UG Rap Community

die live from harris kannst du dir sparen, die geilsten lieder sind in ner besseren version auf dem ral releases und die ghetto stories ist sowas wie eine lp (aber eher compi) von boosi und weebie die ja zur zeit ganz gross im kommen sind- ich hab selbst noch nichts von denen, aber kommt sicher noch (gib tonnen zeug von denen)- auf mixtapes kommen sie geil zumindest.

edit:

die boosie & webbie ist mehr so...pimp c presents...style, u no?

Rapper releases first solo album from Texas prison
KRISTIE RIEKEN
Associated Press

ROSHARON, Texas - From the seclusion of his prison cell in rural southeast Texas, Pimp C said he had little reason to celebrate the release of his first solo album.

He could barely stand listening to his own songs: The music coming from the radio didn't sound like his work at all.

"It just hurts my stomach to think that some dudes were sitting around producing my songs and taking freestyle raps and making songs out of them," Pimp C, half of the celebrated southern rap duo Underground Kingz or UGK, told The Associated Press in a March jailhouse interview. "It's kind of strange. It's like I'm dead but I'm not dead. Like they trying to make a post-mortem album."

"The Sweet James Jones Stories" was created from a series of freestyle raps he did years ago that Houston-based Rap-A-Lot Records turned into the 14-track album. Even without his support or any of the usual hype that accompanies an album release, Pimp C's record sits at No. 8 on Billboard magazine's latest list of top rap albums.

Pimp C, whose real name is Chad Butler, said he hasn't heard the album, which debuted at No. 3 on the rap charts, and he barely recognized the two songs he caught on the radio as his own.

"I'm not talking down on the producers that worked on the record, but can't nobody do me like I do me," he said. "Had I been out there none of that stuff would have made it to the record."

It's the rapper's first solo album after selling well over 1 million records since 1992 from five major-label releases with UGK.

But then he fell behind on the community service required after he pleaded no contest to aggravated assault. He was charged after brandishing a gun during an argument with a woman at a mall. He began an eight-year sentence in January 2002 and will be eligible for parole in December.

Stripped of the accouterments that fame and wealth bring, he's not the royalty he was as Pimp C, the underground king. But inmate No. 1136592, with the easy laugh and endless, "Yes, Ma'am's," comes across as far more of a gentleman.

The album, like those during his days with UGK, is full of brash tales about money, cars and women, sprinkled with drug references and delivered with profanity-laced lyrics in his rich southern drawl. Rap-A-Lot records released the album under their new distribution deal with Asylum and the Warner Music Group.

"He's in a class by himself," said James Prince, founder and chief executive officer of Rap-A-Lot Records. "He has all the ingredients it takes to be a superstar. His voice and expressions are like no other."

The album features guest appearances by Lil' Flip, Devin the Dude, Z-Ro, UGK's Bun B and motor-mouthed Chicago rapper Twista. The first single, "Hogg in The Game," is getting radio airplay and has made the Top 10 countdown on a satellite radio program hosted by New York's DJ Envy.

In a visiting room at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's Terrell Unit, about 35 miles south of Houston in rural Rosharon, Pimp C is introspective while discussing his lifelong love of music. He's clean-shaven with a short haircut and wears a white prison uniform and black eyeglasses with a slight tint. A black and tan wooden cross hangs from his neck.

The trademark goatee he's sported for the majority of his career is gone, but his voice is unmistakable - even as it wafts through a small mesh opening in the glass wall of the prison visiting room.

Pimp C, 31, can trace his interest in music back to his childhood days in Port Arthur - the South Texas coastal town that Janis Joplin also called home - where his family owned a jukebox that played blues, rock 'n' roll, jazz and country.

"That's how I came up listening to everything," he said. "Music don't have no color or no face. It's a universal language. I think being exposed to all that kind of stuff influences the way I make records."

His route to rapping had an interesting twist, though.

Pimp C studied classical music in high school and his choir traveled Carnegie Hall to perform an Italian sonnet. He became the first student in Port Arthur to receive a Division I rating on a tenor solo at the University Interscholastic League choir competition.

"Chad was really music oriented from the crib," said his mother, Weslyn Monroe, a retired librarian.

