A handy guide to Big Boi’s Sir Luscious Left Foot

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The unofficial punchline regarding Big Boi’s much-anticipated solo album Sir Luscious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty is that it’s the first ever album to be “released” via track-by-track leak – no joke, check the album’s Wikipedia page, which chronicles single-leaks dating back to March 2008. Regardless of the strange consistency of these leaks, public opinion had largely conformed to the belief that Luscious Left Foot would be Big Boi’s own personal albatross – his Chinese Democracy/ Dr. Dre’s Detox/Christopher Nolan’s third Batman movie.

Fortunately for us, Big Boi doesn’t share this opinion, and subsequent to his release from a binding contract with Jive Records*, he’s established a partnership with Def Jam and stamped a release date on his albatross: July 6 of this summer. This is good news for, well, the whole damn public in general, because the tracks from Sir Luscious that we’ve already heard are uniformly, unanimously fantastic. And so, in honor of Sir Luscious’ upcoming birthday, here’s a handy little track-by-track guide to the hype we’ve heard thusfar. Get excited, and then ask yourself a question: if funk was popularized forty years ago, and Dr. Dre’s G-funk resurrected its corpse twenty years ago, then does the 20-year pattern suggest an oncoming renaissance?

“Shutterbugg”

Probably the third-best track of the five, in which a resurrected Scott Storch harvests ripe fields of 70s funk tropes; there’s a talkbox (not autotune – a talkbox, like on the greatest song ever), plucky guitar turnarounds, and lithe, sinewy vintage synthesizers. If you’ve got an extra 30 minutes, check this harrowing article, which chronicles Storch’s crazy-ass life as a musical pseudo-prodigy, former member of the Roots, and $70 million cocaine vacuum.

“Shine Blockas”

Probably the third-best track of the five, in which Big Boi takes Gucci Mane (who recently released a mixtape from jail – notice how The Burrprint 2, his newest tape, was for some reason released after The Burrprint 3-D…hilarious) to court for the custody of a lush, strangely lovely beat that’s half-vibraphone and half-808 claps. Jury’s out on who gets the beat – but needless to say, witnessing the two duke it out is spectacle enough for me. Now here’s some Gucci Mane mixtape covers:

“Fo Yo Sorrows”

Probably the third-best track of the five, in which Big Boi gradually suffocates a sparse, 8-bit “Lollipop”-esque beat (well, in that the beat is like “Lollipop,” but a thousand times better) until fucking George Clinton shows up on the last third of the song to recite eccentric poetry about smoking weed – until he’s chopped-up, legit DnB/glitch-style, like a record that skips in all the right places.

“Sumthin’s Gotta Give”

Probably the third-best track of the five, in which Boi teams up with Mary J. Blige to offer a legitimately-soulful slapbass track in which Boi castigates “a nation full of zombies, strung-out on Starbucks and stitched up in Fitch and Abercrombie.” Betcha don’t remember that this song was released as endorsement for Obama’s political campaign…but, the nouveau presidency nonwithstanding, I think it’s interesting to consider this song in a post-Obama context, in which it doesn’t really function as a summation of what’s wrong with Bush’s America, but what’s wrong with our shit in general.

“Royal Flush”

Probably the third-best track of the five, in which Big Boi trades verses with his BFF Andre 3000 and my BFF Raekwon the Chef on top of a slinky, bass-propelled backing track. It’s especially interesting to hear Raekwon’s relaxed, poetic rasp alongside Outkast’s eccentric, bug-eyed hyperflow – and, since all of the parties in question exert a particular dominance over the beats they eat (Idlewild and Immobilarity nonwithstanding)…well, I mean, damn.

Notez:

*This isn’t the first time that Jive has come between an album and the artist behind it; Clipse’s epochal Hell Hath No Fury was victim to the same confusing, unnecessary, and potentially bureaucratic entanglement a couple years back when, following the merger between Sony and BMG, Arista (subsidiary of the former) was swallowed up by Jive (subsidiary of the latter) and Arista artists – like Clipse and Big Boi – found themselves answering to new corporate CEOs overnight. CEOs who, apparently, don’t really understand how to release a rap album, or even foster a positive relationship with its artists. Then again, it’s the record industry, so if any of this comes as a surprise…well, read a couple articles on their business practices, and then enjoy the newfound sense of pride that comes with shamelessly stealing their products. Remember when Clipse dropped the line “they ain’t playin’ fair at Jive” on “Mr. Me Too”? Well…now you know why.