On “Go Somewhere,” he drunkenly details a night where he’s stopped at the entrance of the club and can’t get in, despite being a guy who appeared on a Dr. As long as he has his gateway to the world, a 1979 Cadillac Seville, he’ll keep on pushing-regardless if crooked cops know the stash spots underneath the dash, or if pedestrians gawk at his beater.

“Lacville ’79,” a downtempo funk odyssey, unfurls as Devin overhears neighborhood gossip while being ostracized for his beloved, busted car.

The opener, “Zeldar,” imagines an alien traveling through space and time just as Devin would, using weed to cure anxiety but remaining an outcast: “I rolled into the hood/I’m greeted, but it wasn’t all good/I saw mixed people all kinds of colors and they looked at me like I was weird.” Producer Domo’s pianos and cartoon sound effects play around as Devin attempts to bring levity to his celebrity: “My name is Zeldar and we shop at Walmart.”ĭevin might yearn for the high of celebrity, but he also relishes the lows of normal life. It’s a self-awareness few artists could crystalize or even approach Devin does it for an entire album. It cultivates and further expands on Devin’s everyman persona, a man more concerned with “reefer and beer” than being the biggest rapper alive, much less on his block. Devin’s world was hard, but he always took it easy.Īt the onset, Just Tryin’ Ta Live attempts to balance Devin’s would-be superstar status with his affable, BarcaLounger nature. Other Houston rappers indulged in mafioso fantasies or wild capitalistic flexes. Off sheer charm and confidence, Devin could make you rally behind having a shitty car-as long as you had a car, you won. It’s a ne’er-do-well opus, a 60-minute stretch of time where the narrator could be any person on any given day.

Just Tryin’ Ta Live is the kind of rap album where you don’t even need to aspire to be Devin-mainly because he’s high and non-aspirational. The sound of Devin’s world-green, hazy, and funky-also had space for deeper meaning.Īnd by trying to be serious for once, Devin the Dude unlocked his secret power: creating moments more realistic than any of his Houston counterparts. Devin intended Just Tryin’ Ta Live to lean more into the music than his humor, alluding in a 2002 interview with MTV to a more “serious riff” going through the album. It had all of the same crude sexual humor that made Devin an outright star on “Fuck Faces” but as the album wore on, it flattened out. “I feel like I am no better than anybody else, and sometimes I don’t get the girl at the end.”ĭevin’s previous album, his 1998 debut The Dude, amped up the goofball nature of Fadanuf and packaged it around verses from Scarface, the Odd Squad, and others. “I’ve never considered myself a star,” he told Noisey in a 2017 profile. Houston’s favorite weed head, the guy type-casted for stoner comedy soundtracks, was suddenly a known entity outside of city limits, though not really a household name. Dre tapped Devin for “ Fuck You,” off of Dre’s explosive 2001, plucking him off of shows with Dre protégé Mel-Man. There was Devin on the chorus of “ Fuck Faces,” a sex romp from Scarface’s 1998 album My Homies that evolved into a cult classic. The road towards Devin the Dude’s second solo album, the quixotic and subtly titled Just Tryin’ Ta Live, made it seem like he was being primed for stardom. With dreams of a second Odd Squad record dashed by the label, Devin determined he could be just as good on his own. The album crashed and burned later that year, Rap-A-Lot poured its resources into Scarface’s hard-bodied The Diary instead. It was part East Coast boom-bap, part juvenile raps about sex (“Your Pussy’s Like Dope”) and weed (“Rev. The Odd Squad’s sound didn’t come anywhere near the rugged sides of Houston, instead opting for back-of-the-crate samples of Milt Jackson, the Crusaders, and the Five Stairsteps. They were funky class clowns, messing around with samples and instrumentals and delivering only one album, 1994’s rollicking Fadanuf Fa Erybody. He and his group the Odd Squad-a rag-tag trio of misfits turned best friends featuring Jugg Mug and the blind rapper DJ Rob Quest-defied all conventional Rap-A-Lot logic. He didn’t have Scarface’s mystique, Bushwick Bill’s outrageous stage persona, or Big Mike’s blunt delivery. Devin was always “the dude,” another cast member in Rap-A-Lot Records’ long history of colorful characters who never fit hip-hop’s ideal image of a star.

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