Ludacris: Chicken & Beer : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Ludacris is one of the most liquid MCs in the game today. He varies his flows with such dexterity and has so much musicality in his tones that his mouth truly seems like an instrument. Ludacris is an outsize character -- he's Mr. Fantastic from the Fantastic Four, perhaps a Southern Busta Rhymes, a guy who started as an Atlanta radio DJ but whose third album, Chicken-N-Beer, finds him part of the hip-hop establishment. He's got a lead single, the muscular, bouncing club-banger "Stand Up," produced by Kanye West, one of the hottest producers in hip-hop, and an expensive video with Missy Elliott-like special effects lensed by superstar director Dave Myers. And, like most major MCs, he's got a rabid conservative nipping at his heels for supposed moral transgressions. Last year, Bill O'Reilly, the star of Fox News, used his TV show as a bully pulpit to get Ludacris dropped from his Pepsi deal. On Chicken-N-Beer, 'Cris fires back, though lightly: "You mad 'cause I'm a thief and got a way with words/I'm-a start my own beverage/It'll calm your nerves."

Each of Ludacris' previous albums, Back for the First Time (2000) and Word of Mouf (2001), sold more than 3 million copies because he's cocksure, witty and just hard enough to be taken seriously, but playful enough to be pop. Just like Colonel Sanders, the man's formula hasn't changed. "One of Mini-Me's shoes got more soul than you," he rhymes on "Hip Hop Quotables," from Chicken-N-Beer. "By the time you figure out why your record ain't spinnin'/I'm in the strip club smokin' with President Clinton."

But a great style doesn't always equal a great album, and the world's illest flows can't rescue some of these dud beats. Nothing from 'Cris' crew of largely unknown producers -- who mostly traffic in soulful samples from the likes of Isaac Hayes and William DeVaughn -- approaches the frenzy of "Stand Up." Chicken-N-Beer is usually entertaining, though: Over a mellow beat perfect for cruising, Snoop Dogg smooths in for a memorable guest slot on the funny story rhyme "Hoes in My Room." There's lots of talk of smokin' blunts and doin' it every which way, including what 'Cris calls "froggy style." On "Hard Times" he lets us inside his heart a little, addressing his late grandfather: "Papa, I never went and jumped the broom/Never got that one degree/But if you look down from heaven, you'll still be proud of me." But Ludacris is best at using his style to spark parties, to be frustrated or to talk sex. "Lip-gloss traces/You're pierced in eleven places," he says on "P-Poppin'," "and your lips downtown just made some familiar faces." When he makes an entire album with beats as colorful as his persona, that'll be better than Southern-fried chicken.