Subject: UGK (Band)

• Static

  October 9, 1997

• Real-Life Product

  March 26, 1998

• R.I.P. Pimp C

  December 13, 2007

• Underground Kingz

  August 16, 2007

• The Last Roundup: A Birthday Blog, Mic Skills, Listenlisten, UGK, Riff Tiffs and More

  Happy birthday, Houston's Most Hated! They're celebrating next Saturday at Numbers with The Juan MacLean, Switzerland's the Field and a bunch of local DJs. 29-95.com has a nice chat with local MC Mic Skills, mostly about his new album Defiant. We Wore Masks caught the freshly reunited Blink-182 (Woodlands Pavilion, September 23) playing "All the Small Things" on The Tonight Show. Can't wait for Conan to take over! Space City Rock checks out the new Listenlisten, Hymns from Rhodesia. Readitreadit

  May 20, 2009

• Running the Numbers

  May 28, 2009

• Five Spot: Flying the Mddl Fngz

  Welcome back to Five Spot. Every Friday, we'll examine a recent bit of music news and, sometimes awkwardly, tie it to a bit of Houston rap. It's five videos and occasional cussing. Send tips to introducingliston@gmail.com.Mddl Fngz is a hard hitting (and totally texter-friendly) rap group that formed in 2002, in part as an offshoot of UGK when Pimp C was incarcerated. They're lyrically talented, gruff in their presentation, and utterly convincing in the Look How Mean I Am In My Black Shirt And H

  May 29, 2009

• Five Spot: The Illustrious Dustin Prestige

  Welcome back to Five Spot. Every Friday, we'll examine a recent bit of music news and, sometimes awkwardly, tie it to a bit of Houston rap. It's five videos and occasional cussing. Send tips to introducingliston@gmail.com.We suspect the goal of every music writer is to be able to answer "Who are you listening to?" with a response that makes people go "Who?", thus making you smarter than them. It's why we were so amped when we heard newcomer Dustin Prestige's first full-length mixtape, Houston Pr

  June 19, 2009

• Turning the Screw: Chamillionaire & Z-Ro, UGK, Slim Thug, Trae Day, Chris Brown, Meth & Red, Diddy, MCA, O.G. Style and More

  Welcome back to Turning the Screw, Rocks Off's weekly rap post. It probably won't rhyme, at least most of the time. E-mail tips to introducingliston@gmail.com. Thanks, homies. Single of the Week: Chamillionaire feat. Z-Ro, "Denzel Washington" Wire To Wire Slim Thugga cut off his braids. Not sure how we feel about that just yet. Check back with us next week. Been listening to UGK's Ridin' Dirty a lot lately. What Bun B does on "One Day," "Murder" and "Pinky Ring" might be the best three-song set

  July 28, 2009

• MP3 of the Day: H-Town Underground All-Stars

  Mark C. AustinB L A C K I E holds court at Dean's on Showcase Sunday.​ We heard a rumor bubble up a while ago about how a couple of the Houston Press Best Underground Hip-Hop nominees were supposed to be working on a group track together. There was even supposed to be a co-sign from Bun B worked in there somewhere. The names rumored to be involved with the project periodically changed, but the message remained the same: the song was to be an official signaling that these were some kids who int

  July 30, 2009

• The H-Town Countdown: Setting the Table

  Roughly 84,000 rap albums have been released in Houston since 1989. For the next six months, we'll be counting down the 25 best of all time every Thursday. Got a problem with the list? Shove it. Just kidding. Friendship. Email it to sheaserrano@gmail.com.​For the last few weeks we have pored over countless Houston rap albums, attempting to narrow down the mass into the 25 best. And if that weren't enough, we then ranked them, top to bottom. It was some stressful shit. Imagine going to the beac

  July 30, 2009

• A Musical Guide to Post-Secession Texas: Houston and "Brazoria"

