Since his release from prison in March of 2014, Boosie Badazz has made some of the best "adult" rap music imaginable. This is partly by design: Baton Rouge and the backwoods Southern communities that gravitated toward Boosie appreciated him for the thoughtful street rapper he always was, even as he came to fame off songs like "Wipe Me Down" and ratchet culture, and since his release, it feels as though Boosie has committed to living up to the 2Pac comparisons those fans gave to him. The other part of this is that Boosie (government name Torrance Hatch) has been through so much strife and ill will that it would be hard to talk about anything else on record. Past the familiar story of the existential dread that comes from street hustling, he went from staring the possibility of a death penalty in the face to serving time in one of the harshest prisons in Louisiana to a freedom nobody believed he’d get to see to the discovery that he had kidney cancer.
It’s this diagnosis that led to Boosie’s most emotionally gripping album to date: In My Feelings (Goin’ Thru It), released just earlier this year. After a nephrectomy to remove half his kidney, Boosie was declared cancer-free: news that is both cause for joyous celebration and introspection on a life lived. His newest album Out My Feelings (In My Past) is borne of this introspection, filled with solemn musings about the old-school street life he came from, the people lost to prison, death, or just time over the years, and his inability to understand how much street codes have changed amongst the youth of today. "We grew up youngstas on the corner, tryna make a livin/ Tryna make it back home, so we take a pistol," he begins on "Takem Back," painting a grim snapshot of the most impressionable and vulnerable time in a young black man’s life in a rough environment.
Throughout Out My Feelings, Boosie reflects on a life covered in scars and pain. Not just his own, but those of the people around him and people he’s interacted with; on "Look at Life Different" he raps about a mother with sons who are stuck in jail, one who is gangbanging and another abusing drugs. His tone is somber but resigned—he knows this story too well: "Asked me to pray wit her and asked me can I call Johnny/ That’s her baby boy who wylin’, catchin body after body." It's clear from his ragged delivery that he hurts for her and her sons the way he hurts for his own mother and the grief he brought her during his own wild days. "Thank God for Boosie" is repeated throughout the song, and the implication is that rap was the only thing that saved Torrance Hatch from these dire fates.
Out My Feelings doesn’t have the rawness of In My Feelings, but its production is impeccable where that one was spotty, and it soars when Boosie reminisces on his pre-rap days or makes statements in line with Black Lives Matter about the murders of unarmed black people by cops. Its lows come more sporadically and feel uncomfortable—like the homophobic lyrics found on "The Truth," for example—and the lecturing to young street kids about not sticking to the code of his youth is understandable but carries an "old man yelling at a cloud" vibe after awhile.
Incidentally, one of the best songs on the album is "Wanna B Heard," a wistful love letter to the forgotten where Boosie raps about the pull of gang life and the cry for help that the violence and crime committed by street kids really is. The most potent line: "I saw Glenn had something on his mind, I should’ve asked him what’s wrong/ Probably would’ve told me instead of blasting his dome." Above anything else, Boosie’s intense popularity began with those most ignored. He was their star, because he listened and he understood and recognized that their pain was real and it mattered in a way a lot of self-proclaimed "street" rappers have never been able to do. Thank God for Boosie.
