S. Samuel
With his new "I'm Back" record bubbling across the Internet, SOHH recently reached out to Southern rapper Bubba Sparxxx to find out when fans can anticipate his return to album-dropping.
For Bubba, getting away to Los Angeles for six months and kicking it with producer Polow Da Don helped put his career back into perspective.
“I’d say I’m about sixty to seventy percent done with the album as far as putting together the concepts and the sounds,” Bubba told SOHH. “That’s really what’s held me up for so long, the sound was all over the place. But I feel like I have it all situated now. I’ll probably record another ten more songs and take five out of them. I’ve gotta be honest, from the past six months to year, I’ve really begun to start having fun again. I went out to Los Angeles and kicked it with Polow Da Don who is like a brother to me. I stayed out there with him for about six months, really balled out and I got a chance to really be around him because he’s so energized as far as the process of making music. That really rubbed off on me. We got in there [to the studio] and worked on things. His passion is definitely contagious and just the lifestyle. We were kicking it and it really reinvigorated me.” (SOHH)
Back in 2010, Southern rapper Young Jeezy took a similar approach when he locked himself away with producer Shawty Redd to work on his Thug Motivation 103 album.
The album is like a hip-hop version of the Stones‘ Exile on Main St or Dylan’s Basement Tapes: To make it, Jeezy went completely off the grid, descending in early 2010 into the basement studio in producer Shawty Redd’s south Atlanta home. He didn’t come out for three months. The vibe was different from what the Stones had in the South of France, however. Redd had recently returned home from jail on a murder charge, posting $200,000 in bail. (A trial date is still pending.) Jeezy begins the story of the sessions like this: “I had just got off tour with Jay-Z when Shawty got home. I went to his crib, we chopped it up, and finally I said, ‘I’m gonna go home and grab my stuff.’ Shawty was like, ‘Grab what stuff?’ I came back with all my clothes and sh*t and moved in.” Jeezy hung a flat-screen in his new bedroom and even stocked the cupboard with his favorite cereal, Cinnamon Toast Crunch. (GQ Magazine)
This week, Bubba new “I’m Back” music video began bubbling online.
The white rapper (no, not Slim) that had promiscuous girls and their church-going Aunties shaking what God gave them through the best bart of the early ’00s returns. It’s been three long years (six if you date back to an actual album) since we’ve heard Bubba Sparxxx and his unabashed hick rhymes, and now the Georgian-native announces his comeback with “I’m Back” and its accompanying video. They say rap music makes money, but clearly not making rap music yields profit too as Bubba grabs a couple of high-end Lamborghini’s to play (the much-needed) eye candy in the new clip. It’s not a terrible effort at a comeback from the rapper made famous for his Timbaland-backed “Ugly,”, but Paul Wall kinda demolished the lane for fat, Southern white dudes a few years ago. (Soul Culture UK)
A couple years ago, Sparxxx told SOHH swagger jacking has hurt the rap game.
“I don’t know [what’s going on in hip-hop] but I know I’m going to be original,” Bubba told SOHH when asked about his take on the state of hip-hop. “Any music people hear from me, from this point forward in my career is going to be original. It’s going to be music that only I can make and if I get frustrated with what’s going on when I listen to hip-hop, it’s with carbon copies. I like Soulja Boy because what he did was original. I’m a big Ying Yang Twins fan but I get [mad] when I hear so many carbon copies of what the last person was doing because of it being successful. That’s when I get a little frustrated [with hip-hop] because I’m like, ‘We’re all individuals here.’ Every person that’s been born into this world was born as an individual with things that separate them from others. For me, that’s what music or just art, period, is about. It’s about making that translate, whatever is unique about you, it’s about making it translate.” (SOHH)
Bubba Sparxxx’s last studio album release is 2006’s The Charm.
Check out “I’m Back” below:
