The Curious Comeback of Juicy J

When I'm sad I don't curl up in the foetal position and put on Gravediggaz, I don't even drown my sorrows in Drake, I listen to Juicy J. It's a love that rivals his fondness for ratchet pussy and has remained unshakeable even in the face of assisting the aggressive cultural appropriation by anti-Christ Miley Cyrus or the introduction of a "twerkin'" scholarship. But how did a man on the cusp of forty manage to make such a dramatic comeback in a genre notoriously harsh to artists that have hit the cutting room floor?

Welp, firstly, he's never fucked with the formula. If you've ever spent three hours straight listening to Juicy J it's possible you'll notice he doesn't tend to deviate from the mainstays of talking about butts, zips and double cups over nothing but crunk. Ever. Which I feel is kind of okay when you've been integral to putting the South on the hip-hop map. But the renewed success of Juicy has has seen him take it one step further and build himself into a brand with the same aggressive tunnel vision; launching a clothing line, an iPhone app, a stripper name generator and the subtly titled Stay Strippy online game where you repeatedly smash the space bar to make awkwardly animated pole dancers slut drop. Hey, it's a blow for feminism but it's also why Lil Jon now only lives on through gifs because of ill-fated forays away from what he knew best into "rock" and, umm, Zumba fitness DVDs.

But there would've been nothing to build on had Juicy rested on his laurels post Three 6 Mafia. At the helm of the collective, alongside production partner DJ Paul, it was a savant syndrome style expertise of soul samples and an unyielding work rate that first drove them to mainstream success. But once they'd parted ways with Columbia the downtime saw DJ Paul settling down and branching out into stuff like "meat rubs" (which, BTW, I'm not mad about at all). In contrast, Juicy maintained a merciless work load when he could've easily kicked back and basked in the glory of an unexpected Academy win for "It's Hard Out There For A Pimp" and Three 6's chart successes. Instead, upon returning to Memphis after a stint living the high life in LA, he decided to record more mixtapes than I've had hot meals, which I'm pretty sure single handedly kept DatPiff.com running. It was that admirable insistence on keeping the momentum going that provided the next step to his comeback.

While the Juice Man could've kept churning out mixtapes till he was senile, the final lap to his eventual career resuscitation was coupling that work rate with a humble embrace of the new generation. Like I've said before, hip-hop is a young man's game so those once great who've fallen off the radar have a habit of stunting progress in favour of calling on old buddies, be it through not wanting to suck up the pride and reach out to their youngers or just plain out-the-loop ignorance (sorry DMX). In contrast, Juicy's rise saw him jumping on beats by Lex Luger and, of course, Mike WiLL, the production wonder kid behind stripper anthem "Bandz…" . Then, of course, a mutual Twitter admiration between himself and Wiz Khalifa eventually lead to him signing with Taylor Gang, in turn refreshing relations with Columbia. To the untrained eye Juicy may give off weird-old-uncle-at-the-club vibes, but I feel like his insanely measured swan dive into all things new has resulted in his glossiest release to date.

So, before you you earnestly sit down and review Stay Trippy, remember his resurrection from relative rap death happened because Juicy J is a master of being Juicy J. Though on Stay Trippy he dabbles with vaguely conscious subject matter (OK DAD, I'LL USE CONDOMS) he's never professed to deliver bars upon bars of clever lyricism or deep sociopolitical messages. And that's fine by me because a lot of the time I don't want to stroke my chin to the seventieth new "Control" verse of the week, I want to blast an hour of party tracks while I clumsily roll a blunt and pick which stripper outfit best accentuates my ass.

Follow Jo on Twitter @FUERTESKNIGHT

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