BUBBA SPARXXX

Dark Days Bright Nights

Beat Club Records

From somewhere deep down in the dirty south comes Bubba Sparxxx. Not from Compton, Brooklyn, Detroit, or even St. Louie, but from the small town of Athens, Georgia – a few miles south of Stankonia- where hip-hop’s newest shining star was born and raised. And it shows; Bubba’s brand of hip-hop is far from the hood, instead being close to the farm.

Comparisons with Eminem and Outkast are a bit out of line, even though some have insisted on making them. The only similarity between Slim Shady and Bubba is that they both are white rappers. Their styles have little in common. As for Outkast? While they have some similarities in their sound, nothing is strikingly similar. Geography alone unites them. Anyway, comparisons are for drooling record industry types that are desperate to get some MTV and radio play. The fact is that Bubba Sparxxx has his own sound, and it’s pretty damn good.

Bubba’s flavor of southern country hip-hop could play well “at The Tunnel in New York, or at the dorms out in Athens,” as he boasts in “Bubba Talk.” And it’s true, his tracks have the usual hip-hop bounce quality, but accomplish it in an entirely different way than the Ja Rule’s and Fabolous’s of the world do. The cows mooing, and horses neighing over heavy string and bass beats in “Bubba Talk” is unique at the very least.

And while he might not have anything groundbreaking to say, Bubba still has a solid flow complete with witty wordplay. On the title track, he raps, “I probably won’t even fault ya if you dismiss me as the demon/Because it’s true/I am not you/My skin’s the tone of pissy semen/But if we fight this evening I assure you, we’ll both be red/And it’ll take your whole slum and all they guns to leave me dead.” Bubba does have some serious words for his people of the South struggling with poverty in “Well Water.” He rhymes “Did you know they are closing down the only factory in this town/but you still got the nerve to say there’s plenty of work to go around.” No bling here: He spouts, “Even though it’s Christmas Day, we still eating off foam plates.”

But most of all, Sparxxx’s debut excels because of the funkadelic production of Timbaland. The juxtaposition of the first two tracks show Timbaland’s ability to be creative and varied when he lays down his beats. “Take Off,” the album opening song, is complete with an airplane metaphor, where Bubba takes off towards his “destiny” while the movie Gladiator is being shown in flight. The track includes a slow moving, anticipation building violin sample. Next up the journey really takes flight with the uproarious “Ugly,” a hard grinding, fast moving number. Later on Timbo makes more than a cameo on the fun track “Twerk A Little,” where he aptly rhymes about Sparxxx’s sound, “It’s like hip hop meets f’n Tim McGraw.” After Bubba bumps uglies with the same girl as Timbo, he thanks him for “his sloppy seconds, but after I send her back to you, I bet we are both infected.”

It’s easy to tell by the CD packaging that Bubba Sparxxx is something different. Absent is the usual rapper iced out with his shirt off. Instead we get a picture of a NASCAR and some scratch tickets. It’s not as if the whole “country rapper” shtick is merely a gimmick with little sizzle behind the steak. Not only is it creative, but it’s quality as well.