What About Me: Where Boosie's Jail Time & Catalog Have Placed Him Among Rap's Best

A few months before he passed away in late 2007, Pimp C gave one of his most controversial interviews with Atlanta’s Hot 107.9. He talked about his disappointment with Atlanta hip-hop, particularly Young Jeezy’s outlandish dope-dealing lyrics, and detailed his vision of what needed to happen for the South to continue flourishing in the rap game. In one of the most captivating segments of the interview he said: “If you’re gonna talk about the drug game, you need to talk about the bad side of the drug game too. What about when you get busted and you go to jail? What about when your mama and your wife and your kids is crying ‘cause they at home and you in prison…everybody talk about how many cars and how many jewels they goin’ buy.”

Though few would realize it then and just as many refuse to acknowledge it now, what Pimp was talking about there—panoramic, street-level storytelling mixed with social commentary—is to this day exemplified by Baton Rouge's Lil Boosie. A protege of the late Pimp, Boosie’s ground-up following is damn near the hood version of #basedworld, not only because of his club hits (see “Zoom,” “Swerve” with Webbie and his verse on Foxx’s “Wipe Me Down”) but because of his ability to translate pain and transcendence on tracks like “Hatin’,” “Goin’ Thru Some Thangs,” and “Mama I’m Sorry.” In Baton Rouge, he’s by far the biggest rapper and undoubtedly a local hero to the black community. In “Last Dayz”—the documentary that follows Boosie’s last week before prison, the Pac-level love he gets at home becomes evident when they show entire crowds reciting his lyrics, how people mention his charity before his music and the respect he gets from peers in the rap game. Following the UGK blueprint, Boosie’s catalog is a first-person narrative of all things related to street life, good and bad: spending money, botched drug deals, expensive cars, regrets about not taking the legal route. Despite being an underground legend, Boosie has yet to gain the recognition he deserves as a high-class emcee and he should be looked at more regularly as one of the best rappers out right now.

In November of 2009, Lil Boosie started his two-year prison sentence a month after the release of his second major studio album—a potential stepping stone to his long-awaited national stardom, Superbad: The Return of Boosie Bad Azz. By that time he’d been the torchbearer of Pimp C’s Trill Entertainment label, popularized the word “ratchet”, had a haircut named after him (shoutout to my Boosie fade in high school) and due to a long list of solid projects, had established a cult following below the Mason-Dixon. Because of a head-spinning list of other charges, Boosie, while receiving more adoration than ever, still resides in the country’s largest maximum-security prison, the Louisiana State Penitentiary a.k.a Angola. It seemed that his release would be sometime in February but it looks like March is a more likely time.

On a day-to-day basis, being incarcerated is presumably disastrous to an inmate’s mental health, but for Boosie, his stint in jail has done wonders for his legend; #FREEBOOSIE is a social media mainstay, his alleged release date is talked about daily and the number of rappers dropping references to his name gets higher every day. Save for death, jail seems to be the best promotion a rapper could ask for—for better and worse. Harlem’s Max B—whose current stay in jail has resulted in a similar cult-like following on the East Coast—started his sentence in 2009 as well, on murder conspiracy and robbery charges. Like Boosie, Max’s long list of mixtapes and Dipset collaborations established a core fan group, but his appeal has gotten exponentially bigger outside of the East Coast since he’s been locked up. Calling shit “wavy” is second nature now in the rap world and even Jay Z, who Max assisted Cam’Ron in dissing on “You Got To Love It”, gave a shout-out to the wave on Rick Ross’s “3 Kings.” But even with all the hype and respect, Max B isn’t looked at as a great artist. So does that mean all of Boosie’s recent attention is out of hype?

Even with his dual threat of street bangers and deeply personal cuts, there’s no real way of telling if he, or any other rapper, will be able to fully capitalize on the attention that prison can bring to an artist. I mean, it is prison; staying on top of your work while having to sulk in regret, sadness or whatever else eats away at your brain can’t be easy. It’s fair to say that he’ll be affected in some way. Something between Max Biggavelli and Boosie Bad Ass is different, though: technical skills aside, the introspective nature of Boosie’s music gives the chances of him having a major impact on fans some added hope; his fans all feel personal connections to him so hearing what his stay at Angola was like—as a physical chore and what problems it fostered mentally will likely be a buffer.

Boosie falls in the dead center of where hip-hop purists and those who champion rappers for taking the genre into new, creative directions stand. His music isn’t decorated with wordplay and metaphors but it does coincide with the fundamental technique of detailed, heartfelt storytelling. Take a look at the off-kilter delivery and honesty of Gil Scott-Heron—an artist who is often regarded as a predecessor of rap music (see “Whitey On The Moon”, “Home Is Where The Hatred Is”, “The Bottle”) or Nina Simone’s unwavering disposition in songs like “Baltimore” and “Mississippi Goddam.” Both are frequently sampled in rap not because of “lyricism” but because of the immediacy and accessibility of their messages. Last year Boosie told SPIN that his music is “reality rap” instead of hip-hop. “Most of my shit is deep. It’s hard for me to make a fuckin’ radio song,” he said in an earlier interview. ”I get in that bitch and I rap about the shit that happened yesterday. I rap about shit that’s going down, right then.” That’s probably why Boosie has yet to find himself any mainstream success of note. The same goes for southern heroes and predecessors like Scarface and Project Pat, amongst a host of others; while they are constantly cited as a lot of southern rappers’ biggest influences and are huge within hip-hop, they’re not recognized by mainstream culture. Boosie’s overt, sometimes self-deprecating, confessionals that exhibit raw emotion and a distinct flow—although overlooked—are more in line with the genre’s origins than some may want to accept.

On wax he’s expressed his dissatisfaction with his place in music. In the career-analyzing “What About Me” he says: “They holla Usher and that Lil Jon shit/ They hollerin’ out ‘I smoke I drank’ but I made that bitch/ They hollerin’ Manny, Baby, Wayne and Jeezy/ Don’t nobody holla Boosie like nobody don’t believe me.” His of-the-people vulnerability doesn’t even come off as something strategically calculated; he’s naturally transparent. In one of his most personal tracks, “Goin Thru Some Thangs,” he says, “I wanna get rich but sometimes I don’t believe/ Tryna sell 100,000 but they burnin my CDs/ Niggas and bitches please won’t you give me help/ Get yo ass off that computer and buy the shit up off the shelf/ ‘Cause I wanna ride candy man, just like the others/ Sometimes I wish I shoulda took the good route like my brother.” On “Baby Momma” he vents: “You hurted me/Me and you know you deserted me/I ain’t gon’ lie, feel like you murdered me.” For a rapper whose as candid as Boosie, you can imagine the hundreds of intricate stories he has tucked away for his homecoming.

We’re nearing the end of Boosie’s nearly-five-year bid and thanks to a digital world that moves even faster than the one he left in 2009 and listeners that become obsessed with dead and incarcerated rhymers, rap fans above the Mason-Dixon Line are just starting to get the gist of what kind of hero he is for a sizable region of the country (and expanding). Hopefully the attention Lil Boosie attracts over the next month after he is released from prison will be another step towards his rare and special repertoire of skills being noticed on a stage bigger than just the south.

Lawrence Burney is a writer living in Baltimore who makes a zine called True Laurels. He's on Twitter - @truelaurels