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Hero For Christ

Outkast



The first time I heard Outkast, they were too ghetto to even get much airplay on black radio. The standout track on their first album was "Git up Git Out", an unconvincing pledge to quit smoking weed and make something of themselves. The track featured what was to become an Outkast trademark -- the ambigiously positive lyric line --as well as a guest appearance by ATL compatriots the "Goodie Mob", and it was really the latter group's Cee-Lo that made the track, with his distinctively nasal tenor singing and rapping.

Like the "Lads from Liverpool" however, Outkast rapidly outgrew their provenciality with a series of albums in rapidly increasing levels of innovation. The controversy surrounding them increased as well, as Andre dated Erykah Badu and gained a taste for blond wigs; and as the casual profanity of the duo's underground hit "Rosa Parks" drew the refined wrath of the song's elegant and eponymous heroine.

The group's tour-de-force as a hip-hop group came with the release of the album Stankonia, which featured the ode-to-an-ex's-mother "Ms. Jackson," and the prophetically named "Bombs Over Baghdad". The former brought the return of the ambigious lyrics, where the group starts out with apologies, but ends with curses and recriminations. The latter came attached to one of the most striking videos of recent times, featuring color reversed landscapes, fractal backgrounds, and earthquake-causing dancers in a church of funk.

The follow-up Greatest Hits collection turned out to be a wiser purchase than most such compilations. Not only did it come with all the best and the most innovative songs (without the filler dreck that plagues hip hop albums) but it also included the new single "The Whole World". This new tune sounded like nothing ever recorded in hip hop, with a vaudville-style chorus and odd meter, but it became a bona fide hit nonetheless.

As time has passed, it has become increasingly clear that what makes Outkast unique is nothing more or less than the relationship between the two partners themselves. Alone, each is talented but not exceptional: Big Boi is a born performer with an impeccable ear for what the streets want to hear. There are other hip-hop "survivors," however, who could fit the same description (Jay-Z or Jermaine Dupri, to choose just two examples of many). Andre, on the other hand, is a innovator and an explorer, an experimentalist. Again, there are many like him out there, but most are laboring in obscurity.

What makes Outkast into OUTKAST is the trust the two men have for each other's tastes and preferences. Therefore, unlike most other born entertainers, Big Boi has not descended into trite and repetitive trend-chasing because he has Andre to prod him out of it. And unlike most other visionary non-confomists, Andre has not experimented himself right out of the public ear because Big Boi has kept him tapped into the sounds of the street. Accordingly, the duo has become a reliable pipeline of cosmic chaos into the otherwise lackluster and materialist world of modern hip hop. They have an amazing ability to take anything and give it street credibility. Even phrases like the goofy daydream "I'm So Fresh and Clean" and the apologetic "I'm Sorry Miss Jackson" were adopted by the hood, becoming unexpectedly acceptable street slang along the way.

Speakerboxxx/The Love Below

It's not really one Outkast album, it's two solo albums packaged together. So, let's take a look at them individually.

The striking thing about "Speakerboxxx" is how strong Big Boi is alone. He was always the virtuoso MC of the group, and he displays a surprising musicality and sense of innovation on many of his tracks, particularly "Unhappy" and the high-energy standout "the Rooster". In general, this comes across as a premiere new-school hip hop album, complete with the strengths and weakness of the genre, (including an overabundance of lesser tracks).

In contrast, "The Love Below" isn't traditional hip-hop in any sense. Despite Andre 3000's offkey singing, and tentative composing, the Prince-inflected concept album manages to charm and entertain throughout.

And then of course there is "the song" ("Hey Ya").

If you listened to any radio in the year it was released, you heard it. You may have loved it, or hated it, or most likely, loved it until they played it so much that you hated it. But you couldn't avoid it. It covered the airwaves unlike any other song in recent memory, hitting Top 40, black urban, the alternative stations, and even NPR. It was utterly, unbelievably eccentric, and catchy to the point of madness. The first time you heard it, you asked yourself "what the **** was that?" It didn't sound like anything else on the airwaves, a wild hip hop parody of an old-school rock-n-roll number.

And it went along with the video.

A revisionist history answer to the British invasion, it features a band entirely made up of Andre 3000 playing a London stage sometime during the 60's. There he is, digitally duplicated, as the bad-boy drummer, the cool hipster bass guitarist, the cheerfully nerdy acoustic guitarist, the mop-topped lead singer, and even the triplets-in-jockey-costume backup singers.

Families watch at home on their black-and-white tv's as crowds of screaming girls obey the startling directive to "shake it like a polaroid picture" --after all, Andre 3000 is their neighbor. Even the skeptical middle-aged white woman in the audience (presumably the chaparone-ing mother of one of the young fans) is eventually won over by the gleeful enthusiasm of the lead singer (an apt symbol for the song's seduction of the "crossover" audience). As you see his face, you can tell that he loves the music, and that singing it makes him the happiest man in the world.

And that's the story of how the ghetto-est duo in Atlanta went on to become the most popular band in America.

CRAFT: The production and rhymes on Speakerboxxx are top notch hip-hop, where as the craft on TLB seems a little more tentative -- an artist exploring new horizons.

ORIGINALITY: Speakerboxxx has a definite personality and vitality. But TLB is the truly original side of the disc, although originality must be described (as it usually is) as stealing from influences no one else is even thinking about.

DEPTH: Big Boi touches (lightly) on serious topics on Speakerboxxx --including religion, terrorism (and the response thereof), the challenges of keeping a long term relationship together. It's deeper than the average hip-hop thug track, but nowhere near the classic socially conscious raps. Andre 3000 goes a different route, including a loopy dialogue with God, and exploring the nature of love and lust. Again, it gets good marks on emotional depth, but doesn't begin to approach the classics.

The interesting thing about the disk is that it was so different, and heard by so many people, that it may well be a seminal influence in creating a new sound. Only the future will tell.
For those who haven't seen the "Roses" video:

http://www.stankonia.com/2004_03.html

Once again Outkast and crew provide a visual feast, but in a completely different vein from their previous outing. Here, the Tension inherent in their double-solo-album is made manifest, as Andre and friends, (including Bentley Farnsworth) play the drama nerds putting on a high school musical, while Big Boi and crew (including Sleepy Brown) are the playground-bully gang of jocks-in-letter-jackets.

The bizarre song with the unforgettable chorus ("roses really smell like poo-poo") is complemented by the mile-a-minute visual jokes, allusions and cameos. "West Side Story" is referenced several times, most notably in a brief shot of Big Boi and crew doing the infamous macho-finger-snapping dance of the Sharks and Jets.

For me, however, the most clever moment was when Andre's naughty wish for "Caroline" to crash into a ditch is acted out onstage with campy bargain-basement special effects --thus highlighting both the play-within-a-play structure and the consequent sense of doubled narrative.

In some ways this is a less sucessfully cohesive video than the previous one, but it's definitely worth seeing because of its inventiveness and clever sense of humor.

Comments below:

Comments from Readers:

Great article about Outkast. I really enjoyed the part where you describe the relationship of Big Boi and Dre
  • Anonymous
    7/15/07
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