Ludacris

One Liner: Classic 90's rapper with funny skits and a fast (and furious) flow

Wikipedia Genre: Hip Hop
Home: Atlanta

Sunday

Thoughts:   Fascinating.  In my mind, I'm like, hell yeah, I know Ludacris.  But his top song on Spotify, by a ton, is a complete mystery to me.  And the second track I sort of remember, but as I'm listening to it right now, I realize that it might be terrible.  

Oh, no, wait.  His first three albums are chock full of good stuff.  2001's Word of Mouf and 2003's Chicken-N-Beer, that is where I know this dude.  Those albums are freaking great.  I think I must have downloaded those from Napster or something like it back when they came out, because I definitely know them from start to finish.  Goofy as crap.  Lines like "cracked more nuts than Delta airlines" or "y'all got it all wrong like women in tuxedos" are clunky, but it is over the top of a cool ass intense beat.  

His first album was 2000's Back For the First Time, and it shows off his flow as well as his sense of humor.  The skits can be legitimately funny.  But the big hit was the one featuring Shawna, called "What's Your Fantasy."  100.6 million streams.

I absolutely downloaded that track and played it on WinAmp at my first job out of college.  His tempo is breakneck and amazing.  2001's Word of Mouf blew up in a bigger way though, with multipole big hits on that album.  "Rollout (My Business)," "Move Bitch," and "Area Codes," all from Word of Mouf, are classics.  ALSO, this video freaking RULED with that weird-headed little avatar dancer guy.  68.2 million streams.

His flow, over that beat, is just bouncy perfection.  "Saturday (Ooh Ooh)" is also a fun song on there.  The skit about white people rapping his songs is funny too.  "Move Bitch" still brings it because of Mystikal.  97.4 million streams.

Weird that both of these videos started with State Farm commercials starring Luda himself.  Also, listening to this song with the censored version is lame as hell.  Around this time, Luda was also getting a bunch of guest spots, with guys like Jermaine Dupri, Lil Jon, and Missy Elliott.  Later he was on the huge song "Yeah" from Usher.

But his next big disc was 2003's Chicken-N-Beer, with the huge hit "Stand Up."  It is another album with some funny stuff going on and a lot of silliness, but I was surprised to see how few streams the disc has overall.  Lots of songs on here with less than a million.  Anyway, "Stand Up" was produced by Kanye West, and has 56.4 million streams.

Fascinating.  All of these videos are preceded by Ludacris State Farm ads.  It is like he had a plan for this to become a dance sensation song, but then forgot to actually create the dance and just said to do what he does.  He really likes to mess with size of things, and terrifying things like the little Luda baby.

Before we continue with the newer albums, we need to actually dig in to the man behind the jokes.  Christopher Bridges is his real name - thus the "cris" in the Ludacris - and he's a 46 year old from Champagne, Illinois.  He moved to Atlanta when he was nine, and started rapping then.  He tried a little bit of college at Georgia State, but then in 1999 he released his first album called Incognegro.  Around this time, he was interning at Hot 97.5, and ended up also serving as a DJ there under the name Chris Lova Lova.  Incognegro was later repackaged with some other songs to become Back for the First Time.

Also, as you likely know, he has become a relatively big time actor because of his role in the Fast and Furious movies.  But he was also in Crash, Hustle & Flow, New Year's Eve, and a ton of other flicks.

After those first albums, he kept pumping out discs pretty regularly for a few more years - 2004's Red Light District, 2006's Release Therapy, 2008's Theater of the Mind, 2010's Battle of the Sexes, and then 2015's Ludaversal.  I actually reviewed that whole album back then:

"Ludacris - Ludaversal.  My immediate instinct is to think that Ludacris is a joke.  I don't know why that is, I guess the acting, because I thought 2001's Word of Mouf and 2003's Chicken and Beer were both pretty dang good.  His raps are funny at times, but still hard enough at other times to be more than just a joke.  He's a fan of the ridiculous skit in between songs (this album goes with a guy who took viagra and can't get his dong to relax, and so the 911 operator goes to his house to help him out), but he also gets strong beats and has a really good flow over the top of them.  The most popular songs on this album have Miguel and Usher, respectively, on them doing some R&B crooning, but I liked the track with Big KRIT, Come and See Me:

Oh, and "Beast Mode," which is straight braggadocio, with some really great one liners, and Marshawn Lynch bouncing around in his video, is also a damn solid track.

Good disc."

Here is a weird anecdote: "On August 27, 2002, political pundit Bill O'Reilly called for all Americans to boycott Pepsi products because they hired Ludacris for promotional purposes and O'Reilly objected to Ludacris' style and attitude. The next day, O'Reilly reported that Pepsi had fired Ludacris. Six months later, Russell Simmons and his hip hop action summit threatened a boycott of all PepsiCo products on the grounds that Pepsi had subsequently hired Ozzy Osbourne for a commercial even though Osbourne is notable for use of profanity and explicit lyrics. Eventually an agreement was reached that resulted in PepsiCo donating $3 million to Ludacris' foundation and other inner city charities."  What in the world.  2002, and they were still objecting to a rapper's style and attitude?  Ludacris isn't even that wild!

Regarding those other albums, the biggest tracks were "Get Back" from Red Light District (68.1 million), "Money Maker" from Release Therapy (74.2 million), and "How Low (101.9 million) and "My Chick Bad" (164.7 million) from Battle of the Sexes.  It appears that the last song, his biggest streamer, is so large because of remixes with Nicki Minaj or Trina and Eve, and then lots of TikTok love.

He obviously figured out the right spot to kill the algorithm, but that song is definitely one of the weakest of his popular tunes.  Boring beat, overly repetitive, no where near as good as the classics.  Stupid TikTok.

I mean, he's got a ton of fun, classic tracks.  I have a feeling that his show ought to be good too, with his acting abilities and funny personality.  But also, I'm more likely going to want to go see Clint Black or Charley Crockett up against his time slot, so I doubt I'll catch the show.