Boosie Badazz

Boosie's most explicit influence testimony names one artist by album title: 2017's BooPac, a portmanteau tribute record. "He affected me in a way where he made me want to rap and tell my story," Boosie said of Tupac Shakur, tying the album to a 2017 interview. "He wasn't afraid to talk about what I went through. So 2Pac was a heavy influence on my career as far as me wanting to not fabricate my story, me wanting to really rap about what I really went through." It's a lesson in mode, not sound: confession as the whole method, delivered plain.

listen: upstream & hereshare

1995

Dear MamaTupac Shakur

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2015

Letter 2 PacBoosie Badazz

listen forPlay Tupac's "Dear Mama," a plainspoken address to one person over a spare, warm loop, against Boosie's "Letter 2 Pac," a direct-address tribute written the same way — as a letter, not a boast. Both drop the usual rap armor for verses that name real dates, real rooms, real regret, delivered conversationally rather than performed. Where Tupac addresses his mother, Boosie addresses Tupac himself, carrying that confessional address forward a generation — thanking the man who showed him a rapper could just tell the truth and call it a song.

Pimp C, of the Port Arthur duo UGK, signed Boosie to his label Trill Entertainment in 2001 and stayed hands-on afterward, appearing himself on 2002's "Head Busta" rather than just lending his name. "They just looked out for me, man," Boosie said of Pimp C and his partner Bun B in 2022. "He always made me better ... I use that as a CEO now, I use those tactics." The debt runs past business: the critic writing for the pop-culture site Grantland heard "the countrified funk and gospel sensibilities of Pimp C's instrumentals for UGK" inside the tracks Boosie's own producers built around him years later.

listen: upstream & hereshare

1996

One DayUGK

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2002

Head BustaBoosie Badazz

listen forCue up UGK's "One Day," a slow, bass-heavy meditation on mortality that never raises its voice, then play Boosie's "Head Busta," where Pimp C steps directly onto his mentee's own record rather than being sampled or namechecked. Notice how little changes: the same unhurried, syrupy Southern drawl, the same groove built to be felt more than admired, Pimp C's verse settling into Boosie's beat like it was always built for him. That's the mentorship audible in real time — the mentor's actual voice on the record, not just a shadow of his style passed down.

Ranking his all-time top five rappers in 2024, Boosie put Juvenile — the New Orleans rapper who broke nationally with 1998's 400 Degreez — alongside Tupac and DMX: "Me, 2Pac, DMX, I always say Juvenile because he raised me. I say the people who raised me." He added that he knows the 400 Degreez album word for word. Critics hear it too: the magazine Grantland described Juvenile, alongside fellow New Orleans rapper Soulja Slim, as one of Boosie's "direct predecessors," a Southern voice absorbed into his own before he'd written a verse of his own.

listen: upstream & heresource: HotNewHipHop — Boosie Badazz Reveals His Top 5 Rappers Of All Time (backs the Tupac and Juvenile testimony) ↗share

1998

HaJuvenile

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2006

ZoomBoosie Badazz

listen forPlay Juvenile's "Ha," which closes almost every line on a single syllable — half chant, half skeptical question mark — then Boosie's "Zoom," which leans on its own one-word hook the same way, repeated past the point of meaning into pure rhythm. Both ride a laid-back, almost-talked flow that treats every line like a hook rather than a verse, over production indebted to New Orleans bounce's off-kilter bump. It's the vocal habit Boosie absorbed whole from 400 Degreez: let the beat breathe, and let one word carry the chorus.