Pimp C met UGK partner Bun B in junior high school, when Bun was bused to Pimp C's school for accelerated learning classes.

A single, "Tell Me Something Good," off their first independent album "The Southern Way," accidentally got mixed into a contest on a Houston radio station and sold out the next day. Calls from major record labels quickly followed.

UGK signed with Jive Records before Pimp C's 18th birthday. He dropped out of high school as a senior to focus on his music career, but has since earned his G.E.D while in prison.

"I had dreams of him going to college," his mother said. "I had never even listened to rap, so when he told me that's what he wanted to do I was so mad I wanted to kill him."

Eventually, Monroe came to tolerate and even enjoy rap music. She was UGK's road manager for several years.

Pimp C has thrilled Down South rap fans for more than a decade, but was virtually unknown outside the region until UGK joined Jay Z on the 1999 hit "Big Pimpin'." The song, which earned the group a Grammy nomination, and a $1 million video shot in the Caribbean helped sales of UGK's classic 1996 album, "Ridin' Dirty" rise from gold to near-platinum status.

So how did he let a CD he considers sub-par to be released under his name?

"James Prince is like my godfather and I respect him as a businessman," Pimp C said. All he would say about his earnings on the album is that Prince "found a way to generate some capital while I just was standing still here. I could have stopped it but I thought he might know something I don't know."

In the last three years, "Free Pimp C" has been a rallying call for Houston rappers from Mike Jones to Lil' Flip. Bun B, who said he's been working to keep Pimp C's name in the streets, wore a T-shirt printed with the slogan on Slim Thug's "3 Kings" video and a Web site sold out of a similar shirt.

Pimp C spends his days serving food in the prison cafeteria and his nights reading books and writing songs - he's penned more than 2,000 since his incarceration. Because he has no access to musical instruments, he includes notes like "insert guitar here" or "begin drumbeat now."

The roughest part of prison, he said, is being away from his family, which includes two sons, 11 and 4, and a 3-year-old girl.

His daughter was less than a month old when he went to jail.

"It's hard because she only knows me in prison," he said. "She don't know no better."

Pimp C said only a handful of people in the record industry, namely Bun B and Mississippi rapper David Banner, have kept in touch with him since his incarceration.

"When you come down here you come down here alone," he said. "I'm trying to stay positive and do positive things to get myself home as soon as possible. I'm still gonna do my real album when I get out."

Rapper releases first solo album from Texas prison
KRISTIE RIEKEN
Associated Press

ROSHARON, Texas - From the seclusion of his prison cell in rural southeast Texas, Pimp C said he had little reason to celebrate the release of his first solo album.

He could barely stand listening to his own songs: The music coming from the radio didn't sound like his work at all.

"It just hurts my stomach to think that some dudes were sitting around producing my songs and taking freestyle raps and making songs out of them," Pimp C, half of the celebrated southern rap duo Underground Kingz or UGK, told The Associated Press in a March jailhouse interview. "It's kind of strange. It's like I'm dead but I'm not dead. Like they trying to make a post-mortem album."

"The Sweet James Jones Stories" was created from a series of freestyle raps he did years ago that Houston-based Rap-A-Lot Records turned into the 14-track album. Even without his support or any of the usual hype that accompanies an album release, Pimp C's record sits at No. 8 on Billboard magazine's latest list of top rap albums.

Pimp C, whose real name is Chad Butler, said he hasn't heard the album, which debuted at No. 3 on the rap charts, and he barely recognized the two songs he caught on the radio as his own.

"I'm not talking down on the producers that worked on the record, but can't nobody do me like I do me," he said. "Had I been out there none of that stuff would have made it to the record."

It's the rapper's first solo album after selling well over 1 million records since 1992 from five major-label releases with UGK.

But then he fell behind on the community service required after he pleaded no contest to aggravated assault. He was charged after brandishing a gun during an argument with a woman at a mall. He began an eight-year sentence in January 2002 and will be eligible for parole in December.

Stripped of the accouterments that fame and wealth bring, he's not the royalty he was as Pimp C, the underground king. But inmate No. 1136592, with the easy laugh and endless, "Yes, Ma'am's," comes across as far more of a gentleman.

