Since before they stepped out in 2000 with their
still-peerless cough-syrup anthem "Sippin' On Some Syrup," the members of Three
6 Mafia have commanded a style that might well be called baroque
crunk—with only the "crunk" part risking misrepresentation. The baroque
part proves sound, in the most florid sense of the term, beneath all the tense,
scary piano lines, tormented strings, and disembodied voices of rappers who
sound either dead or well on their way. But what kind of mafia thrives with
just two members? When does an organization mean more than its individual
parts?
These are questions that haunt Last 2 Walk, the first Three 6 Mafia
album since the group took home an Oscar for Best Original Song in a win sure to
stay in the annals of Academy Awards lore for the rest of time. As the intro to Last 2 Walk tells
it, "only some could last through the pressure" of the aftermath—and so
Three 6 Mafia is now just DJ Paul and Juicy J. That might seem a minor point to
fixate on, especially as it relates to a hip-hop album with the requisite
expanding cast of collaborators, but prime Three 6 Mafia always drew on the mix
of manias and moods smuggled in by its foot-soldiers: the brassy sass of
Gangsta Boo, the zombie-walk stoicism of Crunchy Black, and so on.
Alas, DJ Paul and Juicy J drum up some passable
drama and dread to add to the coffers. "I Got" starts off as a bleary
synth-blitz with chilly cymbals before changing entirely into a piano-tickled
take on something like the Halloween theme. In "First 48," the piano clanks through
delirious circles before an actual horror-show organ enters in. But for all the
intricacy on display in the production, the vocals just aren't there: Very
little proves as engagingly or exhilaratingly macabre as past Three 6 hits, and Last 2 Walk falls
back on a frustrating pattern of pat crunk call-and-response screams. (The
nadir comes when a chorus yells "Three!" in response to another shouting
"PlayStation!" over and over.) It all makes for an effect that's more taxing
than chilling.