OutKast managed to show both the longevity and global reach of Southern hip-hopĪnybody familiar with hip-hop social media communities will have been witness to, whether consciously or not, a very annoying tendency of people within these social media circles to discuss OutKast like “André 3000 and that other guy”, as if 3 Stacks somehow carried the duo during their career. Southern voices are all over this album, constantly reminding the listener that though the album may sound out-of-this-world, it blasted off from Atlanta, Georgia. The album features all the mainstays of Southern hip-hop at the time: Khujo, Cee-Lo, T-Mo and Big Rube of Goodie Mob fame show up across the album, there’s a Prince-style sex ballad with 36 Mafia’s Gangsta Boo, and a Dungeon Family posse cut for the hip-hop purists (it’s the only one they’ll find though). But OutKast pulls it off those three larger-than-life concepts and so many more all within a single album.Ī significant part of how Big Boi and Dré keep the sound of southern hospitality in an album, that often sounds like it came from outer space, is their collaborators. Or an apologetic plea for forgiveness from the mother of a mother of a child out of wedlock (put simply: a “baby’s mama’s mama”) that combines glistening synths with smooth, soulful hooks and impeccable rap verses (that’s ‘Toilet Tisha’, ‘B.O.B.’ and ‘Ms. No other artist could pull off a song that marries psychedelic funk with spoken word while ruminating on a tragic tale of teenage pregnancy and suicide. Listening to the way the album effortlessly moulds and meshes funk, rock and gospel with the sound of Dirty Southern hip-hop, which they had by then become associated with, is often astounding.Ī significant part of how Big Boi and Dré keep the sound of southern hospitality in an album, that often sounds like it came from outer space, is their collaborators Jackson’, was their first to reach number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, but I’m sure you would be hard-pressed to find another album with such an eclectic fusion of genres. In fact, to call it pop at all is really a gross oversimplification. To me though, these are both quite reductive ways of viewing the album – for all its creative merit and cultural significance, to brush it off as ‘just’ OutKast’s pop album seems slightly narrow-minded. It’s often referred to as OutKast’s more ‘pop-y’ album, and is also frequently cited as the album where creative differences between Big Boi and André first became apparent something which becomes much more pronounced in the group’s later work. So, after going through their smooth, laidback debut Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik (a mouthful, I know, but also a title that completely and faithfully describes the spirit of the album), their 1996 sophomore ATLiens, with its ambitious fusion of Dirty Southern hip-hop with outer-space aesthetics, and the 1998 Aquemini, a musical tour-de-force, I arrived at their fourth studio album: Stankonia. Now this is no significant event for me as they’re one of my favourite artists and, for me to find myself as I did this week, listening through their discography in sequence is not out of the ordinary. This week I have been listening to OutKast a lot.
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