Not that he’s been away for that long in fact he’s taken Jigga’s one-album-a-year approach so much to heart that his next LP, Release Therapy, is announced on the CD inlay of this one. Welcome back, you humble, subtle rogue, you. “I’m the best/and I ain’t really gotta say that shit” concludes the intro. Hip-hop is the music that ate the world, and in Bridges, it has the most irresistible grin for that often grim mouth since Busta Rhymes’ last video close-up. The snarky little beat builds tension nicely without doing anything spectacular, but then that’s not necessary: the whole point of Ludacris, his very essence, is to live up to his name in a florid explosion of charm, wit and rowdy libido that seldom has much do with deep thought, restraint, or indeed reality as most of us would see it.
And a free spririt he is, claiming to have “sold more records than Elvis”. His first three records managed it, and by gumdrops the intro to his latest vaudevillian theatre of the amusingly absurd sees him sparking on all cylinders once again claiming to have plans “bigger than Serena booty” one moment and declaring of the current anti-hip-hop arrests “they’re trying to give us felonies/so they can lock us up/one at a time/but true writers stay free/ in every one of our lines”.
Ludacris intro 2004 how to#
You have to hand it to the man born Christopher Bridges, he sure knows how to start an album: with a bang.