Pimp C

Chad Butler, performing under the name Pimp C, joined forces with Bun B to launch UGK and elevate hardcore Houston, Texas hip-hop into broader view, while also becoming central to a grassroots effort whose unlicensed T-shirts moved in volumes comparable to the “Yayo’s Home” and “Frankie Says Relax” movements. UGK first surfaced in 1988; a measured sequence of albums and guest spots gradually positioned the crew among Texas’s most respected acts.

That trajectory ended abruptly in January 2002 when Pimp C received an eight-year prison sentence for violating probation by neglecting the community-service requirement attached to an earlier aggravated gun assault conviction. Bun B continued performing and amplified the “Free Pimp C” slogan at every opportunity, prompting thousands of unauthorized shirts bearing the phrase.

While still incarcerated, Pimp C’s debut solo project, Sweet James Jones Stories, reached stores in early 2005; audiences quickly noted that more than a quarter of its tracks reused previously released vocals despite newly recorded beats. Authorities released him late that year, before he had served half his term.

His first complete solo album, Pimpalation, arrived in summer 2006. In December 2007 Pimp C was discovered deceased in a West Hollywood hotel room after an accidental overdose of promethazine and codeine—the principal ingredients of “purple drank.” Rap-A-Lot president J. Prince and the rapper’s widow, Chinara Butler, finished the album he had been preparing, The Naked Soul of Sweet Jones, which appeared in 2010. Additional recordings surfaced as Still Pimping in summer 2011, followed by another collection, Long Live the Pimp, in late 2015.