I knew a guy named Tex, and Houston was his hometown, and he talked about something called ‘the Houston pain’ and about a city after dark that became something between the West Bank and Mad Max. He specifically mentioned wild dogs. Maybe this has something to do with why Houston survivor Devin the Dude so famously self-medicates. “I stay high, man,” he says on Waitin’ to Inhale, an album that dissolves effete subtlety in songs (explicitly dedicated to “all the engineers that smoke weed!”) that come off like Richard Pryor (“Feeding these hos dick / Fuddruckers-style . . . ”) dubbed out by Keith Hudson—hilarious and bottomless ain’t-it-fun party spiels with sudden glimpses of sincerity each time the clouds part. “What a Job” has Devin and knowing cannabinauts Snoop Dogg and Andre 3000 explaining exactly how it works to be an actual rapper. “We got a lot to deal with,” says Snoop, finishing up a song as oddly honest and direct as one of those Beach Boys studio-chatter bootlegs (“Brian Is a Burn-Out!”). It’s a pretty representative song for the Dude’s always-personable personality—or representative of the part of his personality that isn’t scamming on girls with shamelessly vivid metaphor (“This dick is so clean you could serve it with lima beans!”). But he does take a moment to poke through background giggles and sleaze with a line like, “I’d like to help you with your sexual needs.” First listens make you laugh, and next listens (“No Longer Needed Here”) find a darker level to the Dude—lonely moments or grim moments when the Houston Pain surges in. But there’s a happy ending for the last track, which puts a little reverb on a puff and a cough and then pixilates a snare drum like a Wackies dub track: “Smoke it ’til it’s all gone!” As the song says: you can kill the pain!