New Orleans hip-hop has its own unique flavor steeped in the city's rich musical tradition. It blends both the traditional sounds and styles of jazz, second-line (a form of Brass jazz played at funerals), zydeco, and a smattering of gospel with more modern sounds of funk, old school hip-hop, dancehall reggae and New Orleans' bounce music. Add to that a milky pimp-like flow spiced with New Orleans' distinct drawl and street slang and what you have are Cash Money Records Mannie Fresh and Brian "Baby" Williams, the duo that comprise BigTymers.

In 1992, "Baby" and his enterprising brother Ron "Sugar Slim" Williams started their own label Cash Money Records and launched several successful underground rap acts such as the Hot Boys, Juvenile, UNLV and B.G. The Baby Gangsta. Around the time that the brothers started Cash Money, Baby met Mannie Fresh when they ran into each other at a mutual friend's house. "When I found out that Baby did music, I thought 'maybe we can work together and pull something off' and it's been all gravy since then," says Mannie, whose early group Gregory D and Mannie Fresh was a major part of New Orleans' old school hip-hop.

Mannie teamed up with the Cash Money brothers and the label became one of the hottest hit-making machines in the South. With baby and Sugar Slim at the helm of the business end, and Mannie holding down the production side, the three young men are the guiding force turning young talents on the Cash Money roster into underground superstars. Not content to just handle the "business" of running a label, Brian occasionally offered his spirited ad lib (he calls it "game spitting") with Mannie on all Cash Money artists' albums. But a guest performance on the Hot Boys underground classic LP Get It How You Live created such a buzz on the street that the two hit the studio and became artists. Thus, the BigTymers were born.

"It wasn't nothing we planned," says Baby, who in addition to being a sound business man also admits to being quite a ladies man. "We were just dropping verses and doing the intro on BG's tape and everybody else's tape and people kept asking us when we was gonna come out so me and Fresh just went at it."

The result of their collaboration was the BigTymer's 1998 debut album How U Luv That, an album that literally rocked the South and Midwest selling over 100,000 units without the benefit of major radio or video airplay. How U Luv That is now being re-released nationally with nine brand new songs. Produced by the irrepressible Mannie Fresh, How U Luv That offers the listener a serious dose of live instrumentation, tight beats, bubbling basslines and sparkling keyboards. Included in this revised set is the banging new single "Stun'n," a powerful up-tempo track; the beat intensive "Tear It Up" featuring the Hot Boyz; and the blazing title track, which along with the rest of the album is bound to get heads open to a new flavor coming out of New Orleans.