  The final installment of our Five States of Texas project brings it all back home, to the new state of Brazoria, encompassing all of Southeast Texas from the Brazos Valley to Sabine Pass. ​Patron Saint: Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown. A master of rock and roll, country, Cajun/Creole, blues and jazz, no one area musician sounded more like Southeast Texas. That he spent his life moving all over the area, on both sides of the Sabine, only serves as evidence in favor of one of our geographical hypothe

  August 18, 2009

• Houston Music Fight Club, Round 2: Bryan Jackson vs. Jacob Calle, Bun B vs. B L A C K I E, Beau Beasley vs. Justin Nava

  In last week's Houston Music Fight Club, we pitted six of Houston's brightest-shining musical diamonds against one another in a sort of cruel Internet death match. The only blood drawn was the dark crimson blood of laughter that...yeah, we need to work on our metaphors. Anyhow, we came up with three more semi-local celebrity cage matches. We hope that this actually catches on in real life, so that one day it can be sold to pay-per-view for the rest of the world to gawk at. Finally we will have a

  August 19, 2009

• A Third Ward Pawnshop iPod and the Mysterious Fate of Previous Owner "Scooby"

  Whoever he is (was?), Scooby's iPod wasn't short on R. Kelly.​So a couple of weeks ago, after three or four years of increasingly faltering service, Rocks Off's 30 GB iPod finally died. Completely. Out of sheer broke-assedness, we had held on to it for longer than most. By the end, its quirks and shenanigans were endless, not least its inability to hold a charge whether or not it was actually turned on, so perhaps it was something other than foolishness that impelled us to wear it out in the r

  August 26, 2009

• High-Fiving T-Pain, Wondering Why We Can't Quit Plies' "Plenty Money"

  [Note: Thursday night T-Pain, Wale and DJ MOS performed a private concert at downtown nightclub Venue. Our man Shea Serrano was on the red carpet and inside.] Photos by Larami Culbertson"Is it true what they say about the size of a man's chain?"​ 9:17 p.m.: Yo, the PR camp from Heineken, that company that's putting this concert on, is extremely organized. At one point while we were getting the rundown of how the show would play out from the main PR guy, a woman standing near him placed her fin

  August 28, 2009

• Ask a Rapper: Scooby of G.R.I.T. Boys Gives Us the Three Greatest Houston Rap Groups Ever, Including His Own

  The hip-hop world is a less than sensible place -lots of times, you're even required to clarify when bad means bad and when bad means good- so once a week we're going to get with a rapper and ask them to explain things. Have something you always wanted to ask a rapper? Email it to introducingliston@gmail.com. This Week's Rapper: Scooby of G.R.I.T. Boys This Week's Subject(s): Rap groups as pornos; selling out group members; the three best rap groups from Houston. ​Ask a Rapper: Being a member

  September 8, 2009

• Five Spot: A Crap N.O.R.E. Track Reminds Us of Bun B's Better Days

  Welcome back to Five Spot. Every Friday, we'll examine a recent bit of music news and list five reasons why it's either brilliant or dumb-assed. Send tips to introducingliston@gmail.com.Marco Torres​ Yesterday, N.O.R.E. released "Set Trip," a wispy, "Look How Tough I Am," available-via-Internet track that nobody's going to care about in four or five days. We mention it though, because it features a swift contribution from one of Houston's hip-hop archetypes: Bun B. We actually saw Bun B not to

  September 11, 2009

• The H-Town Countdown, No. 13: DJ Screw's 3 N' Tha Mornin' Pt. 2 (Blue)

  Roughly 84,000 rap albums have been released in Houston since 1989. We're counting down the 25 best of all time every Thursday. Got a problem with the list? Shove it. Just kidding. Friendship. Email it to sheaserrano@gmail.com. DJ Screw 3 N' Da Mornin, Part 2 (Big Tyme Records, 1995)​While researching the Countdown, we came across two very distinct opinions regarding this album; naturally, they were almost diametrically opposed to one another. People either argued that it should be placed some

  October 29, 2009