You’re supposed to understand that something bad is about to happen. The cover of Ridin’ Dirty, UGK’s third, breathtakingly expert album, shows Bun B and Pimp C peering over their shoulders from the front seat of a Suburban. The camera’s point of view is meant to be that of a would-be carjacker, and the danger runs in both directions: for two rap stars whose success had made them a target in their hometown, and for the small-time crook who’s about to realize he’s in way over his head.
And in truth, the album is about the danger that lurks at stoplights and on the fringes of dice games. At times, Bun B and Pimp C, who were 22 as Ridin’ Dirty was written and recorded, are defiant or confrontational in response to these threats: untouchable in their slabs, armed like the French Foreign Legion. But their writing deploys violence as something both knottier and more diffuse than a plot engine or the architecture for parables. It’s the air they breathe; it also has tremendous, irreversible consequences.