Recently, rumors about an impending reunion between Trae and Z-Ro began to populate the atmosphere. It seemed mostly like hogwash; though neither of them ever officially acknowledged a rift between the two, everyone pretty much understood that something had pushed the two founding members of Assholes By Nature towards opposite ends of Houston's hip-hop spectrum.
But not too long after the murmurs about their getting back together became hot topics on message boards, Twitpics started popping up on Twitter showing the two together, along with messages about their being in the studio, working on this or that.
And then, like a belated Christmas, it was officially confirmed: A joint album between the two, It Still It What It Is, the follow-up to the heralded It Is What It Is, is in the making.
The two linked up Sunday to shoot a video for one of the new album's tracks. We stopped by to see what was what.
Some notes from the shoot:
- The video shoot took place at various locations around downtown and the surrounding areas. One of the shots filmed was at a dirty, dilapidated building down the street from Warehouse Live. It was ratty and the windows were boarded up and it generally looked a good place to hang out if you wanted to catch hepatitis. If it were unofficially named Warehouse Dead, that wouldn't be too far off.
- When we came walking around the corner, the very first thing Trae did was make fun of our pants. Skinny jeans are a great big joke among the gangsters, apparently.
- It should be noted that Trae and Z-Ro announced their intention to work together again back in December, the same month that those thousands of birds and fish instantaneously died. People have hypothesized that fireworks were the cause, or that some mysterious disease was the cause, or that maybe even lightning was the cause.
The answer seems clear to us: When Trae and Z-Ro reunited, it shook the Earth to its core, destabilizing fragile ecosystems and food chains and so forth. Z-Ro has been known to open up chest plates simply because he couldn't think straight. Trae packs something that they classify as steel. Birds and fish never stood a chance.
- The video shoot was for one of the songs off of the new album that might be called "Fucced Up World," which is definitely a redo of Tupac's "White Man's World." They were playing the song loudly on one of those portable iPod docks while the video was being filmed. It does not suck.
- When we walked up to Z-Ro he offered a closed fist as his hello. We grabbed hold of it like it was a doorknob.