Album Review: Out the Mud by MudBaby Ru
MudBaby Ru raps with the whole family in the room, Pop’s fingernails, an uncle at the stove, Granny fussing about sagged jeans. Out the Mud is a West Memphis household pressed onto wax.
Cross the Mississippi out of Memphis in ten minutes, the first exit off the Arkansas side being West Memphis, a town truck-stop industry trudges across, the Memphis rap economy mostly. MudBaby Ru starts in from that side of the bridge with a lay-in of his ad-libs 40 Boy ENT, Big 4BE, a committee hyped behind him. When stories talk about childhood and arrive now that’s Lil’ Ru the person at hand and the dead and the dead, the ones at hand crowd at song, ahead of any opp.
Granny tells to grab up his britches on “Let’s Talk,” and here mom is on her heels, son just reminds her of her dad, now baby. Ru was smart at school and remembers “Residue under Pop fingernail from sniffin’ out the bag,” an uncle also pops out, selling work white enough to upset Dr. Umar. Key Glock does the title song on hook off of a jet straight on the block, and Ru is here on family history: “Pop cooked breakfast, Unc cooked coke/TT made spaghetti out the same pot.” The Camrys turned into a Bentley on a truck somewhere, and he’s just saying “Let’s Talk” is still calling himself a man on a truck but not rich.
The instructor on “Gun Class II” presents his name as Mud, takes an oath on life, and, in the same breath, calls Fifth to plead his case. The instruction is footwork: “I say right foot, left foot, step up, shoot,” and guest lecturers don’t drop character: Nardo Wick reframing his shooters as barbers looking to chop a fro, G Herbo whipping something white, claiming it’s Jack Harlow. Ru fools his way to worse. He dispatches the blister Belichick on “40 Mo’ Reasons” and throws off of opp hoes as chums bucket on “Ridin Round,” where neighbor finds the dead and posts “Oh my God, I think he dead” on Facebook. Still, even on “Yumz,” three minutes cru at that, he deviates his Plan B chit-chat to describe his anatomy to Oscar Proud.
The five women he knows in a bulletproof one on “Black Truck” count them down from four to three after looking at which women had tried setting the game. One had one of her brothers; another one had someone fingering at a neck chain. Just the last she gets a phone call from someone and answers his own position and his phone (“Ho can’t get me touched, if you get me scraped, we gon’ spin behind that shit”).
On“Car Freestyle,” he details the names he lost: “I lost Jayde, and I lost Lil B, I lost Bezzal, long live CB.” But he verse above is on loyalty, who they with, he has been answered, until Ru’s watching his watching how Lil 9 die warning anyone who wants speak of dog’s words: “Skrilla Flow” has that same weight across a single verse, no chorus, first fire, blood at rush in heart, a lineage bar on being a up a fifty before ever mentioning up, and uncle whipped so hard he damaged his shoulder. In the latter part of the verse, he admits fatigue: “Man, I’m tired of runnin down my opps, gettin’ tired of walkin’,” few bars in “I’m sick and tired of this strand, that shit makin me tired.”
PaperRoute Woo holds the final verse on “IDK” and repeats with Ru’s opening verse word for word, the hundred G’s counted in his sleep a second time. Ru’s well enough around that, but it was sparse before the repeat, and “AP Gold” comes off a single drawer, money, switches, a plug taken down, with no house in it. It’s bettered on “300,” walking in store like it doesn’t matter, ballin like Joker while Ru takes, reciprocate-wise. Grown women that do business, a Presi that cost him fifty.
There’s a daughter on “Auto Mud” that got racks already, and a son going to be born soon whose speech is first before birth, make him eye, let know, he is next, your pops is a Don. Same song he gives a ten to his lil’ mans, griping it went to clothing and hoes instead of bows, then folds “You right, man, I can’t tell you to tell you what to do with that ten, you earned it.” Even gets more soft on the Pretty Ricky-sampled “Love With a YN,” jumps in front stick-up for girl, admits wouldn't cry if she gone, taking her daddy to him ain’t the guy for her and she “She a star like the shit in the top of my roof/When I’m sad, I look in sky for her.”
An entire room of sound on “Button,” Kash and Mannie and lil’ Mike and Tony, who has the beat up too loud. Ru down’s out part’s inside it, a fifty-round drum, capable of shooting out all week, fresh pin into a 5.56, a cooling kit on a ZPAP, police raiding TT’s crib while Unc hid ice in the couch. At end of last verse hold’s mic down, puts rap money at 1.5, dates first million back when he was about twenty-two. Mannie sticks the beat, lil’ goes out crank something, and Tony still has it too loud.
Solid (★★★½☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Let’s Talk,” “Black Truck,” “Skrilla Flow”