an opportunity to talk about his rags to riches story (“I just wanna go to the Grammys / I don’t even care if I win”), but works even better for Bubba because half the stuff drops out for his muted flow before building it all back up. More conceptual is Timba’s other track, “Get on Dis Motorcycle”, with the great Bubba Sparxxx: it shimmers and jingles and turns kids’ voices into percussive hooks and keeps adding layers even when there’s no more room on the track. Timbaland builds a clippy-cloppy loosey-goosey funk track for Missy’s guest shot on the sexy “Break Me Off” - I mean, it doesn’t sound like they were actually in the same room or anything, but it’s still pretty goofy great anyway. It’s like Missy Elliott’s “Gossip Folks”, except less dancey and more introspective.īut we still get the big-namers coming around. He’s got a lot of more obscure friends that come up with some pretty dope backups: T&J Productions rock “Boy’s Bathroom” with a spazzy fast handclap pogo beat someone named Honky Kong turns the guitar and horn hooks from Chicago’s “25 or 6 to 4” into a menacing “What You Know About It” (man I hope this hits radio, it’s the hardest thing I’ve heard in a long time) Focus builds “Roll Off” out of wind chimes and shuffling almost-drums so that Petey can rap over it about how he needs to not listen when other people talk shit about him, “be the bigger man / Let it roll off”. But these are the only two songs where he’s in charge of the beats. “Stick ‘Em Up” is amazing, true minimalist funk with a tapping cowbell percussion track and some black college marching band horns and not much else, with Pablo talking about how his gun “is the only homeboy I call”. I’m really impressed with Petey Pablo’s production skills on this record. And he doesn’t stop there he reps for “Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese,” he reps for “the white ones and the black ones”… he’s the rap savior we’ve all been waiting for! There are just seven times as many hooks as anywhere else in the world-and when the metal guitar-synths blast in out of nowhere for the last verse, backing up his claims with the holy fire of rock: “I rep for the prisons / I rep for the block / All my nine-to-fivers out there workin’ a job. It’s country as HELL, with banjo plucks interspersed among the synths that sound like accordions and a beat-box section that kind of sounds like a dude playing the spoons except with his mouth, and Petey talking about how you shouldn’t mess with him even though he’s been taking time off to enjoy his wealth, and a whole gang of voices yelling “NORTH CAROLINA” on the chorus. Not only is Petey dropping his state of origin every chance he gets, it also forms the foundation of my favorite track on this record, the self-produced “Let’s Roc”. So score one for the dude from North Carolina. Somehow “Freek-A-Leek” manages to be funky and fun without devolving into hardcore sexism. But he’s not interested in any but a willing partner, and he actually asks her in the course of the song what she wants: “It’s time to give her hers” is not a sentiment we’ve really heard a lot of in crunk.
Sure, he’s looking for someone to be freaky with, even on a booty call his stated favorite proportions are 24″-34″-46″, which I’ve spent hours thinking about and have concluded that I’m not sure it’s really possible. Penelope Magnet’s cooing “How you like it daddy?” is classic Lil Jon’s seven-note synth is classicker (and his yelling is approaching iconic status) Petey’s last interjection is my favorite line in any song in any genre this year: “Now I gotta give a shout-out to Seagram’s Gin, ’cause I drink it, and ’cause they’re payin’ me for it!”īut what really makes “Freek-A-Leek” special, what elevates it over all the other crunk sexxxrhymes of the last couple of years, is the relative gentleness of his approach. His kick-ass single “Freek-A-Leek” is top-tenning it big-time, courtesy of its Lil Jon beat and its general dirty-minded-ness and its classic chorus featuring a list of ladies that Petey is down with: “Shamika, Keisha, Tara, Shonda, Sabrina,” etc., the litany will be repeated at many summer parties. Petey Pablo is riding the crunk wave right now.
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