{"id":837684,"date":"2026-07-31T07:28:19","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T07:28:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/837684\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T07:28:19","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T07:28:19","slug":"juicy-j-project-pat-dem-goats-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/837684\/","title":{"rendered":"Juicy J \/ Project Pat: Dem Goats Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

The moment Project Pat<\/a> starts rapping on \u201cStill the Same,\u201d the first song on his and Juicy J<\/a>\u2019s new album, Dem Goats, it feels like champagne flutes should be bubbling over in celebration. \u201cIt ain\u2019t gon\u2019 never be the same now,\u201d the 53-year-old Pat says with his whole chest, his voice carrying the sincerity and heft of age. As Hitkidd<\/a>\u2019s beat fades up, Pat meshes with the unbreakable Memphis groove, dropping into a familiar pocket. His staccato enunciations mirror the hi-hats, occasionally adding a grace note here and there, and when he nails his signature move\u2014adding \u201c-ah\u201d to the end of a word and scooping out a lower octave\u2014it\u2019s like seeing a long-lost friend. Despite his status as an elder statesman of Southern rap, Pat has always been slightly overlooked, working under the shadow of his younger brother, Juicy J, and Three 6 Mafia<\/a>, the mythic, deeply influential group Juicy started with DJ Paul<\/a> in the 1990s. But Pat is indeed a legend, and hearing him sound so assured and comfortable eight years after his last dispatch is enough to make any rap fan giddy.<\/p>\n

He and Juicy, despite working closely for the past three decades, have never made a proper full-length album together. Between 2009 and 2011, the brothers released a string of collaborative mixtapes, all of which were low-stakes fun (especially 2009\u2019s DJ Drama-hosted Play Me Some Pimpin\u2019 Mane Pt. 2<\/a>). For Juicy, it was the beginning of a renaissance as a solo artist, signaling the druggy, Flockaveli<\/a>-esque direction he\u2019d take with Blue Dream & Lean<\/a>. Pat, on the other hand, was in a creative wilderness throughout the late aughts and early 2010s, drowned out by ever-expanding widescreen production and often returning to the well of his early work with diminishing returns. Juicy rode stardom as high as a bizarre Katy Perry<\/a> feature<\/a> and eventually settled into a quieter lane, issuing serviceable albums that harkened back to his more minimalist origins. Pat\u2019s output meanwhile slowed to a trickle, and he became a prison minister, visiting inmates across the South.<\/p>\n

No score yet, be the first to add.<\/p>\n

Though the album dropped with little fanfare, Dem Goats is not a throwaway. For the most part, it\u2019s a solid return to form, a chance for the Bluff City hellraisers to remind everyone where so much of the contemporary rap palette originated. Juicy handles the lion\u2019s share of production according to his unwavering sonic vision\u2014it\u2019s as though he ripped open a vacuum-sealed bag of hypnotic synth sequences, mellifluous soul samples, and mechanized drums and found them still fresh. If it weren\u2019t for the pristine, spacious mixes signaling elevated budgets, most of these tracks wouldn\u2019t sound out of place on albums like Layin\u2019 Da Smack Down or When the Smoke Clears: Sixty 6, Sixty 1. A few nods to their foundations pepper the album, like the lifting of Gangsta Boo\u2019s verse from \u201cPlaya Hataz\u201d into album highlight \u201cSouthern Hospitality,\u201d or the looped chant of \u201cNorth Memphis\u201d on \u201cEye for a Eye,\u201d both techniques pioneered during their cassette-tape heyday. The Memphis sound was always timeless, as transfixing as it was body-moving, and Dem Goats makes a great case for finding freedom in a formula.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The moment Project Pat starts rapping on \u201cStill the Same,\u201d the first song on his and Juicy J\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":837685,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[342,49,48,75,341,343],"class_list":["post-837684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-albums","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=837684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/837685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=837684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=837684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=837684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}