100 Best Albums
- 29 SEPT 1998
- 16 Songs
- Stankonia · 2000
- Speakerboxxx/The Love Below · 2003
- Aquemini · 1998
- Speakerboxxx/The Love Below · 2003
- Stankonia · 2000
- Speakerboxxx/The Love Below · 2003
- Aquemini · 1998
- Speakerboxxx/The Love Below · 2003
- Speakerboxxx/The Love Below · 2003
- Speakerboxxx/The Love Below · 2003
Essential Albums
- A sprawling, genre-defying double-disc concept album—would you expect anything less from one of hip-hop’s all-time most creative duos? Big Boi’s Speakerboxxx side is an explosive update of Dungeon Family funk: “GhettoMusick” is a pummelling hail of breakbeats and organs, while “The Way You Move” recruits Sleepy Brown for a dapper stepping anthem. André 3000’s The Love Below is as eccentric as it is elegant, with mellow, reverb-drenched love song “Prototype” alongside the ecstatic electro-funk of “Hey Ya!”, a pop anthem for the ages.
- Who else but rap’s most fearlessly creative duo could open their biggest album with a bonfire of American dreams? Outkast’s fourth LP may have launched them into the mainstream, but there’s nothing safe about it: Even its most populist track, “Ms. Jackson”, is a glitchy, galactic soul number about a messy divorce. The collection is peppered with slo-mo funk cuts (“Toilet Tisha”), neo-soul steppin’ anthems (“Humble Mumble”) and political drum ’n’ bass rap (“B.O.B.”). There is no genre, no “mainstream versus underground”—there is only groove.
- 100 Best Albums: No. 41 Regarded by many as the greatest Southern rap album ever, 1998’s Aquemini is the connective tissue between Outkast’s beginnings as regional hip-hop heroes and the duo’s full-fledged pop stardom. While their first two LPs featured no shortage of André 3000 and Big Boi’s tongue-twisting rhymes and the Dungeon Family collective’s off-kilter beats (courtesy of Organized Noize and themselves), Aquemini was the creative leap forward that turned an already critically acclaimed group into thought leaders of the hip-hop avant-garde. Long jam sessions with a rotating cast of live musicians yielded their lushest music and most adventurous arrangements to that point; lyrically, the pair began exploring different avenues of creative thought. But instead of breaking up the band, they leaned into that duality while giving the music a singular cohesive vision. Big Boi (an Aquarius) remained vivid in his tales of harsh street realities, while André 3000 (a Gemini) began embracing more conscious material and flights of kalimba. Together, as Big Boi raps in “Return of the ‘G’”, “We worked for everything we have and gon’ stick up for each other, like we brothers from another mother/Kind of like Mel Gibson and Danny Glover.” Produced mostly by the duo and Mr. DJ, Aquemini’s sound is a mix of the distinctly Southern and the distinctly alien. Nowhere is this more apparent than the single “Rosa Parks”, which is built on hollow snares and punishing bass but beams with earthy acoustic guitars and a harmonica solo courtesy of André’s stepfather, Pastor Robert Hodo. Or take the “Da Art of Storytellin’” suite: “Pt. 1” tells tales of earthly vice over a head-bobbing swirl, while “Pt. 2” speaks of the apocalypse through mountains of distortion. Elsewhere, slower songs like the title track, the indelible “SpottieOttieDopaliscious” and the sprawling jam “Liberation” shimmer like an update on the opulent arrangements of Isaac Hayes or Earth, Wind & Fire. It’s an album that prophesied the future of Atlanta—a misunderstood scene that was once dismissed as “regional”, but eventually became the center of the rap universe itself.
- 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.
