers - éminences grises of emotionally profound hustler theater - and as living, breathing competitors, still skilled and vital. 

That's certainly clear on Kingz' "Cocaine," which features hustler-rapper Rick Ross. It's about the title subject, to be sure, but Bun and Pimp engage the subject matter with an uncommon depth of feeling. Bun charts the drug's social history, highlighting society's shifting perception of its use. Pimp's verse is equally courageous, addressing not only the glories of selling cocaine, but also the consequences of his own use of the drug - a concept absent from the worldviews of most onetime alpha-hustlers.

"Nobody wants to be vulnerable anymore," Pimp says of the song. "Rappers don't want to seem weak. But that's a disservice to your audience. You cheat them. If you show all the sides of something, then there's something there for them to connect to. They can see themselves in your music. I did that shit - it fucked me up. You know, it's a popular drug [laughs]! But I wasn't ashamed. You shouldn't do anything you're ashamed of. Anything you hide is something you shouldn't be doing."

Ridding his life of cocaine was an act of willpower from a man whose willpower has never been absent, even when he was behind bars. "There are all types of drugs in jail," he says. "When I was in state prison, there were people cutting up lines in my own cell. But when I decided I didn't want to get high anymore, that was it. I don't do any drugs now. I don't need them."


Back at CBS Studios, UGK is set to challenge the notion that there are no second acts in American life. They have to get on stage and perform a song from seven years ago, in effect introducing themselves to the teenagers populating the live studio audience that's there to hysterically receive Jay-Z's hit parade.

During the filming, Jay completes the first verse of "Big Pimpin'" without a hitch. But when Bun and Pimp hit the stage, they don't quite register with the crowd. Undeterred, UGK make their case, jabbing through the song, delivering their parts with blinding speed and acrobatic dexterity. Maybe there's a delay in recognizing the two wide-bodied, older-than-usual rappers giving Jay a run for his money. Maybe the song's snake-charming flutes are successfully entrancing the crowd. Whatever the case, by song's end, the crowd's screaming becomes uniform. The kids aren't just howling for Jay-Z anymore, and they no longer need to shout "Free Pimp C."

The kids chant the letters "U-G-K." And for just a moment, this is Bun and Pimp's life.

Article tags: Bun B, Fabolous, Jay-Z, Pimp C, UGK 

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