The Charm

The Charm is the third album by American rapper Bubba Sparxxx, released on April 4, 2006. It is the follow-up to Deliverance and was released on Purple Ribbon Records through Virgin Records. Unlike the previous installments, it is the first album to have very little input from Timbaland.

The album received a generally positive reception but critics found it uneven in its amalgam of mainstream hip-hop songs and serious internal tracks. The Charm debuted at number 9 on the Billboard 200 with 51,000 copies sold in its first week released and spawned two singles: "Ms. New Booty" and "Heat It Up".

Critical reception

The Charm received generally favorable reviews but music critics were divided by Bubba's decision to leave Timbaland for Big Boi and change his production and lyrical content. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 66, based on 18 reviews.

Nathan Rabin of The A.V. Club praised the production work from Organized Noize and Bubba for still being able to deliver strong philosophical lyrics with bits of humor in them, concluding that "Sparxxx will probably never move enough units to justify his early billing as rap's next great white hope, but creatively, he continues to exceed even the loftiest expectations." Soren Baker of the Los Angeles Times also praised Organized Noize's production for making Bubba sound commercially viable while allowing him to add more lyrical depth to his repertoire. Justin Cober-Lake of Stylus Magazine felt that the change in production from Deliverance didn't hamper Bubba's ability to continue delivering aggressive lyricism over club tracks.