Listening back with a neutral ear is tricky. it felt like a Rosetta Stone for the preceding half-century of contemporary music”
“From the first modulated note that kicks off the armour-plated riot vehicle of ‘GhettoMusick’. But showboating in the end zone is what led to so many of the album’s genius moments, so it’s a necessary evil. It doesn’t all gel: “My Favourite Things” fills a ‘Rogers & Hammerstein meets drum & bass’ brief that literally no one was asking after. Considering the bloat, it moves at a surprisingly frantic pace: itchy be-bop and spasmodic Little Richard impressions on Dré’s half explosive drum machine phonk and barrelling posse cuts on Big Boi’s. From the first modulated note that kicks off the armour-plated riot vehicle of “GhettoMusick” to Dré’s final meander through the corners of his nasty mind nearly two and half hours later, it felt like a Rosetta Stone for the preceding half-century of contemporary music. Well – some of it.Īs infamously blunt critic Robert Christgau put it, SB/TLB is the dictionary definition of excess – but glorious excess at that. They sidelined trusted production unit Organized Noise (something Rico Wade has still yet to fully get over), amassed 120 songs, then trimmed the fat. Whatever disharmony lay below the surface, a workable compromise was made. The pair felt out new directions separately, but kept tabs on each other’s progress. By featuring Dungeon Family member Sleepy Brown’s velvet croon liberally throughout his new material, he was also bringing caramel to the crunch. Simultaneously, Big Boi was journeying to the deepest fathoms of his 808 obsession. He would work without sleep for days, scoring string sections between four studios. André 3000’s side of the record started life as a concept for a young Paris-bound romantic, which goes a long way to explaining the horniness and hammy skits. The run-up to Speakerboxxx/The Love Below signalled it was already set to be different. “Wretched excess, blessed excess, impressive excess” The whole world was finally listening, but OutKast ran out of things to say. Upon reaching the top of pop’s Mount Olympus, a cruel twist occurred. Previously launched by their ineffable chemistry as MCs, overlapping and interlocking with a slick balance of world-weary caution and gallivanting abandon, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below was, for all its deserved success, the visible end of that dynamic. Speakerboxxx/The Love Below ended up a downpayment on a future they couldn’t sustain. A 39 track, 135-minute opus rooted in musical theatre was far out of convention for a next step. Yet on Stankonia they were still very much cut from a rap cloth, even with full-throated anti-American critique, breakbeat bombast, and singing owls woven in. (Bombs Over Baghdad)” lead off 2000’s Stankonia (chart-wise it bombed, but burnished their credibility to no end).
The duo fast cemented a reputation for doing things their own way: they rocked muumuus, turbans and wigs with impunity they battled the overactive legal team of a Civil Rights hero all the way up to the Supreme Court they let the stupefying sonic centrifuge that is “B.O.B. The royal flush of shame they felt turned to defiance, catapulting them to claim their own identity, and from there, their greatness. He half-gulps his words, but the ones he forced out – “Da Souf got sum’ to say” – solidified into a mantra. Watching back, Dré is unusually ineloquent in the face of the New York audience.
Two years later, they were booed relentlessly at The Source’s annual jamboree for having the temerity to win Best Newcomer, effectively caught in the crossfire between an East-West rivalry that was about to reach its bloody apex. Their debut single, “Player’s Ball”, was first snuck out onto a compilation in 1993 as a novelty Christmas jam. When starting out, the teen ATLiens André Benjamin and Antwuan Patton weren’t especially well regarded, locally or nationally. A Democratic presidential hopeful even ruminated on their breakup rumours in a campaign ad. Their ubiquity began to outstrip just music. OutKast overtook in the outside lane and took home Album of the Year instead. By springtime 2004, they had the most beloved song on the face of the planet, had shifted 10 million units of a double LP released only the previous autumn, and injected a rare dose of colour into a Grammy Awards so white that The White Stripes were odds-on favourite to sweep the board. At the beginning of the century, no one could touch OutKast.
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