a guy named Chad should be 50

+ Fantasia's Purple rain

square one.

I write and have always written in order to stay sane. Words from me on a page — whether nonfiction or memoir, or what I do now which tends to be a combination of both — is a great untangling. It’s an emptying, a map of found connections. I create good sentences when inching toward the monotone hums of my anxiety and melancholy. From writing can come a peace, however ragged at the edges. Such was the case this past fall, when I wrote about 60+ creators of hip hop who died before their time.

It was 2021 when moans of woe about Black men in rap music dying young erupted into a panic of calls to action. In that year alone, we lost eight artists, ranging in age from 28 to 57. Twenty of the 57 Black men here died in their 20s. The oldest two died at 59. Twenty-seven were born in the state of New York, and most of those in the five boroughs. A dozen of Brooklyn’s sons went to early graves.¹

The reporting and writing was in-depth, riling and heartbreaking. So many details from that project haunt me. And the story of one rapper, a guy from the humid and hurricane-swept Texas-Louisiana border, is still heavy on my mind. I’m talking about Chad Lamont Butler of the hip hop duo UGK.

The truest of UGK fans go way deeper into the legendary duo’s catalogue and the mood than I do. They live it. I’m that person who (like so many) vibes to

… the song, with its epic Andre 3000 verse, was chosen by many a media outlet as one of the best songs of 2007. I also used to bop to

… but it’s sour now, and should have been sour (even Jay Z doesn’t like it anymore).

Beyond these and a few other songs, let me not even pretend to know just how deep UGK goes. But I do know the duo’s music must sound to Texans of a certain age like early rap from the Bay Area — MC Hammer, Tupac, Too Short, Digital Underground, MC Ant, K Cloud & the Crew, Sway & King Tech — sounds to me. Like home.

Chad Butler arrived via a lineage including blues guitarists, a disappointed and musical father, an encouraging mother, a helpful stepfather, an active and loving mother, his own commitment to creativity, and a hypnotic, candy-colored drug-of-choice. And:

He was actually diagnosed bipolar. He thought he had a touch of schizophrenia. And he had pretty severe depression issues.²

Then, the heartbreaking details of his codeine-laced