- Outkast were teenagers when they released Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik. Though they’d met at an Atlanta mall only two years earlier, they already sounded like soul mates by the time they dropped their 1994 debut. What’s more, the record not only introduced the world to hip-hop’s greatest odd couple—swaggering, smooth-talking Big Boi and a far-out word nerd known then as simply Dré—but it also broke the coasts’ beef-based monopoly on relevance. “Southern rap” wasn’t a thing until people had to come up with a way to classify this heady set of languid funk, moody grooves, slurred hooks and intoxicating slang. While the Outkast heard here is a bit harder-edged than the ATLiens of the future, their early-days balance of street cool, societal musings and off-kilter outlook was refreshingly one-of-a-kind, encapsulated by the immortal refrain of the third track: “Ain’t no thang but a chicken wing.” Of course, “Player’s Ball” was the breakthrough—a slinky jam that dared to dream of a 24/7 pimped-out plane of existence high above the daily grind of the ghetto. But Outkast are often grounded, examining the pressures that cause kids to quit school for crime on the delightfully dissonant “Call of Da Wild” and sharing their own youthful missteps on the horn-streaked “Git Up, Git Out”—both of which feature CeeLo Green on the chorus alongside his Goodie Mob bandmates. Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik gets a big boost from breakout producers Organized Noize, who laced their beats with live guitar, keys and bass, and hence pioneered the Dirty South sound. But it was the duo’s unusual personalities and restless creativity that bought Outkast artistic control heading into their next LP and led to Atlanta’s position as the hub for successful rap eccentrics, from Lil Jon a decade later through to Young Thug in the ’10s.
Albums
Artist Playlists
- These ATLiens convinced the world that the South had something to say.
- Their videos are playful and poetic, true to ATLien form.
- Pop music's a slightly stranger animal thanks to this duo.
- Even on album tracks, this rap duo couldn't stop pushing limits.
- Genre hopping with the two eclectic ATLiens.
Compilations
More To Hear
- A mind-altering hit of psychedelic proto-trap.
- Estelle chats with Big Boi on the LP’s 25th anniversary.
- Celebrating the music of two massive game changers.
- Celebrating the music of two massive game changers.
- Jams from Outkast, Stevie Wonder, Jackson 5, and Donna Summer.
- More seasonal sounds with The Midnight Hour, Sade, and Outkast.
More To See
About Outkast
Back before rappers in the American South got the respect of their East and West Coast contemporaries, Outkast raised the bar for lyricism, originality and creativity. "The South got something to say," André 3000 proclaimed at the 1995 Source Awards as he and Big Boi accepted the award for Best New Rap Group. Atlanta natives André Benjamin and Antwan Patton, both born in 1975, met as teenagers rapping in their school cafeteria before forming a duo and connecting with local producers Organized Noize. Their 1994 debut album, Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik—punctuated by a silky single, "Player's Ball"—was a coming-of-age depiction of the pimps, rides and aura of their hood. With thick drawls and lucid lyrics over soulful instrumentation, Outkast continued their art of storytelling with three almost instantly classic follow-ups, ATLiens, Aquemini and Stankonia. Each record offered more amorphous flows and endless imagination than the one before it, with bars promoting non-violence and perseverance, perhaps most explicitly spelled out on socially conscious standout "Humble Mumble". Over time, they played up their complementary personalities: André's poetic pensiveness and eccentricity shined, as Big Boi excelled at quick-witted slick talk. And those contrasts blossomed on 2003's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, a double album featuring Big Boi's funk-infused hip-hop and André's Prince and Jimi Hendrix-inspired ballads. After winning the Grammys' highest honour (Album of the Year) for their ambitious efforts—making them the second rap act to do so—Outkast released the soundtrack to their 1930s-era musical film, Idlewild, then took a break. Since, Big Boi has released lively solo albums, while André goes wherever his spirit takes him. It may be tough to imagine, but before ATL became one of the major hubs of rap music, it was Outkast who convinced out-of-towners that the A was already on the map.
- ORIGIN
- Atlanta, GA, United States
- FORMED
- 1992
- GENRE
- Hip-Hop/Rap