Album Review: Dem Goats by Juicy J & Project Pat
After thirty years of trading verses on each other’s tapes, Juicy J and Project Pat finally make a full album together, a blunt-drum instruction manual for surviving the feds’ camera age.
For decades now, North Memphis has been exporting the same pair of voices of one pruned into chants and ad-libs, the other lagging into its half-step behind the beat. Juicy J founded Three 6 Mafia, while his older brother Project Pat ran parallel to the dynasty in Hypnotize Camp Posse, cutting Mista Don’t Play into Memphis scripture. They both are past fifty, and they’ve never recorded a collaborative full-length album (outside of a mixtape) before this one. Project Pat talks in the intro, doing TV shows, radio interviews, podcasts, and prison tours, leaving the gangsta rap for the young niggas heading for the penitentiary.
On “Out of Order,” the threat is no longer the opp, but the partner helping the prosecutor, and Project Pat goes through the routine: the plea of not guilty, additional charges for brandishing K’s, moving into the federal prosecution. While Juicy J opens the verse on the first rule: you can’t owe anything to nobody, and then he keeps getting weirder: fentanyl strips over your own marijuana, mama sitting in the first row at a trial of a telling man. Juicy J gives the lesson on “These Streets” to the young listener, on jail, death, and wealth: move alone, check the bro who can’t look you in the eyes, the assignment of the film Juice is waiting at home. The sixteen-year-old kid, described on “Eye for a Eye,” is already charged as an adult, caught a body, and he’s not even old enough to vote.
The judge who passed the sentence to the killers of XXXTentacion appears in “Don’t Do It,” guaranteeing a man a death penalty while serving the sentence, and Juicy J finishes his verse with shot spotter technology, GPS embedded in the car so that there won’t be any more chases anymore, drones, phone records, service log records, and the closing in of infrastructure: “This not GTA, this real life.” Juicy J flips the case study to another side on “Life Be Lifing,” where federal agents kick in the door, baby mama being an informant, ATF enjoying your Instagram pics, no Christmas spent at home, and Hanumankind is adding more movement to the beat than anyone here. He brings some statistics (95% federal conviction rate) on “To Be Real Witcha,” and the camera feed containing all the evidence needed; Project Pat spent over 100K on bail, yet he served all of his days in prison, and Snoop Dogg describes the homie who PC’ed up and made the case against himself for the alphabet boys.
Project Pat still places his lines in a hair behind the drum; over the dark piano loop and a hard bounce of “Still the Same,” that lag becomes a highway of the same gravity as his repentance, made, he says, before federal agents got him into their net. Meanwhile, Juicy J works the opposite pocket, chant phrases and ad-lib room, warning that the biggest threat to your survival may turn out to be your next of kin, trying to save young niggas from going to the cage and the grave. He drops into the host mode on “Southern Hospitality,” arguing the crown is long overdue since all this new shit sounds like him; Project Pat supports the claims, there’s a lot of cappin’ in this rappin’, most sample artists should crown him too. The voice of Gangsta Boo, who died in 2023, runs through the last part of the song, chasing away player-haters with her .32, which will put you down to the floor. For a brief moment, the crown discussion includes her.
The Mexican OT manages to fit more syllables in the same pocket on “Bank Of”: a rapper who looks like a scammer, while Juicy J describes the city that looks like Home Depot, everyone has a hammer, and Project Pat, who has spent time with the cartels, turns from a thousandaire into mils, while lots of people back home are DOA. Anderson .Paak shifts the center of “Wasting Time” through phrasing and timing, while Project Pat paints the picture of his mama in a black dress thanking God for the lack of stress. KARRAHBOOO provides the driest and the most succinct attack on “Tap.” He doesn’t hit women, but don’t make her hit one, and he takes over the song from two men playing with switches.
A couple discusses Instagram likes at the beginning of “Hold On.” Juicy J describes the love as toxic and pleads with her to stay in the same breath, saying he’s scared, and then Project Pat suggests putting a muzzle on her mouth. The brothers provide the stand-on-business talk on “Cut All That,” and flex talk on “Red Carpet Treatment” over grids so close that you could almost swap them, and the hooks separate them; a walkthrough for eighty grand and a wife serving him grapes like the prince of Zamunda are good lines sitting idle in place.
Facing thirty years once, Project Pat asked who sat him down and answered the question on the intro to “Free My Dog”: “I sat me down.” Then the hook asks for somebody’s freedom, a man who stole a pistol from an old man for a few hundred and robbed him, beat him until he defecated, got shot by that same man, lost a limb, and was born and died degraded, and faith as great as the size of a mustard seed: “Fall asleep to the cries of a grown man.” Kenneth Whalum’s horn makes the song church-like, and Lecrae, who has lost partners making ten a kilo in Memphis, prays that this song will be how they remember him.
Before “Never Coming Back” even starts, Juicy J mentions the lost friends and school shootings and then puts it in plain lines: depression of the years gone by, a dog who has just lost his appeal and has left when his daughter was two, she is a grown woman now, death after death, until he can hardly grieve anymore, and the darkest of them: “Drugs the only thing that’s solvin’ it, so I’m dissolvin’ it.” Project Pat asks in his verse how his best friend became a witness, and then he rewinds to the forties, stealing food to survive, Section 8 apartments noisy with roaches and rats, going to bed as a child and waking up as a grown man in chains.
Killer Mike tells one and only street story here that spans the whole life. On “Choose Wisely,” he recounts the story of his partner from the eighties who stole a pistol from a lady and was pulling it on junkies daily, robbed a man, beat him until he defecated, got shot by that same man, lost a limb, and was born and died degraded, glory stories exaggerated all the way. Anthony Q. sings the sentence over him: this is the life that made you choose, and Juicy J recounts the collateral damage: a shootout in the park, an innocent kid dead, and a man awaiting fifty-five years at eighty-five percent, expecting flying cars and floating cities on the other side. Juicy J says it like a tour date, and the man will be right. The future will arrive; it just will not wait for him.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Don’t Do It,” “Never Coming Back,” “Choose Wisely”