You'd be hard-pressed to find another 90s rap crew more influential on the last decade of mainstream rap music than Three Six Mafia. The sound crafted by Juicy J, DJ Paul and Lord Infamous reverberates across the landscape of music, in everything from trap synths to drumbeat patterns in dance pop and R&B. With Crunchy Black, Gangsta Boo and Koopsta Knicca, the collective from Memphis rewrote the rules for everything.
Make no mistake, Three Six Mafia has a hand in the development of trap, crunk, horrorcore and bass music. And their sound is more avant garde than is often acknowledged, somewhere between slow-rolling and something druggier and darker. The crew has an affinity for everything from Golden Era rap to G-Funk: they've flipped an LL COOL J classic and have some of the best basslines in the game. But they land somewhere undeniably Memphis and all their own.
We ranked the 25 Dopest Three Six Mafia songs: