Three 6 Mafia on Vinyl: Where to Start with the Memphis Originators

Three 6 Mafia started in Memphis in 1991, out of a partnership already running. DJ Paul, born Paul Beauregard, had been DJing since he was eleven and making beats for his half-brother Lord Infamous, born Ricky Dunigan. Juicy J, born Jordan Houston, came looking for help with his own beats, and the three became the Backyard Posse. Lord Infamous coined the name Triple Six Mafia in a 1993 verse and it stuck. Koopsta Knicca joined in 1994, and Gangsta Boo and Crunchy Black filled out the six.

The records sound the way they do because DJ Paul and Juicy J produced all of it themselves, on their own gear, for their own labels. The debut was cut to 16-track reel-to-reel tape in a Memphis room, and the early catalog runs on bass-heavy, horror-movie menace that local radio would not touch at first. The business worked the same way: Prophet Entertainment in 1994, then a 1996 falling out that moved the group to DJ Paul and Juicy J's own Hypnotize Minds imprint in 1997, distributed by Relativity and later through Loud and Columbia.

The catalog keeps mattering because so much came out of it. Tear da Club Up is widely read as a precursor to crunk going mainstream, and the Tear Da Club Up Thugs side project made what is often called the first album produced entirely in that style. Two decades later, phonk producers built a genre out of these tapes. GOOD TASTE carries seven Three 6 Mafia records from 1995 to 2005, the full arc from Prophet to a major label.

Three 6 Mafia - Mystic Stylez

The debut landed May 30, 1995 on Prophet Entertainment, cut to 16-track tape at The Production Room in Memphis and produced start to finish by DJ Paul and Juicy J. Mystic Stylez has all six members plus Kingpin Skinny Pimp, Playa Fly, La Chat and M.C. Mack, and it set the template for a whole branch of Memphis rap. Prophet Records has it back on red vinyl.

• Why it's worth purchasing: the album every conversation about Memphis rap comes back to.
• Why it's worth purchasing: the full six-member lineup in one place, with the Prophet circle filling out the guest list.
• Why it's worth purchasing: red vinyl anniversary edition of a 1995 album that spent years hard to find.

Three 6 Mafia - Live By Yo Rep (B.O.N.E. Diss)

Prophet followed the debut on November 21, 1995 with Live By Yo Rep, a twenty-eight minute EP built around a diss aimed at Bone Thugs-n-Harmony. Both camps later played it down as a misunderstanding rather than a feud, and the two squared up on friendly terms soon after.

• Why it's worth purchasing: the leanest record in the catalog, with nothing wasted.
• Why it's worth purchasing: a fixed 1995 moment in hip-hop, preserved as it happened.
• Why it's worth purchasing: a Prophet Records pressing and the obvious shelf-mate to Mystic Stylez.

Three 6 Mafia - The End

Released December 3, 1996 on Prophet as Chapter 1: The End, this is the first Three 6 album that sounds like a studio made it. The End keeps the same dread, but the low end is cleaner and the arrangements wider, with Project Pat on Where da Killaz Hang and the full Prophet Posse taking over Body Parts. It comes on translucent orange vinyl.

• Why it's worth purchasing: the hinge between the tape-era records and the label-era ones.
• Why it's worth purchasing: Project Pat and the whole Prophet Posse turn up, the Memphis scene in miniature.
• Why it's worth purchasing: translucent orange vinyl on the last album of the Prophet Entertainment years.

Three 6 Mafia - Chpt. 2: World Domination

The first album with real distribution behind it, out November 4, 1997 on Hypnotize Minds and Relativity. Chpt. 2: World Domination revisits four earlier songs, including Tear da Club Up '97, the rebuilt version that swapped in a Theme from S.W.A.T. sample and became the one everybody knows. The Dayton Family, Project Pat and DJ Spanish Fly appear. For more of this, the Tear Da Club Up Thugs album CrazyNDaLazDayz is the next stop.

• Why it's worth purchasing: the pivot record, where the horror beats start aiming at a club.
• Why it's worth purchasing: Tear da Club Up '97, the definitive version, closes the album out.
• Why it's worth purchasing: splatter color vinyl from Get On Down.

Three 6 Mafia - Hypnotize Camp Posse

Issued January 25, 2000 on Loud Records and Hypnotize Minds as Three 6 Mafia Presents, Hypnotize Camp Posse is the whole label on one album: thirteen rappers, all six members plus Project Pat, T-Rock, La Chat, M.C. Mack, Scan Man and Mr. Del. DJ Paul and Juicy J produced every track, and Pastor Troy is the only voice from outside the camp. Get On Down presses it on blue spinner vinyl.

• Why it's worth purchasing: the Hypnotize Minds roster at full strength, all in one place.
• Why it's worth purchasing: one outside guest across the whole album, which tells you how self-contained this operation was.
• Why it's worth purchasing: blue spinner vinyl, and a posse album that rarely gets reissued.

Three 6 Mafia - Choices: The Album

Out August 28, 2001 on Hypnotize Minds, Loud and Columbia, Choices: The Album is the soundtrack to a direct-to-video film the camp produced and acted in themselves, with Project Pat in a lead role. Ludacris guests, La Chat is everywhere, and it is the last Three 6 Mafia album with Koopsta Knicca and Gangsta Boo on it. The 20th anniversary edition comes on cloudy clear vinyl.

• Why it's worth purchasing: the final album with Koopsta Knicca and Gangsta Boo on it.
• Why it's worth purchasing: a rap group scoring its own movie, the Hypnotize Minds way of working in one object.
• Why it's worth purchasing: cloudy clear vinyl, on a record that never had much of a vinyl life.

Three 6 Mafia - Most Known Unknown

By September 27, 2005 the group was down to DJ Paul, Juicy J and Crunchy Black, and Most Known Unknown is where fifteen years of Memphis work met a major label. Stay Fly, with Young Buck and 8Ball & MJG, is the song most people know them by; Mike Jones and Paul Wall turn up on Swervin. Hypnotize Minds, Sony Urban Music and Columbia shared the release, and Get On Down has it on silver vinyl.

• Why it's worth purchasing: the crossover album, and the door most listeners walked through.
• Why it's worth purchasing: Stay Fly, plus a guest list that maps southern rap in 2005.
• Why it's worth purchasing: silver vinyl from Get On Down.

If You Like Three 6 Mafia

• Project Pat: Juicy J's older brother and the most-featured voice in the camp, with five of his own albums here.
• Too Short: Oakland rather than Memphis, but the same independent-first instincts and just as deep a catalog.
• Cypress Hill: the other 1990s group that built a whole sound out of menace and low end.
• Denzel Curry: the clearest modern descendant, to the point of naming a record King of the Mischievous South.
• Danny Brown: a very different rapper with the same appetite for genuinely unsettling beats.

Where to Go From Here

Everything here lives in Classic Hip-Hop, with the wider shelf in Hip-Hop. For the era Most Known Unknown belongs to, our Essential 2000s Hip-Hop on Vinyl: A Starter's Guide covers the ground around it. Titles not on our shelf, if you are filling gaps elsewhere: When the Smoke Clears: Sixty 6, Sixty 1 from 2000, Da Unbreakables from 2003 and Choices II: The Setup from 2005. To browse every Three 6 Mafia title we stock, in every pressing, visit the Three 6 Mafia collection.