Dubb Sicks makes no secret of his white-trash roots. Besides dumpster diving on the cover of his mostly astounding latest effort, the increasingly notorious Austin-based misogynist spews the sort of populist pollution you’d expect from an Odessa native whose people toil on the broke side of the oil industry.
That said, Lifestyles is by no means a Southern rap album. Dubb might rhyme about hick phenomena like crystal meth, but his heart is in the New York underground. On jams with East Coast legends like Pace Won (“Just To Make Y’All Feel It”) and C-Rayz Walz (“Madd Deep”), it’s clear why Dubb is one of the few Texas MCs who gets tour love above the Mason-Dixon: he’s a binge-drinking, brass-knuckle-packing vagrant with a slick tongue, and those are universal features for a set that represents “broke hustlers with no bucks” and resents “pussy hipsters and black dudes with Mohawks.”
If Eminem symbolized post-industrial Detroit and all of its Caucasian frustration, then, to judge by cuts like “The Anthem” and “It’s Over. The End,” Dubb Sicks is equipped to embody all the rage of Gulf hooligans in the post-spill era.