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The Pimp and Tha Gangsta

One of the hottest duos ever to emerge from the south, the group Dirty has a history deeper than the deepest reaches of the Mississippi River. Hailing from a city and state not normally known for producing rap music, Montgomery, Alabama, the artists known as The Pimp and Tha Gangsta are at the center of the current southern rap revolution.

Much like another well-known Montgomery resident, Rosa Parks, Dirty may be from the streets, but they are about the revolution. Musically, mentally and structurally. At face value you might just see the pictures their names paint, a pimp and a gangster. But dig deeper into their catalog, now six albums deep, and you’ll see that they are so much more.

Just as Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on that Montgomery bus in 1955, amidst an era of terror and injustice like our generation has never seen, Dirty has never been afraid to stand their ground. They’re not afraid to take rap music back to the revolution and they aren’t afraid to bring the street shit that everybody loves.

Both artists started rapping at an early age. As cousins who were raised like brothers, growing up in Montgomery, the 12 year old Pimp was a huge influence on the 8 year old Gangsta. These were the days when the duo certainly weren’t known as The Pimp and Tha Gangsta, they were merely getting their feet wet. But about 5 years after they started dipping into music, the group Dirty was born. “That was when a nigga was little,” Tha Gangsta remembers, “There wasn’t too many niggas that was rapping in Montgomery like that, there was a few. The east coast and west coast was really poppin’ back then, but my inspiration came from Pimp. I ain’t really say I wanted to rap until I was around him seeing him do it.”

As the group approached their mid to late teens they started performing around Montgomery and in cities like Birmingham and Mobile, Alabama, Gainesville and Tallahassee, Florida, Memphis, Tennessee and around Georgia. The incredible response they received inspired them to jump full on into the music business and they released two independent records. Country Versatile was their first foray into the industry, but it was their second independent release, The Pimp and Tha Gangsta that brought them to their first major deal with Universal Records.

Universal then released a revamped, remastered version of The Pimp and Tha Gangsta in 2000 to wide acclaim. “We had the underground scene down there in Alabama so hard.” Gangsta says, “We had the whole state in shock.”

Their second major release on Universal, Keep it Pimp and Gangsta, suffered from a lack of promotion and an over saturated rap roster at Universal and prompted the duo to walk away from the industry powerhouse. At the time they were spending a lot of time in Houston, a major hub for rap music in the south, and they hooked up with J. Prince and Rap-A-Lot Records.

Their first Rap-A-Lot release, Love Us or Hate Us came out in 2003 and spawned the classic club hit, “I Wish,” an aggressive taunt to the entire world in which, via an extremely catchy hook, Dirty was able to release all of their frustrations at once. Laced with more than a few “Motherfuckers” throughout, the single was almost impossible for radio, but still blew up in the streets. Where Dirty has always been based.

On this, their sixth album as a group, and second for Rap-A-Lot Records, Hood Stories, Dirty is letting the world know that they are still here and are as revolutionary and jammin’ as ever. As with all of their releases, Dirty covers the street life, the club life, and many of the aspects of life typical to hip-hop in 2005. But just as they were when they were first starting out, they are not afraid to talk politics and get a little controversial.

Their first single “Keep Your Hands Off Me” covers the issue of police brutality. While many artists today are afraid to touch on such serious issues, Dirty jumps right into it.

“We got more messages on the album too.” The Pimp chimes in, “We got a song called ‘Little Red Yvette,’ which is just talking about young females having a hard time with life. Struggling on any type of level. Having babies at young ages, trickin’ for money, doing drugs real bad, you know the real shit that go on in everyday life. A lot of females struggle with shit, and niggas do too cuz they didn’t have no one to tell them ‘Naw don’t do that,’ or to take care of them. It’s saying, you could have did better, we ain’t trying to dog you, it’s some keep your head up type shit.”

He continues, “We got another cut called ‘Pray for Me.’ It’s a song for our mama’s telling them to pray for us. You know we out here doing what we do, and we still go to our knees every night and pray, but at the same time we feel like they a little bit closer, their prayers will probably reach God before ours. We trying to tell mama to pray for their son every night.”

Cuts like “I’m a Gangsta” and “Stop Lyin’” are some straight street jams like the ones you have come to love from the past Dirty records. Hood Stories is all about balance. In this day and age when so many rappers are content to talk about the same old bling bling and their hood stories consist of nothing but tales of girls, violence and money, Dirty has a method to their madness. They’ll party, they’ll get down and dirty, but they’ll also help to elevate their communities to higher levels of consciousness. It’s important in this day and age.

“If you check our history mayne,” The Pimp explains, “We always like to fill the youth with some knowledge. Not just riding down the street with 24’s and not just showing the gold in your mouth. We like to leave a message on our album, if it’s just one message. We want to let them know that ‘Hey, we doing this like this, but at the same time my brothers, we need to do this too.’”