Exclusive Interview By Statik Selektah
“Rap is a grown-up game,” says Bun B. The legendary artist has proven that with his diverse body of work, from co-founding the seminal, award-winning hip hop duo UnderGround Kingz (UGK) with Pimp C, to a widely acclaimed series of solo projects starting with 2005’s Trill, to films, teaching, entrepreneurship and beyond. But his first love is always the art of hip hop.
Born Bernard James Freeman in Port Arthur, Texas, Bun B is known for pioneering Southern sounds in the genre, bringing the Lone Star State to rap prominence as few had before him. Hip hop acolytes recognize classic UGK tracks like “Live Wires Connect,” “International Players Anthem (I Choose You),” his verses on Jay-Z’s iconic “Big Pimpin’”, and his high-scoring “That’s Gangsta”, to name a few. Today, based in Houston, the innovator spends nearly as much time mentoring others as he does honing his own craft.
Most recently, Bun B and renowned DJ/producer Statik Selektah have triumphed with their TrillStatik series. Their first album, recorded live in New York City, was a star-studded anthology created through an 11-hour livestream in 2019. In 2022, they repeated the success for TrillStatik 2, recorded live over 12 hours at Lower East Side institution The Sweet Chick - again with an A-list lineup.
TrillStatik 3, recorded at New York speakeasy Hidden Tiger, upped the ante further. Over 12 hours of live sessions, the album featured a brilliant cast of players rotating through a world record performance. The 15-song masterpiece included Method Man, Smif N Wessun, Talib Kweli, Smoke DZA, Paul Wall, Haile Supreme, comedian Sam Jay, and many more. Produced throughout December 22, 2023, it was available to the world by midnight on December 23. During the marathon, from the booth to the burgers - served up from his own Houston restaurant Trill Burgers - Bun B was golden all night.
And the TrillStatik duo achieved one more milestone that evening: The first magazine cover story interview streamed live on Sirius XM, thanks to Statik Selektah’s hosting Shade 45’s Showoff Radio. Read on for this revolutionary conversation.
STATIK SELEKTAH: So Bun B, what’s the difference between an album and a mixtape to you, and where does TrillStatik 3 fit in?
BUN B: A mixtape could just be accepted as a compilation of songs… whereas an album has to be seen as a complete body of work. [A] mixtape can be very easy lifting for people, because in hip hop typically, the majority of the mixtapes are done with the artists rapping over other people’s instrumentals. You don't have to go through the trouble of having to secure beats from a producer and not even book a studio time to get everything tracked out. You can pretty much rap over an instrumental like it's a two-track and put it together… You don’t even have to have a mixtape of songs that you recorded all at the same time… It could be some shit you did in ‘07, ‘09, 2010, and then you drop it in 2011. People will accept that.
But an album, they expect it to be fully formed from beginning to end. No real sporadic thoughts; the shit should be organized… You can kind of throw caution to the wind with a mixtape, but with an album you’ve really got to try to hit the nail on the head.
STATIK: Absolutely. And someone call up the Guinness Book of World Records, because we’re the first people to ever do a complete album in 12 hours, and have it released the next day. We’re the first people to [do that and] broadcast it to the world via Twitch [and] YouTube.
BUN B: Yeah, because I’m writing everything live too from scratch. [That’s] the beauty about TrillStatik 3. We get a lot of emcees together, a lot of people really good at what they do, and we create great music. But this is as futuristic, streaming an album live out to the world, [as much as] it is really a throwback. Because this is how most hip hop used to be recorded, with all the rappers in the room at the same time writing their rhymes together. Laying their verses together, waiting to go into the booth after the other emcees going, “Shit, I got to step it up.” This is the original way of creating hip hop music. So we’re going forward and backward at the same time, to be present in the moment.
STATIK: Now, they call you Houston’s unofficial mayor. How did your come-up in Houston shape your music, your attitude, all that?
BUN B: A lot of us had to employ a Do It Yourself mentality because being in Texas, we’re halfway across the country from the West Coast. We’re halfway across the country from the East Coast, and L.A., and New York. Both have large media communities - a lot of different outlets, magazines, TV shows. So it’s very easy to get the word out if you’re an L.A. or New York artist because the platforms to get those messages out were typically available to you. But with social media and streaming and all that, the playing field is level now… If you don’t have money, but you have creativity, thoughts and a strong work ethic, you can push a lot of momentum out into the community just by wanting to work harder.
