It would have been better if Slim Thug spared us this blinding group effort. It's true that group albums usually have the sheer luck of sounding like crap and punishing everybody in the process. This is no different.
Cut from the Same Cloth
The reason for all this trouble, Slim Thug, is one scary person – off the mic. Peaking at around 6’ 7’’, the Houston Rockets certainly missed out. Right. On the mic, he’s skillfully emotionless and a Hogg short for his group the Boss Hogg Outlawz. He’s an awfully boring rapper on the mic, too, surrendering his freedom of speech to a highly formulaic rhyming gridlock pace (he could be a great rapper off the mic, for all we know) that probably gives him enough time to think, think again, and then rap, or else think again about rapping. Boss Hogg Outlawz is not just his group, it’s 7 inexact clones of his rhyming gene.
Boss Hoggin'
With that in mind, their debut Serve & Collect is hard to enjoy with a ridiculous reliance on rigid personalities, group chemistry (there’s none if you were wondering), and naturally Slim Thug. Being that it’s a group album, usually a pretext for disaster, each member does manage to escape the group mold for a few spare chances at individual success like on “Rollin” featuring C Ward. The more members like Killa Kyleon and PJ crawl out under their group heading, the more we want to crawl in our own pitiful hole and cover our ears; “Badge On My Neck” is a slippery joyride ("I drop the top and I slide") that begins with a car and ends inside the car.
The only slightly great moments occur at the hands of Slim Thug like “We Boss Hoggin’” and “This is For My Gs”, the latter only significant because of a Slim Thug-helmed chorus.
The Bottom Line on Serve and Collect
The boss, as he calls himself, is going to be in need of a more improved workforce if he wants to remain the boss of anything. At this point, in spite of the group–-he’s the boss of solitude. No one in the group can quite hang with him ever on this debut.
