When I see a track with a lineup like this, I always get really excited right at first, and then almost immediately really worried that it won’t be able to live up to the sum of its parts.
Big Boi – Gossip (feat. UGK & Big K.R.I.T.)
In this particular situation, you’ve got a lot of potential pitfalls: one of the dudes on the song has been residing in the spiritual world for the past four and a half years, two of them are very established, approaching middle-age rappers from different parts of the south, and one is a young and aspiring artist from yet another part of the south from everybody else. Ideally, with a song with this many strong talents on board, it would be best for all of them to spend some time in the same room together to get on the same page and get all of their comparably genius creative minds pointed in the same direction, but in this case, that would clearly not be an option (see reasons above). But in my opinion, aside from the Pimp C verse sounding a little uncharacteristically unsmooth and out of the pocket, this track actually does a pretty good job of living up to its lineup. Plus, Big Boi in the first verse makes reference to one of my favorite non-Soul Food Goodie Mob tracks.
Goodie Mob – They Don’t Dance No Mo’
