the southern takeover

Bun B cowboys up for his Houston Rodeo Takeover with Southern star cast and surprise guest Erykah Badu

On Friday, March 3 night, Houston icon Bun B returned to the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo with a bunch of hip-hop/R&B artists, successfully packing NRG Stadium with people who were ready to take that trip down memory lane.

Bun first hit the stage for this year's Southern Takeover, dropping a couple of sanitized bangers from his days in UGK (Underground Kingz) with the late Pimp C, with a full band behind him. He rocked a black, fringe leather fit, complete with a poncho bearing the UGK logo and a cowboy hat bearing the Monster Energy Drink logo.

Then came the cavalcade of stars. Last year, he stuck to Houston artists: Paul Wall, Slim Thug, several Lils. This year, he opened up the lineup to artists from other Southern states. First up was Tennessee, as he brought out Tela, producer/performer Jazze Pha and duo 8Ball & MJG – all Memphis boys – to do a few numbers.

The crowd got more turnt when Bun introduced Mississippi MCs David Banner, as he and Houston MC Lil’ Flip performed their rambunctious collabo “Like A Pimp,” and Big K.R.I.T., who teamed up with Bun to do a cleaned-up version of their “Country Sh*t” remix.

The stadium rafters truly started rattling when welcoming talent from Louisiana. Lafayette singer Cupid had people line-dancing in the aisles when he sang his hit “Cupid Shuffle.” That was just an appetizer for the main course, which came in the form of Cash Money Millionaires Juvenile and Mannie Fresh.

After Fresh gave the crowd a few bars of that Big Tymers fave “Get Your Roll On,” Juvenile followed with two crowd-pleasers you just knew he was gonna do: “Rodeo” and the one-and-only “Back That Thang Up.” Bun came up unfortunately short with Georgia, a state rich with hip-hop talent.

He got Atlanta-bred Trinidad James, who wore a red, Roy Rogers-style cowboy outfit and did an adequate rendition of his hit “All Gold Everything.” (Houston radio personality HardBodyKiotti did briefly come out to help Bun led the audience in swag-surfing as they performed “Swag Surfin” from Stone Mountain’s Fast Life Yungstaz.)

As for Texas, it wasn’t as bountiful as the myriad Houston legends he rounded up last year, but there were still some memorable moments. A guitar-wielding Scarface did a couple of songs; one of them served as background music for an “In Memoriam” montage of all the local/national rap stars we’ve lost throughout the years.

Screwed Up Click alumni YungStar performed as a trio of slabs – carrying such Houston rap vets as Slim Thug, Killa Kyleon and the Botany Boyz – did a brief promenade on the stadium floor. (One of them was also covered with the logo from Bun’s Trill Burgers business.)

But the final guest was a real surprise. After telling the Houston audience he loved them, Bun showed them how much by bringing out Dallas neo-R&B queen Erykah Badu. Wearing a large coat and an even larger silver hat, Badu stalked the stage and occasionally flashed her grill to the cameras as she performed “On and On” and “Tyrone.”

The latter ended with Badu giving quite the dramatic, high-pitched finale. The show came to a close with everybody coming back onstage to join Bun in performing another UGK classic “Int’l Players Anthem (I Choose You).”

“We put 75,000 people in here tonight,” Bun told the audience, before all the performers hopped on the back of trucks and rode off the stadium floor. (The show announcer later declared that it was 74,573 audience members— that's more than last year's H-Town Takeover.)

Houston's OG gave an entertaining, family-friendly show that took people back to a simpler time, when people mostly used their computers to burn mix CDs.

Photo by Marco Torres

Hometown hero Bun B surveys a crowd of 74,573 adoring fans at his Southern Takeover.

