Recording information: Mike Dean's House Of Hits, Cypress, TX; King Of The Ghetto Studios, Houston, TX; MAD Studios, Houston, TX; Noddfactor Studios, Missouri City, TX.
On 2006's I'M STILL LIVIN, Houston-based rapper Z-Ro (born Joseph McVey) paints a vivid picture of ghetto life. Highlights of the album include "City Streets," which features a cinematic arrangement and a weeping hard-rock guitar sample, and the disarmingly sensitive "T.H.U.G. (True Hero Under God)," a track that inventively places fast, frenetic rhymes against a gentle, Quiet Storm-style backdrop.