Songs Rhino loves, #54: OutKast, UGK & Sleepy Brown - “Tough Guy”

ONE OF THE BEST DAMN RAP SONGS OF ALL TIME

This one is YouTube-only, but if you’re interested in rap music even the tiniest bit, you will want to hear it, because it’s very close to perfect. OutKast are one of the most acclaimed, revered, famous, and popular rap groups in history, and they mostly deserve those distinctions; I am not of the personal opinion that André 3000, who is the more rapturously ballyhooed of the duo and who has the final of four verses on this joint, really kills this, and neither does Pimp C of UGK, of blessed memory, who goes third. Both of their verses are just okay. But the beat is a barnstormer, and Patrick “Sleepy” Brown, who gets my vote for the very best hook singer of any gender in the history of rap music, absolutely slams it down in his hook, on top of which Antwan “Big Boi” Patton, the less heralded member of OutKast, who has already appeared in this column with the glistening pop jam “Mama Told Me”, goes crazy on his opening verse (content note for some salty language therein), and then the second member of UGK, Bernard “Bun B” Freeman, who was for a period of time my favourite rapper in the entire history of hip-hop precisely because of his propensity to spit verses like this one, absolutely loses his mind and spits a brain-assassinatingly perfect verse which on some days I would say is my very favourite verse in the entire history of rap music. I’ll have a lot more to say about OutKast (who are from Atlanta) and about UGK (whose name stands for “Underground Kings” and who are from a small town in Texas called Port Arthur) in future installments of this column; there is no chance that either group won’t continue to show up multiple times. But this is a pretty good introduction to what they can achieve, both separately and collectively. With apologies to The Geto Boys, Goodie Mob, and 8Ball & MJG, they are probably the two most significant Southern rap groups in history, and they would definitely get my vote as the two best; this joint, despite being a rarity that only exists because John Singleton seems to have commissioned it for his abysmal remake of the seminal Blaxploitation film Shaft with Samuel L. Jackson in the lead role from the year 2000, is something close to the artistic zenith of both groups’ careers. The Pimp, who was also a legendary producer, and André 3 Stax, who is a top 10 or 20 rapper in the history of the artform, both hit their stride as rappers elsewhere in their careers, but even despite that, all rap heads deserve to bring this one into their lives. It’s a monster. It’s worth it for the Bun B verse alone – my elder brother, a longtime reader of this newsletter who loves this song just as much as I do, describes the Bun verse as “the perfect blend of rhythm, speed, lyricism and punch”, and I think he’s exactly right. Rap heads! Dive in! You won’t regret it!