Trick Daddy

Trick Daddy is an interesting proposition, in hip hop terms; he’s never managed any real acclaim with the critics, who have often savaged his work, and he’s enjoyed only moderate commercial success, too, but he’s remained in the spotlight within the genre itself, and continues to turn out records to this day. His debut album dropped in 1997, but was poorly received; whilst there’s no question that Daddy - real name Maurice Young - had had his fair share of run-ins with the law already by that point, it was also true that everything about the album seemed to be a cynical attempt to cash in on the kind of ‘dangerous’ image that the likes of Wu-Tang Clan were making fashionable around that time, with even the album art looking as if it had been lifted directly from Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s Return to the 36 Chambers. Since then, he’s released a slew of records that all have a titular preoccupation with the idea of being a thug, including www.thug.com and his most recent effort, Finally Famous: Born a Thug, Still a Thug. He tours sporadically in his native U.S., where he retains a modest cult fanbase; it’s difficult to envisage, though, any kind of mainstream breakthrough at this point.