Lil' Troy - Sittin' Fat Down South - 1999 - Universal Records
Lil' Troy is certainly best known for his lone hit single, "Wanna Be A Baller," found here. While listening to the full album it occurred to me that there are so many guests that I'm not even sure which voice belongs to Troy. Upon inspecting the liner notes, I'm baffled. It appears that Troy doesn't even appear on "Wanna Be A Baller." And if the liner notes are to be believed, all songs were produced by someone named Grim and not Lil' Troy. So I'm not really sure how this is his song. Oddly enough, it would appear that he doesn't even show up on his own album until the fifth song. And he only seems to appear on five of the album's fourteen tracks. Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm confused. Mystery aside, it's a pretty good record. There's a definite Texas sound throughout. The Geto Boys are definitely invoked in style, and as it happens both Scarface and Willie D. make guest appearances. The beats are mostly built from the ground up, even when interpolating other songs (I swear "Wanna Be A Baller" was a nod to the intro of Prince's "Raspberry Beret") and feature a nice range of instrumentation with heavy use of electric piano and bluesy guitars. It's not a super cohesive album though, and sometimes the change in tone can be jarring. For instance when you get to "Still A Bitch," which is completely sung instead of rapped. Or when Scarface shows up on "Another Head Put To Rest" that sounds like it could have been recorded ten years earlier based on the beat and the flow that he rides. Or when the Roger Troutman sample comes in on "Where's The Love," which is completely vocodered and seemingly out of place. But then again, I'm not complaining as "Where's The Love" is one of the more interesting tracks here. And in fact the weird mish-mash creates a pretty interesting mess. While "Wanna Be A Baller" remains the one-hit that made Troy a wonder, this album as a whole is something that probably could not be replicated. It's not great, but it does somehow work.