It seems like half the rappers in Memphis have been affiliated with Three-6 Mafia over the course of the group's 15-year history. But even singular voices like the sneeringly sassy Gangsta Boo and the goofily adenoidal Lil Wyte have been overshadowed by the trademark murky bounce of Three-6 house producers DJ Paul and Juicy J, who've pioneered a darkly simplistic form of Southern rap built on eerie minor-key synth melodies and huge, cavernous drums. On their last two projects (Frayser Boy's Me Being Me and the Three-6 group album Most Known Unknowns), the producers experimented with lush soul samples and sweeping strings, yielding their biggest-ever hit, "Stay Fly". So the most striking thing about Straight to the Pros, the debut album from Paul and Juicy's new protégé Chrome, isn't the emcee himself; it's Paul and Juicy's decision to mostly abandon their successful new direction for the impenetrably hard horror-crunk on which they built their name.
Straight to the Pros is the purest example of the Mafia's signature sound-- a fog of ghostly chimes and ominous synth-bass foghorns-- since their 2003 album Da Unbreakables, but if it sounds like a bit of a rehash at times, the approach also results in a handful of pieces that rank among their best production work yet. On "16 oz.", a churning wave of bass stunningly drops out to make room for an old-school 808 and an evil little xylophone riff, while "Gutta Man" interpolates the theme of the old "Spider-Man" cartoon to add an ecstatically bizarre edge to an otherwise run-of-the-mill rob-and-kill track.
As for Chrome, well, he's fine. He's got a high-pitched, nasal voice-- sort of like Eazy-E-- that makes a great foil to Paul and Juicy's riotous swamp-bass excursions. During the screwed-up chorus of "What Cha Need", he offers a percussive double-timed counterpoint to a series of disembodied voices, whereas on "Get They Ass Kicked", he's all heated snarl, refusing to be outshined by guests Lil Scrappy and Lil Wyte. Still, he never says anything unusual or revelatory, sticking instead to the typical Three-6 tropes of dealing drugs and beating folks up. So the album's most unexpected moment comes from Juicy J: On the now-traditional album-closing posse cut, surrounded by dudes talking themselves up, he dedicates his entire voice to Hurricane Katrina: "Now they wanna call us refugees?/ What the fuck you mean?/ 'Cuz a nigga ain't ate in three days and his clothes ain't clean." It's a curious glimpse of what could happen if Three-6 Mafia abandoned its violently myopic worldview and used their dark powers for good.
