True crime pays for Oscar-winning hip-hop duo Three 6 Mafia

WITH SONGS LIKE “Corner Man,” “Weed, Blow, Pills,” “Hood Star,” “Click Bang” and “+e First ,-,” the track listing on +ree . Mafia’s Last ! Walk reads like an episode guide to the reality crime genre.

“All I watch are crime shows,” admits DJ Paul Beauregard, one half of the pioneering Memphis rap group, in a thick southern drawl. “Crime "#$, American Justice, City Confidential,%e First &'—I have ’em all on a DVR at my house. +ose shows make you realize how hard it is to commit a crime. Of course, they show murders and bad stuff, which is gonna happen every day regardless of the TV cameras, but it also shows the young guys who are getting caught. It’s a wake-up call: If you do bad stuff, you’re gonna end up like this guy.” Ironically, just as +ree . Readied the release of Last ! Walk, their long-awaited fifth major label effort, the group’s hometown pulled the plug on a production deal with %e First &', citing negative publicity and unfairness to local media outlets.

“Personally, I don’t like how they’ve treated Memphis on there,” says Jordan “Juicy J” Houston, Beauregard’s musical partner. “I like City Confidential better because they show you all the good stuff about the city, then they do the tragedy. [%e First &'] is even more sad, because those guys do the crime, get on TV, and then they start crying.” In other words, Houston and Beauregard don’t expect their fans to live the lives they rap about.

“Music is music, and crime is crime,” Houston insists.

“What you hear on a CD, you’d be a dumbass to go out and try.” “Our music,” Beauregard adds, “is entertainment, like movies like Heat and Boyz N the Hood.” In the two decades since +ree . Mafia’s inception, gangsta rap has gone from an underground sensation to a legitimate billion-dollar industry. Long criticized for misogynistic and violent lyrical content, the genre took a major hit last year when, during a congressional hearing, one of its most visible proponents, No Limits mogul Master P, expressed regret over his past output.

Yet, even as sales of gangsta rap Cds have declined, +ree . Mafia’s star continues to burn bright. Beauregard and Houston were catapulted into the national spotlight when +ree . Mafia’s “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” won the “Best Original Song” category at the 0-th annual Academy Awards. Via a reality TV show called Adventures in Hollyhood and appearances on such primetime programs as Studio #$ on the Sunset Strip and NUMB"RS, they’ve maintained—and even cultivated— their presence on the fringes of pop culture.

“But as soon as they cut those cameras off, we head straight to the [recording] studio,” Houston says. “We believe in the dream of taking +ree . Mafia to the next level, so we’re gonna keep on pushing.”