[In Houston] we just cool motherfuckers. I think that’s the main thing for us. We make friends easy. We love to break the ice. We’re funny, sociable, welcoming. I think all of that makes for a good entertainer and a good friend. And that’s what I believe I am to many people in the hip hop community.
STATIK: You started hip hop at a young age, but you didn’t release your first solo album Trill till you were in your thirties. Obviously had all the UGK catalogue prior to that. What inspired you to make the change, and how did Trill shift the focus of your career? Because [Pimp C, who died in 2009] was still here when you made the first one.
BUN B: Yeah, but Pimp was locked up, so that’s the only reason why I even did a solo album. I had no want or need to be a solo artist, because I felt like [UGK] was the greatest group in the world. It was very easy for me to make music with Pimp… But when he got locked up, I had to do something to keep the momentum going until he got back, to keep the group and his name alive. The best way to do that was by doing a solo album.
But the dynamic shifted, because now I’m doing the heavy lifting. I got to pick the music, find the producers and book the studio time, and then go in and not just construct my rhymes, but also the song. I got to be there for the mixing and mastering, a lot of shit that I never really had to do. So it taught me a lot about the industry. [Before], I would just come in, lay my verse and bounce… and Pimp would do the rest. Kind of like what I do here with TrillStatik 3, but being more involved in the overall process of not just recording but sequencing an album.
That shit changed. But when Pimp came home, it allowed me to be more contributive to the process instead of being detached, write my rhymes and bouncing. I could bring in more say-so and have more opinions from an educated perspective.
STATIK: For a while, you were at Rice University teaching a course on hip hop and religion. What’s your perspective on how the two are linked?
BUN B: Look, religion doesn’t work for everybody. Some of us grew up in religious settings that, as we got older, didn’t really coincide with the direction of life we were going to lead. [Whether] you did or didn’t grow up in organized religion, those things don’t actually help you become a good person or more centered person or help you contribute to society and your fellow man.
For some people, religion doesn’t do that, but hip hop does. That’s the beauty of hip hop as a culture, not just the music. [Hip hop] encompasses many different things… It was meant to bring a sense of unity and community into an area that was being ripped apart. The South Bronx at the time was being torn apart, [people getting displaced], and instead of these people coming from different cultures and languages beefing with each other, the music brought people together, which it always does.
Music always has been the great equalizer for human beings. That’s the way we come together; that’s how we commune. And I believe we pick our friends by the music we listen to. That’s a big part of how we bond with people - the music we listen to, or the God we believe in. Those are the two major things that humans use to commune with each other. So I'm just glad that I do come from a very strong religious background, but that I also add hip hop in my corner. For me, I got the best of both worlds.
STATIK: In [June 2023], you opened your first restaurant, Trill Burgers. Why did you decide to be a restaurant owner and what’s been your experience with that?
BUN B: I decided to do it because when I was presented with the burger, it was the best burger I’d ever tried and probably one of the best meals I’d ever had. I knew the product was going to go, it was going to be big. But I also knew that for me to be a part of it and take it to where I thought it could go, I would have to sacrifice a lot of time and comfort to make it happen. If you watch my page and the Trill Burgers page, you see I’m constantly moving, running around, working, because that’s what it takes to build a brand out here. I’ve done that before… with UGK as a group and with Bun B as a solo artist. So [I’ve presented] a product consistently time after time at different places and [made] sure people got the same experience. We did that with music and now we’re doing it with food.
I’m in a very blessed space. I got a great team, solid support from the hip hop community. All my friends come through - they blow us up, they big us up. I’m in a great place right now and I'm rocking with that fucking burger. We fed everybody last night that came through Trill Burgers.
STATIK: That shit was slapping. And how dope is it watching the hip hop world connect with the weed world?
BUN B: Well, it’s organic, right? Hip hop and cannabis have always had partnerships. We’ve always been operating in the same spaces. We both came from counterculture. We both were ostracized in society… looked at as lesser than, looked at as not wholesome. Now opinions have changed about cannabis [and] the consumption of it… but then opinions also have changed about hip hop. So I’m just glad that hip hop and cannabis stuck around long enough to be recognized for their true contributions to this world. We make shit easy.
