Trick Daddy: Thugs Are Us : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Trick daddy is the thug's thug, backing up more azz per minute than most rappers see in a year. Thugs Are Us is the latest Miami hip-hop block party from the guy who brought us Book of Thugs: Chapter A.K., Verse 47 and www.thug.com. From the opening track, "I'm a Thug" - glad to get that cleared up, Trick Daddy - it's raw, hilarious stuff, with amazing avant-ghetto chants like "Take It to da House," "Where U From" and "The Hotness," which proclaims, "We worldwide without the Web/ Grateful without the dead." Since Trick Daddy is more into sex than violence and more into bass than either, he's fun to ride with as he meditates on the essence of thugness, aided and abetted by his homegirl Trina. "99 Problems," a hip-hop answer to the Nails' "88 Lines About 44 Women," describes his open-trunk policy in regard to the ladies ("I got a bitch that's a thug, and she carry a gat/A bitch that looks like Kim and one that looks like Da Brat"), while in "Pull Over (Remix)" he worships booty like it's going out of style, which, as we all know, booty never will, not if Trick Daddy has anything to say about it. "The Hotness" sums him up perfectly: "I was born with nothin', die with nothin' - in between I want everything!" (RS 866)

ROB SHEFFIELD