T.I.’s Grand Hustle roster is deep. Ever since the Pimp $quad Click dropped their slept-on group project in 2005, we’ve been waiting for the crew’s most inventive member, Big Kuntry King, to go solo. Well, it looks like we’re finally getting our wish on September 30th, when Kuntry is releasing My Turn To Eat, his aptly-titled solo debut on Atlantic Records .
While Kuntry’s spent almost ten years in T.I.’s shadow, he’s capitalizing on that shady position by dropping his album on the same day as Tip’s Paper Trail. Hopefully this marketing move will bring some new fans to the South’s other King. After listening to the album yesterday, Kuntry gave Complex his track-by-track analysis…
“INTRO” f/ Lil’ Duval
Producer: James “Nard” Rosser & Brandon “B” Rackley
Kuntry’s Commentary: “The intro is really who Big Kuntry is. Yeah, I play games, it’s funny, I make jokes, but I’m serious. It start off with all the jokes, but the verse is serious. I’m comfortable in my own skin, but I’m not comfortable in this game. This first album is more like an introduction, so I can get this out the way and get to a bigger, broader audience. [Comedian Lil’] Duval been with us since the beginning, since I’m Serious. Met him doing shows in Jacksonville, Florida, and he been ridin’ with us since. He’s in everybody’s damn video.”
“TOOL IN DA POCKET”
Producer: Keith Mack
Kuntry’s Commentary: “I thug it out a lil bit. When we walk in that club, and ol’ Billy Badass wanna be Billy Badass, but remember pot’na—I’m in the club by myself, but best’a know I got ‘it’ on me. You want to be Billy Badass tonight, you might not make it home. That’s not even for me, that’s for people just to open your eyes up. You might have a safer time in the club because you gotta realize these cats is out there in the club just like that—it’s just their mindframe.”
“DA BADDEST” f/Trey Songz
Producer: Shawty Redd
Kuntry’s Commentary: “Me and Shawty Redd been trying to get together before he was even doing stuff with Young Jeezy, back when Jeezy was just Jeezy. We always partied together anyway, we just get in the studio and knock out a lot of songs. He just nice with it. When we get together, it just feel right when we make the music together. Redd make alternative music too; he make all different type of sounds that y’all haven’t heard yet, but he got that signature street music. He don’t use no samples, he got that signature sound, but a lot of people copying that sound. But he’s the best one with it.”
“WE IZ”
Producer: J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League
Kuntry’s Commentary: “They let me hear a lot of songs like ‘Maybach Music’. But at the time, when I was doing my album I was like, ‘Nah man, that’s not the south homie, I can’t get on that right now.’ At first I didn’t like the beat, and then it just started flowing through. It’s so different, it’s hard. They gave me another beat that I might use for the next album that’s jammin’.”
“POTS AND PANS”
Producer: Shawty Redd
Kuntry’s Commentary: “If you feel like it’s [hip-hop] dead, come down here, and you’ll see me getting to the money and we still doing what we doing. It’s almost like modern day racism. It’s already hard being a black man, now I’m from the South, you hate me for that too? Because I don’t drop lyrics like the people you grew up listening to? Whoever your pioneers are are not our pioneers Down South. I’m talking for the South, this is how we feel. We was always rapping for our corner, our block. But now radio stations started saying, ‘We ’bout to start playing what’s in our city,’ and that’s how the South got up.”
“SOUL OF A MAN” f/Ricco
Producer: Keith Mack, James “Nard” Rosser & Brandon “B” Rackley
Kuntry’s Commentary: “I can’t be more than the soul of a man. I want you to feel me more than a hit song on this record. Do a song gotta be a hit for you to feel the soul of a man? It’s hard for a big company like Atlantic to see what they have, just like it was hard for Arista to see that they had a T.I., Colombia didn’t see they had a 50 Cent. So don’t oversee me because I’m the soul of a man. It’s all G to me, because if you don’t believe in me, that’s more work for me to do.”
“LOVE YOU THE RIGHT WAY” f/Lloyd
Producer: D. Johnson
Kuntry’s Commentary: “I put this record on there because i was going so hard, I don’t want to lose the ladies. So I told the woman, if your man can’t fulfill your dreams, your dreams will come true over here. Lloyd make it R&B like a mutha, but I try to go against him and be on the same page, and the women eat that up. So if a male scan through that song, they’ll be like, Aww that’s an R&B song. But if they listen to it, they’ll be like, That’s right up my alley. Because that’s how it is.”
“WE HERE”
Producer: Shawty Redd
Kuntry’s Commentary: “It’s a real big street song. All that playing, you think it’s a game around here, nah we here. I’m a big boy boss, I’m the big homie, you need to get to know that.”
“FOCUS” f/Young Dro
Producer: Tony Galvin
Kuntry’s Commentary: “Dro do his thing man, he’s crazy with the wordplay [”Super like Mario/Meatball raviol/29 hundred million, Grandma on the patio”]. Just separating ourselves from the rest. We high, but we focused.”
“POSSE” f/MacBoney & Yung LA
Producer: Marvelous J
Kuntry’s Commentary: “‘Posse’ might start some fights. I wanted to make something for the real gang bangers out in the street, because I got some friends that do that…not saying they bad people, just saying…Yung LA is futuristic swag. He’s a youngster; he got the young cats behind him. From the beginning, I had him on ‘Going Ham,’ ‘Killin’ Em,’ and we did ‘Ain’t I’ together. After I took him under my wing and had him on shows with me, now he’s getting his own shows.”
“YEAH (I’M ON IT)”
Producer: Marvelous J
Kuntry’s Commentary: “That’s been blazing in Atlanta for a minute, and they still like it like it’s a new song. I put it on there so people that never heard it could catch up to it. Like ‘Going Ham,’ folks just catching onto the saying ‘going ham’. And that’s how my music always been. But I was way ahead of my time, so seven months later, that’s when the song blew up. Just like everybody feeling ‘The Baddest’ now. At first they weren’t feeling it, now they love it. Now shows poppin’ up for that song. I try to make music that’s relevant for now.”
“THAT’S RIGHT” f/ T.I.
Producer: James “Nard” Rosser & Brandon “B” Rackley
Kuntry’s Commentary: “That’s a record that’s been out for a while, but the whole world hasn’t heard it. I had to put it on there because it just broke the ice. I took Tip’s hook from a song he didn’t finish. And he was like, “how you gonna take my hook—can I at least say it over?” So I had my producers, Nard and B, make a beat around it. So when folks be like, Tip trying to help Kuntry out on a record like “Shoulder Lean,” it’s not the same thing because I actually took it off a song and put it together.
BONUS COMMENTARY
Kuntry on T.I.’s feud with Shawty Lo…
I’m the oldest, Tip is like my young brother, ya dig. And the thing about [Shawty] Lo, Lo never been no bad person. When he lashed out at Tip with the little underground stuff, we didn’t understand what was going on. Especially when we asked him, ‘What’s up?’ He would be like, he ain’t had no problems. I don’t know if it was a publicity stunt; I don’t know what it is. I just feel like anything a person really do and feel, they’ll check it at the door. But that’s a situation Tip can handle. We handle all situations. I’m not finna addressed that, stick to the G-Code. I don’t live on the internet, I’m not a blogger. You gotta see about me just like you always saw about me, and that’s in the streets. Internet cats can’t get to the street. That’s why it’s not really beef, just the he-say she-say.
Credit: Complex.com
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