After the underwhelming success received for his freshman album Already Platinum, Houston native Slim Thug decided to do his best to distance himself from the machine that pushed him away from his roots that was Interscope records. Since his 2005 debut, he has released two group albums along with his partners in rhyme, the Boss Hogg Outlawz, but otherwise we haven’t heard much from the low-toned Texan.

With his official return Boss Of All Bosses, the self-proclaimed “boss of the north” doesn’t take much of a step forward with his content or production, but what he does do is continue the legacy of the Houston Hip-Hop scene with a slightly different approach sonically than most of his peers. Songs like “Top Drop” which features the third coast’s favorite White boy Paul Wall and the UGK assisted “Leaning” fall in line with what fans are used to from the state of Texas.

For a considerable portion of the album though, S. Thug’s sound takes a couple steps back as the music proceeds to add synths to the arsenal of instruments utilized to possibly widen his mainstream potential with a few tracks from “Lollipop” producer Jim Jonsin such as the lead single “I Run.” Even Mr. Lee’s spaced out remix to the originally Dr. Dre produced “Bitch I’m Back” sounds a little more clean than what one would expect. In these cases, the songs seem to find Thugga still coming off with the swagger that you have come to count on from the former Neptunes affiliate and provide more than satisfactory results.

With every stride to craft a good album, however, comes a misstep of sweet-tooth nonsense like “Smile” and the unnecessarily Auto-Tune filled “She Like Me.” The rest of the album is littered with substandard production and faulty guest verses from people as obviously trivial as J Dawg to phoned in 16′s from Texas veterans like Scarface and Z-Ro.

Boss Of All Bosses is by no means a failure, but fans who didn’t follow the Houston movement back when it first went Pop in 2005 most likely won’t be enthused. On the otherside of the coin, for those who were riding with Slim back when he was “Still Tippin,” then this album will easily keep them satisfied for future endeavors.

3cigs

Previously Posted — TSS Presents 15 Minutes With Slim Thug | Slim Thug – “I Run” Video | Overhead…