"Everything I ride original, no kits on them chops," Pimp C proudly declares on "Pinky Ring," a thick slice of Curtis Mayfield-sampling funk from UGK's 1996 opus, Ridin Dirty. The Port Arthur, Texas duo managed to make waves 90 miles down the road in Houston by applying to their music the same virtue that was paramount to the city's auto aficionados: originality. For decades, H-Town's car culture has revolved around "slabs"—slow, low, and bangin' riders outfitted with candy paint, a fifth wheel mounted on the trunk, and rare rims outfitted with protruding spears called "pokes," "swangas," or "elbows." These aftermarket details required imaginative customization from any number of the city's experts. In 1996, Houston already had a well-established hip-hop scene. Geto Boys put the city on the map with their unadulterated realness, and by the mid-90s, the Screwed Up Click's pitched-down, glacially-paced sound came to define the region. But by the time Pimp C and Bun B hit their stride on Ridin Dirty, they, like H-Town's custom car artists, injected even more vibrant originality into the city's culture.
Similarly to Atlanta's Organized Noize, who Pimp actually shouts out in the outro of "Pinky Ring," Ridin Dirty's production team (primarily comprised of Pimp and Scarface confidant N.O. Joe) breathed life into their beats with a heavy use of live instrumentation, hiring a number of keyboard, bass, and guitar players to bolster samples of golden-era funk. The result was a vivid document of both the good and bad—from the crystalline laments of mortality on "One Day" to the sun-kissed glory of "Hi Life"—that was to the increasingly stagnant Houston sound as slabs are to factory-made car models.
Of course, Ridin Dirty was tied to slab culture in much more than a metaphorical sense, too. References to Fleetwood 'Lacs, Mercedes Benz 600 Ss, AMG and Lorenzo rims, Yokohama tires, candy paint, and trunk-popping jump off the page as colorful scene-setting devices, as well as aspirational luxuries for the listener. Cars are so central to the album that Bun and Pimp actually appear in one on the cover, looking over their shoulders in a perfect distillation of Ridin Dirty's intoxicating blend of paranoia and pursuit of wealth.
As Bun B tells it today, he and Pimp were just like any other auto-obsessed Houstonites in '96. "Comparing, showcasing, and talking about the newest car innovations is a way to bond between Southern men and I think car men in general," he told VICE over email, going on to explain the importance of the city's car washes that offered detailing services. "The car wash is the common communal area for car people in the South. Meet up, get clean, and show your sound. The detailing took an hour tops, but guys hung out for two or three times that."
Unlike, say, the stretch Hummer in Juvenile and Lil Wayne's "Bling Bling" video, or the prohibitively expensive (starting at only $189,350!) Maybachs immortalized in the name of Rick Ross's record label, the cars UGK touted were more competitive on the street level. They actually required some work on the owner's part. Constructing slabs has become a much more attainable pursuit in the years since the album's release, thanks to specialized auto parts businesses popping up in response to fierce demand that sometimes proved violent in Houston. UGK's impact on this culture still reverberates through South Texas's custom shops today. So in celebration of Ridin Dirty's 20th anniversary, we hopped on the phone with some of the region's longtime slab artists to get their thoughts on the landmark album.
EDDIE KENNEDY, OWNER OF 3RD COAST CUSTOMS
Bun, Pimp, and I, we're all from the same area. I'm originally from Beaumont, they're from Port Arthur and put it in everybody's face. And a lot of people for a long time never knew what a slab was, but it started to get major exposure and people actually started to accept the slab scene. People in Canada, New Zealand, Tokyo— we ship swangas everywhere. There's people everywhere that want to be down with it now, it's crazy.
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