Big Boi - Boomiverse (DOLP)

   “As long as I have a job, he’ll always have a record deal,” L.A. Reid once said about Big Boi. It sounded nice; it’s the sort of thing we like to imagine hardened moguls saying about their sentimental favorites. It was around the time that Big Boi’s first solo record, Sir Lucious Leftfoot: The Son of Chico Dusty, was struggling publicly to escape Jive’s corporate ledger into the world. As the recording sessions, bills, and tensions mounted, the album began to feel like a toxic, troubled asset, which made it all the more surprising when the exhilarating, endlessly replayable final product finally leaked into daylight: This was the album everyone was so worried about?

Seven years later, Big Boi’s solo career feels if not adrift, then circling the same spot. He’s definitely not coasting, but his solo career is still a goodwill project. Sir Lucious is still unstoppable whenever you cue it up, a massive, liberating party going on behind a door you forgot to open for seven years. But 2012’s Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumors was a step backward, a genial and middling album full of collaborations that didn’t quite gel. Boomiverse is closer in spirit to Sir Lucious: He’s steered the ship back toward the straightforward, funk-infused party territory. The producers are a straight-flush of dependable collaborators, from Organized Noize to Mannie Fresh to even Scott Storch, who also worked on Sir Lucious and whose name doesn’t pop up on that many big-name rap records anymore.

Boomiverse doesn’t have the same freewheeling, blitzkrieg energy as Sir Lucious, but it reestablishes Big Boi as a dependable record maker who will always make music worth checking for, no matter what else is going on around him. He’s not really in a position to be competing against Migos on rap radio, and he doesn’t want to, at all—“The Super Bowl ring hand is full,” he told Pitchfork in 2012—so he embraces his parallel universe. Everyone on Boomiverse sounds out of touch and fantastic. Snoop Dogg, Killer Mike, Kurupt—they are all leaning into the pits and crags in their voices, embracing their age as a sort of superpower. Big Rube pops up on the opening, Organized Noize-produced “Da Next Day,” and he sounds approximately six thousand years old: “True fusion only occurs at the heart of a star,” he rumbles, which is not really a sentiment for the squeaky-voiced anyway.

You can tell that Big Boi is still in love with the sound of his voice, and still fascinated by finding places it can drop into busy productions: “This type of paper just don’t fold or get thrown in the booty club, flexing/We hoody-hoo them hoes and have them glued to the section/Ain’t nothing new, that’s just us oozing perfection,” he hop-skips on “Order of Operations.” “I put the bottle down, hit the throttle, got’em now/Sodom and Gomorrah, deplorables all around my style,” goes a section on the Fresh-produced “Follow Deez.” He sounds like he’s sipping from the same fountain of youth as E-40, whose enthusiasm for his art could power city blocks.

There are a couple of moves here that land on twisted ankles: “Mic Jack,” produced by DJ Dahi and DJ Khalil, sounds like a Justin Timberlake solo cut translated from Hungarian, with bar mitzvah-worthy synthesizers, Adam Levine awkwardly crooning, “The dancefloor tells no lie,” and Big Boi proclaiming, “I build a bear before I build a bitch.” “Kill Jill” pairs a haunting little vocal sample from the virtual anime pop star Hatsune Miku with Killer Mike and Jeezy; it’s a strong cut, but it’s hard not to wince a little when Big Boi muses, out of nowhere: “They say Cosby gave them roofies/Now who know what the truth is?” It would be repugnant if it wasn’t so half-hearted; he doesn’t even have the bravery to stake out a position, he just indulges in some drunk-uncling.

This is exactly the kind of avert-your-eyes old-guy grumbling he’s normally so adept at avoiding. As usual, he takes a bar or two to remind us how seriously he takes his lyrics—“I’m gone keep on pushing this pen, I don’t write on no iPhone” (“Made Men”), or “I tend to overthink when I ink these bars, but y’all don’t even try” (“Overthunk”)—but his touch is nimble and he never lingers on a point or gets bogged down. On “Order of Operations,” he talks about buying land over Lexuses. On “Da Next Day,” he calls himself “rap’s Underground Railroad” and leaves a dollar tip for a Waffle House waitress in the same breath. This is Big Boi’s mind in motion—jokes, insights, insults, wisdom, and confessions all shooting out of the nozzle of a fire hydrant. There’s room in his party for human-sized feelings.

There is exactly one potential pop hit on Boomiverse: “All Night,” a singing-in-the-shower romper with a rollicking piano line that feels like something D.R.A.M. might be doing. Check the credits, and lo and behold, it’s none other than Dr. Luke behind the boards. The song has none of the lacquered, assembly-line sheen of his usual work, providing further evidence that Big Boi at his best is a top-shelf collaborator, someone who instinctively knows how to draw vital energies out of unlike minds. Boomiverse probably won’t alter his trajectory, but there are several songs here that I would not be the least bit irritated he played at a festival. For a guy whose catalog includes “Rosa Parks” and “Bombs Over Baghdad,” that is not faint praise.

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