#43 - "Royal Flush"
Big Boi featuring Raekwon & Andre 3000 {2008}
Overall score: 7.653
# 10s: 0 -- Highest score: 9 {Kool_Aid_King, Jameson Teqkilla, MP2K, chilluminati, Kang.}
Lowest score: 4 {jqnetto [this kid is hard to please]}
Your host's score: ^^
Our first bonus track says goodbye, and tbh not the one I would've hoped it to be. A one-off originally intended for Big Boi's solo album Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty, the track reunites him with both his Kast partner Andre and Wu-Kang-Clan one-upper Raekwon THA GOD, fresh off of wiping the floor with the competition on their 1998 collab "Skew It on the Bar-B." This track is so much fun, I want to say Rae takes the trophy here again just cause he sounds so ALIVE doing his thing on it, but at the same time Andre kinda comes out the dark and murders them all with an extended verse. All of this is over a delicious Isley Bros sample that makes everything float along with a conversational bounce. Their chances of a timely comeback didn't die for this.
Choice lyrical nugget: "Crack and I have a lot in common / We both come up in the 80's and we keep that bass pumping / That's a nega-tive comparison, embarrassing / Unfortunate that if you come up fortunate the streets consider you lame / Ha, I thought the name of the game was to have a better life / I guess it ain't. What a shame"
Soothing us back into the fray is this melodic outro-lude to the Southernplayalistic album. This track provides a nice Player's Ball redux soundscape while lyrically summing up so many of the positive things that defined their world at time of recording. It's a nice melodic accompaniment to the Dre&Snoop-lite that the original served. For the most part the people who enjoyed "Player's Ball" enjoyed its reprise and vice versa, but nonetheless interesting that this outlasted a few of the all-the-way fleshed-out album tracks.
Choice lyrical nugget: "To all you players and you pimps smoke out and have a ball / And if your ho is actin crazy -- put her on the wall / Now now now everybody's dancing and just feeling right / I see all of you players got yourselves laid in on ice / I hope when all y'all dance is over, can I get onn, yeah / My kids'll have a story, that still be told, whoooa, about"
(about the only actual NEW lyrical nugget here but it's a good 1)
OMG! I didn't realize until now, but looks like the bookends of Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik are finally meeting up. Unlike the outro which gently escorts us away from the intensity of the world we've just spent an hour inside, "Myintrotoletuknow" starts us off with a BANG! It's not technically the first song on the album after "Peaches (Intro)," but the RAPID FIRE sput here by Big and Dre lets us know more than 1 thing: there's the subject matter which will dominate the conversation during the 15 tracks to follow -- namely weed, cadillacs, and pimpin -- but more importantly that they deserve our UTMOST attention. There's a lot going on here, and all the craziness acts as a preview to the development of some of their more experimental and emotionally out-there tendencies.
+ hahahaha Jameson's middling score still cudn't INFLUENCE the other voters not to say nice things about it!
Choice lyrical nugget: "Time and time again see I be thinking about that future / Back in the days when we was slaves I bet we was some cool ass ****** / But now we vultures, slam my ***** back out / To make his ass black out, or even pull your ****ing heater / To make his whole crew believers, you're harder than a bitch full of dicks / But that don't be sounding like King **** to me / See now in the ghetto or should I be saying Lakewood / You better be strapped cause them ****** over there just ain't good"
