An honest-to-God best-of from the Tennessee rap duo 8Ball & MJG would work something like a pocket history of Southern rap. On 1993’s Comin Out Hard, their national debut, they kicked exaggerated crime-life tall-tales for six or seven minutes at a time over homemade car-trunk beats, never bothering much with hooks or structure. But the highlights from their last two albums, for Diddy’s Bad Boy label, were exemplary streamlined head-knock club-rap. (Those last two albums, in particular, are the reason best-of albums were invented: a few undeniable snarls surrounded by seas of halfhearted radio-targeted filler.) Their outlaw-duo chemistry was there from the beginning, but over the years since Comin Out Hard, the two cultivated a fascinatingly schizo approach, swinging haphazardly from visceral bone-chilling pimp-talk to warm, openhearted up-from-nothing inspirational tales. And iPods being what they are, it’s not hard to construct that narrative for yourself, to watch these guys develop over the years. But that’s not what We Are the South does.
Ball & G recorded too much material for too many record labels for a real best-of to ever happen, and We Are the South is more quickie cash-in than anything else. The bulk of the album comes from On Top of the World and In Our Lifetime, Vol. 1, two albums that the duo recorded for Tony Draper’s Suave House label in the mid-1990s. The good news: Those albums are both classics, arguably the two high-water marks of these guys’ aesthetic. Over woozily patient soul beats, the two spent these albums shading and developing their personas, adding depth and resonance by opening up and getting emotional without ever sacrificing the ripping impact of their hardest stuff. If you were going to assemble an 8Ball & MJG best-of from two albums, these would probably be the ones. On “Pimp in My Own Rhyme”, 8Ball spits urgent mushmouthed threats over unforgivingly trebly G-funk synths. On “What Can I Do”, an uncommonly candid MJG gives a harsh clarity to his memory of getting arrested for dealing drugs in front of his whole family. On “Throw Your Hands Up”, the two play granite-heavy foils to the stuttery speed-rapping of guests Outkast.
But this stuff is great enough that I can’t conjure any real reason not to hunt down the complete albums instead of wasting time with a compilation that rips the songs out of their contexts and haphazardly shuffles them up. We Are the South comes padded with a few relative rarities from the two’s not-as-good solo albums and from random mid-90s Suave House compilations. Of those, the only one that really demands to be heard is the sinuous banger “Lay It Down”, with its surprisingly on-fire guest-appearances from Ice Cube and Diddy, of all people. The other tracks are mostly solid, but it’s not like 8Ball & MJG were ever the type of group to save their best material for odds-and-ends comps.
The only song here I’d actually call bad is the mediocre plastic-funk 8Ball solo track “Starships and Rockets”. Other than that, it’s a perfectly decent listen, especially if you’re driving around on a lazy summer afternoon. But the essential stuff is easy to come by in more flattering contexts, and the inessential stuff is completely inessential. You’re better off making your own best-of at home.
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