As hip-hop gets increasingly close to containing more beef than most Texas cattle ranches, Ludacris will soon hurl some lyrical spears — not at a fellow rapper but at a reporter — on his new album.
The Atlanta MC promised to
return some of the fire and ire at controversial and conservative political pundit Bill O'Reilly on his fourth album, Chicken & Beer, due in late summer. Last year, the host of Fox's "The O'Reilly Factor" blasted Pepsi for tapping Ludacris to be one of its spokespeople because he was a "thug rapper" who "espouses violence, intoxication, and degrading conduct to women."
The very next day, Pepsi axed Ludacris from its ad campaign (see "Ludacris Barks Back At Pepsi, O'Reilly; P-Roach Antics Not An Issue For Soda Giant").
"I feel like they don't respect the black dollar," Ludacris said of the beverage company's decision to drop him. "People just need to get their facts together [to] see if you want to support this company from now on. It's about learning how businesses are run these days, especially for the kids, so that we understand that none of this has to happen anymore."
Pepsi's move to nix Ludacris while keeping Jack and Kelly Osbourne as spokespeople seems even more prejudiced given Jack Osbourne's recent admission of having a drug problem (see "Jack Osbourne From Rehab: 'I Got Caught Up In My New Lifestyle").
"When they put the Osbournes on," he said, "that's basically them saying I'm worse than the Osbournes, so I don't know who makes the decisions up there. No pun intended, but that's ludicrous, man."
While it's not exactly known how Ludacris will skewer the big-mouthed broadcaster, the jabs will sit alongside Chicken & Beer songs such as "Teamwork," an ode to sexual threesomes, and "Too Much," a musical homage to herb.
Guests on the album include Snoop Dogg, Eightball, Scarface and Ludacris' posse Disturbing Tha Peace (see "Ludacris Warns Against Idle Chitchat, Tries To Out-Bass Tyrese").
So as not to get stereotyped as someone who relies on big-name producers for his hits, Ludacris chose to work with a host of them — some known, like the Three 6 Mafia, and others, like DJ Nasty, still relatively underground. As for the LP's title? It's been marinating in Luda's head for almost 20 months, which isn't that surprising considering that the inspiration has been sitting in the rapper's stomach for a lot longer than that.
"People want to know where all the craziness is coming from, the creativeness, the rhymes," he explained. "It's from eating chicken each and every day. One way or another — baked, I don't care if it's fried, rotisserie, a Caesar salad with chicken on it — I'll eat it. Chicken every day."
Before fans feast on Chicken & Beer, they can hear his "Act a Fool" on the "2 Fast 2 Furious" soundtrack. He just hopes he doesn't live up to the song himself when he appears in the film, which opens June 6.
This report is from MTV News.
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