Album Of The Week: Boosie Badazz Touch Down 2 Cause Hell

Back in 2007, the now-defunct booty magazine King sent me down to Orlando to profile the Baton Rouge rapper Lil Boosie. Boosie had a bunch of hits at the time -- tightly-coiled, exultant club-rap bangers like "Zoom" and "Wipe Me Down" and "Independent" -- and the editors' idea was that I should do a "most entertaining rapper in the game" feature about him. The idea was something like: "This guy is fun!" Those songs and their videos had given those guys, and me, the wrong idea about Boosie. Immersing myself in his mixtapes, and then flying down to meet him, I learned that those party-rap songs, great as they were, only represented a tiny shard of what he did. In the South, he was a street-rap hero, a fiery voice that spoke of violence and oppression and the chaotic possibilities of day-to-day life when you're a person living without security. He wasn't a fun guy; he was an avenging angel. When I got down to Orlando and met Boosie, he was in a dark mood because someone had fucked up his hotel reservations. He was not partying. A guy who looked like T-Pain recognized Boosie in the elevator and offered to bring him some weed. He accepted the guy's gift and then kicked him out of the hotel room. In the hours that he was waiting for a show promoter to send a car and pick him up, Boosie paced his hotel room like a panther. He did push-ups and idly watched Time-Life infomercials and smoked terrifyingly strong weed. He kept the lights off and the shades drawn, and he cussed out his friend for bringing him the wrong McDonald's order. He fumed about his record label and told me about the time an Arkansas local was shot dead while he was onstage next to Boosie at a show. When it was almost showtime, a friend took out Boosie's suitcase, and Boosie ritualistically, mechanistically put on piece after piece of jewelry. A guy working for the promoter finally showed up in a beat-up minivan covered in posters and took us to the show, a stage in the parking lot of an Orlando club where Boosie was opening for Lil Wayne and Trick Daddy. Boosie wouldn't get out of the van until someone had brought him a fat roll of cash and he'd counted it three times. Kids at the show recognized Boosie in the front seat, knocked on the window, waved. Boosie stared straight ahead, acknowledging nothing. Then he left the van and made straight for the stage. Once he was up there, he just ripped. He was magnetic. He rapped like his face was on fire. The kids in the crowd treated Boosie like an absolute hero. For 20 minutes, Boosie led something like a cathartic church service, the whole crowd screaming every word from every verse back at him. Then he got back in the car and went back to the hotel, ignoring his friends as they complained that Trick Daddy's crew had diamonds and they didn't. I didn't like Boosie much as a person, but as a rapper, he had a power about him, a sense of weight in his presence. I felt privileged to see him in action. And then he went away for years.