Shorty The Pimp

By 1992, Todd Shaw had already been releasing rap albums for nine years — he had seen trends rise and fall, all the while sticking to his self-made brand of laconic, bass-heavy street rap. While Too $hort showed no signed of abandoning his original vision, *Shorty the Pimp* is nonetheless an important point of development for the rapper. It was the first album on which he collaborated with Ant Banks, the Oakland-based producer who would become $hort’s most trusted ally in the years to follow. Banks had an instinctual understanding of $hort’s sound, emphasizing its essential components and bringing a leaned-back rhythm and extra-heavy, naturalistic bass thump to “I Ain’t Nothin’ But a Dog,” “I Want to Be Free (That’s the Truth)” and “So You Want to Be a Gangster.” $hort handled the rest of the tracks himself, including the autobiographical “In the Trunk,” arguably his most anthemic song since “Life Is… Too $hort.” Additional support appears in the form of the Dangerous Crew, $hort’s hand-picked posse of Oakland rappers who trade verses on the extended jam “Something to Ride To.”

But what separated Shorty the Pimp from the rest of the now-crowded rap field was the music.