Bubba Sparxxx

Warren Anderson Mathis (born March 6, 1977), better known by his stage name, Bubba Sparxxx, is an American hip hop recording artist from Troup County, Georgia. He is perhaps best known for his singles "Deliverance", "Ugly", and "Ms. New Booty", the latter of which features the Ying Yang Twins and peaked at #7 on the US Billboard Hot 100.

Early life and education

Mathis was born on March 6, 1977 and grew up in a rural area north of LaGrange, Georgia, a town 65 miles southwest of Atlanta. His father was a school bus driver, his mother a grocery store cashier. His closest neighbor, who lived half a mile away, introduced him to rap music through mixtapes mailed from New York City. The music of 2 Live Crew was his introduction to hip hop; he began listening to West Coast gangsta rap such as N.W.A and Too Short and the Atlanta duo OutKast. With rapping as a hobby, he was a tight end and linebacker for his high school's football team and earned All-Region honors in his senior year.Steve Herndon, a former offensive lineman for the NFL's Atlanta Falcons and Denver Broncos, played football with him during high school, according to an interview with Down-South.com. In 2007, he moved from Atlanta to Tampa.

Deliverance (Bubba Sparxxx album)

Deliverance is the second album by American rapper Bubba Sparxxx, released on September 16, 2003 by Beat Club/Interscope Records. It was produced by Timbaland and Organized Noize. The album debuted at #10 on the Billboard 200 with 64,500 copies sold in the first week released. Although this album was only moderately successful, selling around 350,000 copies, it is regarded by many critics such as The Source, Hip Hop Connection and more mainstream magazines such as Q to be something of a landmark in hip-hop music. The album's main strength according to critics was that it embraced Sparxxx's grass roots, with production heavily influenced by country music and similar musical styles. This influence is evident on tracks such as "Comin' Round" which sampled its chorus from a track by the bluegrass group The Yonder Mountain String Band, leadout single "Jimmy Mathis" which is led by a catchy harmonica tune from the Area Code 615 track "Stone Fox Chase", and "She Tried" led by a washboard rhythm section and a mellow fiddle sound.

Bubba

In American usage, bubba is a relationship nickname formed from brother and given to boys, especially eldest male siblings, to indicate their role in a family. For some boys and men, bubba is used so pervasively that it replaces the given name...The nickname may also be used outside the family by friends as a term of endearment.

The linguist Ian Hancock has described similarities between the African language Krio and Gullah, the creole language of African-Americans in the isolated Sea Islands of South Carolina and points out that the Krio expression bohboh (boy) appears in Gullah as buhbuh, which may account for the "bubba" of the American South. (http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/06.htm)

Robert Ferguson notes in his “English Surnames�’; Bubba corresponds with the German bube, a boy. This matches Saxon and Hibernian tradition.

Because of its association with the southern part of the United States, bubba is also often used outside the South as a pejorative to mean a person of low economic status and limited education. Bubba may also be taken to mean one who is a "good ol' boy." In the US Army and Marines, bubba can mean a lay soldier, similar to grunt but with connotations of endearment instead of derision (e.g., "Can you make that device easier to work with, 'cus every bubba is gonna have to use it.").

Bubba (fish)

Bubba (c. 1982 – August 22, 2006) was a Queensland grouper who resided at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, Illinois. Bubba is believed to be the first fish to undergo chemotherapy. He was often nicknamed "The Super Grouper."

History

The 69.3 kilogram Bubba was donated to the aquarium in 1987 by an anonymous donor; at the time he was a female about ten inches long. Bubba switched gender to male (being a protogynous hermaphrodite) in the mid-1990s and eventually grew to 154 pounds while living in the aquarium's "Wild Reef" shark exhibit. In 2001, Bubba developed an unusual growth on his forehead, which was eventually diagnosed to be malignant; the aquarium called in veterinarians to remove the growth surgically and treat Bubba with chemotherapy that year, and again in 2003 when it regrew.

Shedd officials stated that Bubba was popular with cancer survivors, especially children, and was a favorite of visitors. The oncology department of Hope Children's Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois, recognized Bubba with a tile in the ward.