From an observer's perspective, Bubba Sparxxx had nothing to be unhappy about heading into 2006. He had a top 10 Billboard hit & gold single ("Ms. New Booty") & he had inked a deal with Purple Ribbon Records, a dream come true for an Outkast-idolizing southern boy. So why does his Big-Boi-executive-produced 3rd album have so much self-doubt & melancholy lurking between the lines of even its most braggadocious songs? Simply put, because that was always Bubba. Even in feel-good songs like "As the Rim Spins," "Wonderful" & "Hey! (A Lil Gratitude)," his artistry is fueled by the sober contemplation of regrets.
Although ONP made a handful of beats on his sophomore album (& his masterpiece) Deliverance, the lion's share of that album was produced by Timbaland. To accompany the switch from Interscope to Purple Ribbon, Bubba said goodbye to Tim (who only produces one track on The Charm) & enlisted ONP to produce 5 of the album's 11 songs: boom-bapish album opener "Represent," the sinuous "Claremont Lounge," Outkast-esque electro-funk "As the Rim Spins," trappy-triumphant Petey Pablo feature "The Otherside," & the summery, string stab & chipmunk vocal chop-heavy "Wonderful." The result is a breezy, relatively short (about 46 minutes) album of artful, radio-ready music that still can't seem to escape the gravity of Bubba's seriousness.
The opening track starts the self-doubt early, as Bubba reflects on his legacy, or lack thereof, coming to the conclusion that he doesn't want to be legendary, just to make a living: "I guess it just wasn't meant that I'd be mentioned with the greatest spitting, then/Lord, at least let me get it up & pay the rent again." This sentiment returns in "As the Rim Spins," with its tension between hope & resignation, & again in the album's best track, "Ain't Life Grand." Over a sedate instrumental of gentle synths, bongos & Neptunes-esque percussion produced by Big Boi himself, Bubba raps reflectively about the ups & downs of his career & personal life. The declaration "I'm getting sick of banjos & fiddle shit," is the 2nd swipe at his previous album, after the Stevie Wonder-sampling "That Man" where he directly says he "expect[s] no forgiveness for Deliverance." What is there to forgive? I think it has to do with his ambivalence about the subgenre that Deliverance helped spawn--country rap, hick-hop, call it what you want--& the problematic ethos that a lot of its artists & fans ascribe to: basically, "rap would be great without all the black people." (Bubba talks about it in this Rolling Stone article: "I do urban music. I do hip-hop. I don’t want to be looked at as starting anything that’s not reflective of caring about hip-hop culture as much as I care about hip-hop culture.") It's possible that Bubba didn't see all of this coming when he made The Charm, but it's fair to suppose that even in '06, he felt he made a misstep by encouraging his career to be defined by his whiteness.
The Charm is not Bubba's best album of his 3-record major label run. In fact, it's probably the weakest. There's a Mr. Collipark-assisted attempt to remake "Ms. New Booty" in the strip club misfire "Heat it Up"; & "Claremont Lounge," despite a strong Killer Mike feature, feels pointless. None of the 3 emcees seem to fit each other's styles, & the beat is lackluster by ONP standards. But Bubba has always been a hugely underrated lyricist, with an original & inimitable way of stringing together multisyllabic rhymes, & his production almost never misses.
Despite the hugeness of "Ms. New Booty," the album still underperformed both commercially & critically, & soon thereafter Bubba ended up in rehab for his pill habit. The inciting emotion for Bubba Sparxxx is dissatisfaction with choices he's made & determination to do better next time. So maybe it's ironic that The Charm (as in "the 3rd time"), his biggest moment in the mainstream, was also the moment that turned it into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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