Boosie Believe It
October 12th, 2009
Superbad suffered from the weight of the absurd expectations that Boosie created for himself. Coming off a string of excellent mixtapes, notable for both their ferocity and fearlessness, Torrence Hatch’s sophomore Asylum release seemed formulaic and calculated. With his mixtapes keeping an equilibrium between searing political polemics like “Fuck the Police,” weed anthems like “Loaded,” chromatic portraits of hood life, and the occasional soft-hearted “for the ladies” jam–few contemporary gangsta rappers conveyed their complexities and contradictions as well as Baton Rouge’s best.
Perversely, Superbad attempted to smooth out his rough edges–precisely the same reason why people liked Boosie in the first place. He’s raw, not in an unpolished way, but more that he’s prone to telling reporters that his hobbies include sticking E Pills in “girls’ bootie holes.” Eddie Murphy raw. By no means is it a bad album, just one plagued by bad decisions: the constant and grating presence of Lil Phat and Mouse, little conceptual or thematic unity, and a song regrettably titled, “Miss Kissing on U.” (Ben Westhoff’s Washington City Paper review addresses these in more depth.)
