Otherwise, “Fatty Girl” represents Ludacris’s worst quality, which so happens to also be his signature quality: the fact that he raps like a pervy uncle who loves ass almost as much as he loves puns. The fact that Murray coined the term “badonkadonk” on this song is a modest consolation prize. The very worst of these scratches is 2001’s “Fatty Girl,” produced by the Trackmasters and featuring LL Cool J and Keith Murray doing some of the most unfortunate late-career rapping you’ll ever hear (“More nuts on your face than graffiti on the wall,” LL raps). But I would argue that Ludacris’s singles catalog is filled with songs we’d all rather not revisit, despite how cool and ubiquitous a dozen of them were at one point. Imagine my horror in having just discovered the (apparently quite popular) Sum 41 remix of “Get Back” that strips the beat away completely and replaces it with all sorts of guitar wailing and record scratching that ain’t nobody got time for.Įvery popular musician scratches now and again, and it would be a disservice to an artist’s otherwise great work to harp on only their worst songs in an exceedingly ungrateful manner of nitpicking. Now, however, I permanently associate it with the image of Tom Cruise dancing in the closing credits of Tropic Thunder, which has transformed the song into kitsch for me. At least, that’s how I thought of the song back when it was still new. It’s maybe my fourth-favorite Ludacris record, on the strength of his gargantuan flow over that jangly, carnivalesque beat.
When’s the last time you heard “Get Back”? It isn’t even that old, in the grand scheme of Ludacris’s chart dominance he released the song in 2004. Ludacris Songs That Have Not Aged Well at All “Fatty Girl,” “Number One Spot,” “Get Back,” “Money Maker,” “Welcome to Atlanta,” “How Low,” “Ho,” “Blow It Out,” etc. So what is it about Ludacris’s music that seems to reek of a lapsed sell-by date? Is it the stench of pop crossover? The fact that his signature penchant for goofy over-enunciation inevitably sounds quaint now that so much Southern (and Southern-influenced) rap music is decidedly slurred and sung? Is it the misogyny (“Move Bitch,” “Ho”), which is too campy and blunt to blend in with the rest of pop culture in the 2010s? Really, it’s all of those qualities - plus the fact that his big, exuberant pop records put him sharply at odds with the now-dominant stylings of trap music - that have cursed Luda’s catalog with a pronounced obsolescence, save for a few blessed exceptions.īelow, we sort Luda’s straight-up unlistenable songs, the questionable stuff, and his undeniably great tracks in three, totally disproportionate categories.
He had a loud and shameless knack for Seussian riddles and vulgar puns that sounded like no other pop music that anyone, rappers or otherwise, had ever made. Luda made great records, too - at least, I now vaguely remember them for once having sounded pretty great. And T.I.’s hit singles from the same decade have all held up pretty well, too, including the full-tilt sellout records he did with Justin Timberlake. Nelly had a similar run of 2000s rap crossover hits, and I think most rap fans would stand by all of them. More than a decade later, though, Ludacris is perhaps the least fondly recalled hitmaker of his era. From 2000 through 2006, Ludacris was hip-hop’s senior ambassador to pop culture. Through his label Disturbing tha Peace’s relationship with College Park rap group Playaz Circle, he basically discovered 2 Chainz, who would advance DTP’s legacy into the 2010s. 1s (“Stand Up,” “Money Maker”), five platinum albums, and eight platinum singles. He dropped hits clean through the 2000s: seven top-10 records, including two no.
Why Atlanta Is the Undisputed Capital of Hip-hop Cultureįor a rapper generally regarded as a great singles artist, with no “classic” albums to his credit, his longevity was astounding.
0 kommentar(er)
