Three 6 Mafia: Last 2 Walk (Boston Phoenix, 8/19/08)

On their first album since crashing the Oscars with their contribution to Hustle & Flow, Three 6 Mafia, chopped and screwed down to a two-piece producer/rapper tag team, haven’t lost their focus on getting shorties, rims, ’dro, etc. Has success gone to their heads? Well, if you believe “Lolli Lolli (Pop That Body),” ladies in the clubs are still impressed with Oscar’s golden dome: “She bouncin’ on my lap and she try to unzip/I whispered in her ear, ‘It’s hard for a pimp.’ ” The same song also includes, within an unbelievably sleazy series of verses that conclude with sex being had in a very large moving vehicle, this awkward political endorsement: “There’s a whole lotta room in the front of the range/Like Barack Obama said, yeah, it’s time for a change.” Yikes! The production is somewhat conservative by crunk standards — is it even possible now for a song to employ a tasteful degree of T-Painful autotunery? — as the audio adventurousness of 2005’s Most Known Unknown gets traded in for fight songs and empty boasts set to the now-familiar juxtaposition of minor-key synths and relentless beats. Last 2 Walk is a club-banging record, but it’s hard to recommend something so by-the-book. As Key said in Hustle & Flow: “Just because you got the bacon, lettuce, and tomato don’t mean I’m gonna give you my toast.”