It’s list-making season – for children who believe in Santa, music writers, etc – and there are three rap albums that you are bound to see wherever it is that you see lists: Jay-Z’s American Gangster, Kanye West’s Graduate, and Lil’ Wayne’s Da Drought 3. These artists all create good music and lots of people purchased and enjoyed all three of these works. Lil’ Wayne, in particular, may have produced the two most gifted hours of lyricism ever committed to record. None of those is the best rap album of the year, however. That title belongs to Underground Kingz by Port Arthur’s UGK. I realize that I can’t really say “the best” since I am just a guy who writes a column on the Internet. But I listened to a lot of great rap albums this year including all of the ones above and I’d say that UGK’s was the best. The. Best.

It’s a more momentous, historic album than anything else this year, save Jay-Z. But his was a return to form after losing his thug somewhere between a Chris Martin feature and Cameron Giles. UGK made a comeback, but not from any beat they intentionally skipped. They were the best thing this side of Outkast in 2002, and then Pimp C, one half of the duo, caught a gun charge. This is their first album since his release and it’s a two-disc-long kick-in-the-door.

Two years ago, while Pimp was in prison, Bun B released Trill, an beautifully titled album which was extremely good, if for nothing else than Young Jeezy’s two show-stopping cameos and the fact that Bun is extremely competitive, which can get fun on an album featuring TI, Jay-Z, and Scarface. But Bun never seemed entirely comfortable without Pimp C’s beats or lyrical foil. Back in 1992, they created a brand of muscular drums and soul in the cracks and Bun and Pimp, one guttural, the other nasally, talking about drugs and women and street codes and, above all of that, fate and god.

That whole ’92 sound was jumbled and faint on Trill, but with the return of Pimp C and his production on Kingz comes the synergy that still makes “Pocket Full of Stones” so chilling and real even though it was released at the same time as Kris Kross’s “Jump.” Kingz leans often towards anthems. These songs – like “The Game Belongs To Me” and “How Long Can It Last” – are made in that ‘92 mould but by a group with fifteen more years of skin in the game, so the songs are recognizable and glorifying of UGK’s legend, but also dexterous and evocative. There’s patience and a reflective instinct at play here too. Put this all together and you get lines that are simply iconic, like Pimp C’s “It’s been a long time since I hustled on the block / but very corner that I hit I left it screwed up and chopped.”

There are missteps on this album, often in the same vein as the weaker songs on Trill: side jaunts away from the proven formula. Take those away, though, and you essentially have a greatest hits album of all new material. Kinda like Brett Favre 2007, if that makes any sense. If it doesn’t, just understand: this is the best rap group in Texas history, and while they’ve sounded rawer and hungrier in the past, UGK has never sounded better or smarter or more adept at their art than they do on Kingz.

As Bun raps on “Tell Me How Ya Feel” off Kingz: “I’m the son of the struggle / the godchild of the grind / the product of the product / and the cousin of crime.” He may have felt that way back in ’96, but it took him until 2007 to know how to rap it.