Setlist

“Wood Wheel,” Bun B

“Pocket Full of Stones” Bun B

“Get Throwed,” Bun B

“Tired of Ballin’,” Tela, Jazze Pha

“Girls in the Club,” Tela, Jazze Pha, 8Ball & MJG

“Space Age Pimpin’,” 8Ball & MJG

“Like A Pimp,” David Banner, Lil’ Flip

“Country Sh*t (Remix),” Big K.R.I.T., Bun B

“All Gold Everything,” Trinidad James

“Swag Surfin,” Kiotti Brown, Bun B

“Cupid Shuffle,” Cupid

“Get Your Roll On,” Mannie Fresh

“Rodeo,” Juvenile

“Back That Thang Up,” Juvenile

“I Look Good,” Chali Boy

“Knocking Pictures Off the Wall,” YungStar

“Wanna Be a Baller,” YungStar

“Havin’ Thangs,” Big Mike

“Smile,” Scarface

“Mary Jane,” Scarface

“Big Pimpin,” Bun B

“On and On,” Erykah Badu

“Tyrone,” Erykah Badu

“Int’l Players Anthem (I Choose You),” Everybody

Bun B David Banner Erykah Badu Houston Rodeo Pimp C Slim Thug Southern Takeover rodeohouston

Movie Review

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 doesn't match the first movie's enthusiasm

Blumhouse

Five Nights at Freddy's 2.

Blumhouse Productions first made their name with the Paranormal Activity series, establishing themselves as a leader in the horror genre thanks to their relatively cheap yet effective movies. In recent years, they’ve added on “soft” horror films like M3GAN and Five Nights at Freddy’s to draw in a younger audience, with both films becoming so successful that each was quickly given a sequel.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 finds Mike (Josh Hutcherson) and his sister Abby (Piper Rubio) still recovering from the events of the first film, with Abby particularly missing her “friends.” Those friends just so happen to be the souls of murdered children who inhabit animatronic characters at the long-defunct Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, children who were abducted and killed by William Afton (Matthew Lillard).

A new threat emerges at another Freddy Fazbear’s location in the form of Charlotte, another murdered child who inhabits a creepy large marionette. Mike, distracted by a possible romance with Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), fails to keep track of Abby, who makes her way to the old pizzeria and inadvertently unleashes Charlotte and her minions on the surrounding town.

Directed by Emma Tammi and written by Scott Cawthon (who also created the video game on which the series is based), the film tries to mix together goofy elements with intense scenes. One particular sequence, in which the security guard for Freddy Fazbear’s lets a group of ghost hunters onto the property, toes the line between soft and hard horror. That and a few others show the potential that the filmmakers had if they had stuck to their guns.

Unfortunately, more often than not they either soft-pedal things that would normally be horrific, or can’t figure out how to properly stage scenes. The sight of animatronic robots wreaking havoc is one that is simultaneously frightening and laughable, and the filmmakers never seem to find the right balance in tone. Every step in the direction of making a truly scary horror film is undercut by another in which the robots fail to live up to their promise.

It doesn’t help that Cawthon gives the cast some extremely wooden dialogue, lines that none of the actors can elevate. What may work in a video game format comes off as stilted when said by actors in a live-action film. The story also loses momentum quickly after the first half hour or so, with Cawthon seemingly content to just have characters move from place to place with no sense of connection between any of the scenes.

Hutcherson (The Hunger Games series), after being the true lead of the first film, is given very little to do in this film, and his effort is equal to his character’s arc. The same goes for Lail, whose character seems to be shoehorned into the story. Rubio is called upon to carry the load for a lot of the movie, and the teenager is not quite up to the task. A brief appearance by Skeet Ulrich seems to be a blatant appeal to Scream fans, but he and Lillard only underscore how limited this film is compared to that franchise.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is better than the first film, but not by much. The filmmakers do a decent job of making the new marionette character into a great villain, but they fail to capitalize on its inherent creepiness. Instead, they fall back on less effective elements, ensuring that the film will be forgettable for anyone other than hardcore Freddy fans.

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Five Nights at Freddy's 2 opens in theaters on December 5.

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