Bun talks his new album, the syrup-sipping epidemic in Houston, and reaching out to Lil’ Wayne.

By Joe La Puma

It’s tough to knock a king off his throne. Not even the passing of his best friend has been enough to cloud Bun B’s focus. The Southern rap O.G. and UGK frontman kept motivated to polish off tracks for his upcoming II Trill album, which hits stores April 29. Moving forward with his career without leaving Pimp C’s memory behind, Bun sat with Complex to talk about his new album, supporting ringtone-rappers, and why he won’t counsel Lil’ Wayne about the syrup-sipping that has killed some of his Houston brethren.

Complex.com How many records for the album did you record after Pimp passed?

Bun B: Probably only like three of four. We were heavy into the meat of the album before Pimp passed. The dedication song-the night I wrote it, I wanted it to be one of the last records recorded for this album after what happened. As soon as I did, I felt this need to write something else, once I got that off my chest, just letting everyone know, I miss my brother, I love my brother, but at the end of the day, I’m not as vulnerable as you think I am. I was compelled to write another song about that, so we ended up with three of four after he passed.

What mindset did you have in the studio after he passed?

Bun B: Doing a solo album of course it’s me going in without him, so it wasn’t like we didn’t know we couldn’t do it. But it definitely is different, we live in an age now with Pro Tools and all of that, so a lot of times people aren’t in the studio with each other, a lot of times they’re two-tracking stuff. It feels different to a certain extent, like doing a full project. It’s probably going to feel weird from here on out. This album like I said, it being a solo album, is different but we’re still putting together this last UGK record too, because there’s a lot of music that we’ve already recorded for it. I think that album itself is going to be a little bit weird.

On Trill II, you have a broad range of guest appearances, more than any in UGK memory. What’s the reason for such a cast of characters?

Bun B: To me it’s not just a different cast of characters, it’s just letting people get involved in it more so than we would. Keep in mind that most songs that have features, have four people, so it’s not like you have a 16 song album and 10 of them have people eating up the other verses. One song I have is called “You’re Everything,” and it’s kind of a love song to the South. It’s us showing our admiration and love for the environment that created us and made us who we are. For that I wanted to pick people that when you see and hear them, they’re distinctly Southern, and that’s me, David Banner, Rick Ross, that’s 8Ball and that’s MJG. So there are four cameos on that one track, and there’s three other songs like that as well. There are really only four songs where other people are rapping on the album. All in all when people listen to the album, they’ll see there’s not really as many people taking up space on the album. I definitely wanted to incorporate other people’s creativity. There’s nothing wrong with breaking bread with other people in music.

You seem to be very in tune with the digital aspect of the game. What was your learning curve?

Bun B: It was just about hearing people talk about different things and wondering where they were getting all this information. I read the Times, I read the Houston Chronicle, I read USA Today, and Newsweek, so I take in a lot of different information. But I would keep hearing like, “Yo, I just got this new song,” or “I saw this new YouTube clip,” and I’m like, where are these people getting all this information from? And they’d be hitting up the blogs, so I entered the blogosphere and it was something to see. It’s definitely a unique way of looking at the world. People with all these different opinions, it’s just something beautiful to behold, and I thought I had to jump into this and feel what’s going on, and I’ve been moving forward with it ever since. I’m the gadget king [laughs]. Home // CELEBRITIES // WEB EXCLUSIVE // Bun B