Three 6 Mafia - Mystic Sylez 2xLP (Prophet Entertainment)
"Mystic Stylez laid the groundwork for Three 6’s path to domination. Combining pulpy horror, gangsta rap, and murky sounds from the Memphis underground, Three 6 landed on a formula that would fuel one of the late ‘90s and early 2000s’ most dominant Southern rap dynasties like Cash Money or No Limit. But perhaps even more impressive than that initial reign is the legacy: in the years since the group’s splintering, their mystic styles are periodically exhumed and reanimated by new generations of dark-rap necromancers. Modern subgenres like crunk, trap, horrorcore, and ratchet owe blood debts to the Mafia; the now-omnipresent triplet flow is the late Lord Infamous’ way of communing from beyond the grave; bygone Three 6 classics “Slob on My Knob,” “Chickenhead,” and “Who Run It” still rack up royalty checks from modern samples and interpolations.
The signature Three 6 sound — eerie sounds pulled from horror soundtracks, video game scores, and dusty R&B records, along with prodigious, demented rapping and infectious group chants — would come into clearer focus as the ‘90s progressed. “It spoke to a different generation of Memphis,” fellow Memphis rapper 8Ball said in Netlfix documentary series Hip Hop Evolution, “It was like this young, cocaine-snortin’, gangsta-ass Memphis shit. There’s no God, it’s all debauchery."" - Spin Magazine