Hard as it is to believe now, Outkast were initially regarded as interlopers, a weird parenthetical to the East Coast-West Coast dominance of mid-'90s rap. So strained was their standing among hip-hop power brokers that the group were booed when they won Best New Rap Group at The Source Awards in 1995, prompting a then-20-year-old André 3000 to announce defiantly that “the South got something to say”. ATLiens only drove the wedge further, doubling down on the idiosyncrasies for an album that mixed early-'70s soul with sci-fi imagery (“ATLiens”) and stoic snapshots of street life with the psychedelic headspace of dub (“Elevators [Me & You]”), crowning the duo less ambassadors of a particular region than rulers of their own private kingdom.
Other Versions
- Goodie Mob
- Mystikal
- A Tribe Called Quest
- Dungeon Family