Let Us Remember: PSK-13’s “Like Yesterday” ft. UGK

“I never thought that there would ever be a time

When a man would want to kill another man behind a rhyme

I never thought I would ever live to see

Another man try and come and take my life away from me

I never thought I would ever have to deal

With the fact that to protect my life somebody might get killed

But I’ll survive and I know I’m blessed to say

I know tomorrow won’t be like yesterday”

 

That’s the chorus of “Like Yesterday,” a track by Houston rapper PSK-13 that features UGK and production by Pimp C. Despite easily being a candidate for one of top twenty best UGK songs of all time (I know it’s officially a PSK-13 song, but after you listen to it, you’ll agree this is undoubtedly a UGK song), the song is only available on PSK-13’s album Born Bad? and as a bonus track on the 2007 Southern Way reissue, screwed and chopped by DJ Screw. I first heard the track on Noz’s $64 Cologne compilation.

 

Like on “One Day” and “Hi-Life,” “Like Yesterday” finds the group reflective and melancholy, looking back on their lives with a mix of regret, defiance, and humility. But even more than those two songs, “Like Yesterday” is brutally honest in a way you rarely hear from “gangsta” rappers. While every album from that genre features an obligatory “Sorry for selling crack and killing people” song, it’s rare that a song will come out and admit how surreal it is that a) people kill each over words in a rap song, b) people kill each other at all, and c) that to protect your own life you might have to take someone else’s. 

 

In Pimp’s verse, he portrays his lifestyle as a mix of desperation (“We used to sell dope cus time don’t hold up/How the fuck you gonna eat if you ain’t got shit to fold up?”) and escapism (“Got my mind on Donny Young, doing 40 for cheddar/We smokin’ that skunk and poppin that trunk to make us feel better”). A possible key to the song also comes in his line “Living our life wrong cus we weren’t supposed to live long.” If you’re convinced you’re going to die young, it may be easy to taunt death, to treat it like it’s no big deal, but as you grow older and your life becomes more stable, the idea of death becomes much more real and frightening. In this sense, the chorus can be read as a confession of the fact that, despite all their youthful shit-talking, they’re actually scared to die.

 

Though I stand by my claim that UGK steal this song so completely that it becomes a UGK song, I do have to give credit to PSK-13 for a pretty great verse. In lines like “I remember this like yesterday, Saturday nine o’clock/Electric Company backed up by Schoolhouse rock” and “I was only 13, mannish, used to run through some chicks/Used to catch the bus to the Majestic to watch kung fu flicks,” he does a great job of creating a vivid picture of his “yesterday.” 

 

Bun’s verse starts out reflective (“As my days go by/I wish could close my eyes/And just expose myself to my past”), but quickly turns defensive: “But I suppose I can’t change the path that I chose/And why would I wanna? Everybody knows I just tried to do right.” But soon he turns back to his reflections:

 

Drugs I used to ride it, used to hide it, used to sell it, even tried it

Denied it to the end to my momma but eventually

it came out, her baby son done turned the game out

Couldn’t take the shame out her eyes

All the lies, all the excuses

When your momma’s crying it’s all useless

Boy you ain’t ruthless you’re just your momma’s baby

Who’s hoping and praying that maybe things could be like yesterday

 

Those last two lines say so much. Faced with the disappointment and shame in his mother’s eyes, Bun is a baby once again, hoping and praying he can return to the protection of his past. By selling drugs, by being famous, by talking tough in his rhymes, he’s put himself in a potentially fatal situation and there is no turning back.

 

“Like Yesterday” is a brilliant and complicated song. It wrestles with questions of regret and responsibility and reveals the fact that the duo aren’t as bulletproof as they claim to be. You can hear in their voices and in the music how deeply felt the sentiments in the song are. Songs like “Like Yesterday” were UGK at their best: talented, flawed, and honest to the bone.

 

PSK-13 ft. UGK – Like Yesterday

 

Buy PSK-13’s Born Bad? album