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

Meta-comedy remake Anaconda coils itself into an unfunny mess

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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