On that song, and on much of the rest of the tape, Boosie snaps on all the people who abandoned him and his family, who thought he’d be in prison forever: “Three or four bitches, they told me lies / Told them I was coming home, they rolled the eyes.” The next song is called “I’m Comin’ Home,” and title aside, it has no interest in releasing any of that tension. On that first song, Boosie is Clint Eastwood or Robert Mitchum, staring at the gallows and baring his teeth at them. Because I don’t do attempts.” A few songs later, he asserts, “Part of my life’s like an old-time Western,” and it’s hard to argue once you picture that scene. “They said, ‘We got you on six bodies and two attempt,'” Boosie sneers at one point. “Murder Was The Case (Intro),” the first song on Boosie’s excellent new Life After Deathrow tape, repurposes Snoop Dogg’s “Murder Was The Case” and just lets Boosie vent about the idea that he was facing death. But he’s not in a partying mood, and you cannot blame him. He’s home now, finally, as of this past March. He also went up against a murder charge in one of those befuddling cases where the prosecution attempted to use his rap lyrics as evidence against him.
But then, in 2008, Boosie was arrested on a marijuana charge and somehow ended up spending the next six years in prison on various drug charges. So Boosie had that whole party-rap thing down cold, whether that was what he wanted to do or not.
The way he howled “ yeeeaaauuuhh!” halfway through his verse on Webbie’s “Independent” is an all-time party gauge: If you’re at the club and everyone yells that word along with Boosie, you’re among the right people. Once, on assignment for King magazine, I stood behind Boosie on an Orlando parking-lot stage and watched a euphoric crowd shout Boosie’s verse from the “Wipe Me Down” remix - “B-O-O-S-I-E B-A-D-A-Z-Z THAT’S ME!” - back at him, and it ranks as one of my favorite live-music memories ever. Ratchet music, the prim and minimal strain of party-rap that’s currently dominating West Coast rap, got its name from a 2005 Boosie single. But Boosie’s biggest hits were his party songs. Boosie started off as a gangsta rap child star, and by the time he got around to making Ghetto Stories, his great 2003 collaborative album with Webbie, he’s matured into a wizened seen-it-all street rapper, squawking about impossible hardships in a voice that sounded like a feral cat on helium. The party songs never dominated the Baton Rouge rapper’s catalog, and you sometimes got the impression that he didn’t like doing them. Once upon a time, Lil Boosie made party songs.
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