The album, like those during his days with UGK, is full of brash tales about money, cars and women, sprinkled with drug references and delivered with profanity-laced lyrics in his rich southern drawl. Rap-A-Lot records released the album under their new distribution deal with Asylum and the Warner Music Group.

"He's in a class by himself," said James Prince, founder and chief executive officer of Rap-A-Lot Records. "He has all the ingredients it takes to be a superstar. His voice and expressions are like no other."

The album features guest appearances by Lil' Flip, Devin the Dude, Z-Ro, UGK's Bun B and motor-mouthed Chicago rapper Twista. The first single, "Hogg in The Game," is getting radio airplay and has made the Top 10 countdown on a satellite radio program hosted by New York's DJ Envy.

In a visiting room at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's Terrell Unit, about 35 miles south of Houston in rural Rosharon, Pimp C is introspective while discussing his lifelong love of music. He's clean-shaven with a short haircut and wears a white prison uniform and black eyeglasses with a slight tint. A black and tan wooden cross hangs from his neck.

The trademark goatee he's sported for the majority of his career is gone, but his voice is unmistakable - even as it wafts through a small mesh opening in the glass wall of the prison visiting room.

Pimp C, 31, can trace his interest in music back to his childhood days in Port Arthur - the South Texas coastal town that Janis Joplin also called home - where his family owned a jukebox that played blues, rock 'n' roll, jazz and country.

"That's how I came up listening to everything," he said. "Music don't have no color or no face. It's a universal language. I think being exposed to all that kind of stuff influences the way I make records."

His route to rapping had an interesting twist, though.

Pimp C studied classical music in high school and his choir traveled Carnegie Hall to perform an Italian sonnet. He became the first student in Port Arthur to receive a Division I rating on a tenor solo at the University Interscholastic League choir competition.

"Chad was really music oriented from the crib," said his mother, Weslyn Monroe, a retired librarian.

Pimp C met UGK partner Bun B in junior high school, when Bun was bused to Pimp C's school for accelerated learning classes.

A single, "Tell Me Something Good," off their first independent album "The Southern Way," accidentally got mixed into a contest on a Houston radio station and sold out the next day. Calls from major record labels quickly followed.

UGK signed with Jive Records before Pimp C's 18th birthday. He dropped out of high school as a senior to focus on his music career, but has since earned his G.E.D while in prison.

"I had dreams of him going to college," his mother said. "I had never even listened to rap, so when he told me that's what he wanted to do I was so mad I wanted to kill him."

Eventually, Monroe came to tolerate and even enjoy rap music. She was UGK's road manager for several years.

Pimp C has thrilled Down South rap fans for more than a decade, but was virtually unknown outside the region until UGK joined Jay Z on the 1999 hit "Big Pimpin'." The song, which earned the group a Grammy nomination, and a $1 million video shot in the Caribbean helped sales of UGK's classic 1996 album, "Ridin' Dirty" rise from gold to near-platinum status.

So how did he let a CD he considers sub-par to be released under his name?

"James Prince is like my godfather and I respect him as a businessman," Pimp C said. All he would say about his earnings on the album is that Prince "found a way to generate some capital while I just was standing still here. I could have stopped it but I thought he might know something I don't know."

In the last three years, "Free Pimp C" has been a rallying call for Houston rappers from Mike Jones to Lil' Flip. Bun B, who said he's been working to keep Pimp C's name in the streets, wore a T-shirt printed with the slogan on Slim Thug's "3 Kings" video and a Web site sold out of a similar shirt.

Pimp C spends his days serving food in the prison cafeteria and his nights reading books and writing songs - he's penned more than 2,000 since his incarceration. Because he has no access to musical instruments, he includes notes like "insert guitar here" or "begin drumbeat now."

The roughest part of prison, he said, is being away from his family, which includes two sons, 11 and 4, and a 3-year-old girl.

His daughter was less than a month old when he went to jail.

"It's hard because she only knows me in prison," he said. "She don't know no better."

Pimp C said only a handful of people in the record industry, namely Bun B and Mississippi rapper David Banner, have kept in touch with him since his incarceration.

"When you come down here you come down here alone," he said. "I'm trying to stay positive and do positive things to get myself home as soon as possible. I'm still gonna do my real album when I get out."