“There’s only so much time left in this crazy world,” he purrs, doubled by slinky jazz guitar and sounding so laid-back he’s horizontal, he’s floating in midair upside down. Along with the production crew The chorus is a pseudo-sequel to Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik’s “Hootie Hoo,” this time delivered over a faith-infused harmony of background vocals. The song broke barriers and challenged what constituted hip-hop music. “The ATL for Atlanta, and the aliens for our status as foreigners in the hip-hop game,” André told the Los Angeles Times in 1996. Over a four-minute stretch, Big Boi sets the André-produced beat ablaze. —Peters, There is something immensely haunting about “Da Art of Storytellin’ (Part 1)”—the synth that croons in the background like the opening to a sci-fi anthology series, the patter of bongos that rattles off every few seconds. It’s only a matter of time. Connect your Spotify account to your Last.fm account and scrobble everything you listen to, from any Spotify app on any device or platform. The beat matches the chaotic energy, with phantom snares and a haunting synth line that rattles in your head. —Sherman. It boasts an entire once-semi-famous collegiate marching band, thumping like the heart the lyrics describe; and guest vocals from Scar and Sleepy Brown; AND an appearance from Janelle Monáe in what was essentially her debut; A N D a music video that looks like a glorious, trippy amalgam of “Black Hole Sun,” “Don’t Come Around Here No More,” and Blue’s Clues. The joyous call-and-response chant of Caroline! He was a little crunk, a little Memphis, a little Ludacris: he had all these phases. Over an urgent, face-bashing beat—that screech was lifted from a few seconds buried in Miles Davis’s “Sivad”—both André and Big Boi go two-for-two on verses dripping in aggression, confidence, and wordplay. They went to the underground, and then to outer space, and then back to Atlanta. I'm sorry Ms. Jackson (Oooooo)/ I am four eels/ Never meant to make your daughter cry/ I am several fish and not a guy, A thing that has been lost during all of this Outkast talk is how deliberate and intentional the group always seemed to be, even in their earliest days, which is the surest sign of their genius. Where Big shows us a snapshot of a day in his world, Dre takes us on a trip through someone else’s. “Int’l Players Anthem” is just about the end of the line for both duos: Outkast would release only two more songs together (the great loosie “Royal Flush” and an unceremonious track on a DJ Drama compilation album) and UGK’s Pimp C would die several months after the song’s 2007 release. 34399 Followers. “New York–wannabe-ism,” Killer Mike recalls. Undeniably catchy, cleverly subversive, and unexpectedly profound, it asks what keeps people together—and it also asks “all Beyoncés and Lucy Lius” to get on the floor. They were coming off a successful album, and they had the fame. But even with the bass and drums, the main attraction remains the former lovers, who were cool enough to set aside whatever drama there may have been for a special moment. If you turned over, would the person you saw be someone you could truly spend the apocalypse with? The call perfectly introduces “Liberation,” a nearly nine-minute Dungeon Family gathering where André, Big Boi, Cee-Lo, Erykah Badu, and Big Rube take turns singing and speaking of freedom. They were just 19 years old, fresh out of high school and just beginning their recording career. One of the great tragedies of 2000s hip-hop is that we never got a solo André record—or at least one where he was truly rapping. That’s clearly evident in this track, and it also encompasses the trajectory of the rest of their immaculate career. It serves as a crystallization of both groups at their best: four one-of-a-kind men rapping about the wildly different ways they love women. Between 2006 and 2007, André was employing a scorched-earth policy, dominating on every rap verse he delivered. Looking back, it seems obvious that the most forward-thinking rap group of all time would’ve been focused on the future since their inception. It was another prime example that the group that never followed the rules invented some new ones themselves. On the titular single, Big Boi explicates the album and, for that matter, the group: “We prayed together through hard times, swung hard when it was fitting / But now we tapping the brakes from all them corners that we be bending.” —Charity, If Outkast’s chief goal was to differentiate themselves from the rest of hip-hop, then “GhettoMusick” is something of a manifesto. Wordplaying the biblical queen Jezebel and “Southern belles,” the two trade bars about relationships and promiscuous women against a smooth beat with no need for any chorus. It’s just a story after all. “I apologize a trillion times,” concludes the pop-supernova chorus to Outkast’s first no. “Crumblin’ Erb” is a song about street violence (Big Boi: “And drive-bys, kiss yo’ ass bye-bye, sayonara suckers / I flipped the script and turned the page, ain’t scared of you motherfuckers”) and the ideal way to reduce it (André 3000: “We is gonna smoke out until we choke out”). Nate rapped a cappella over the phone, and Big Boi recorded his verse about life in jail and waiting to get out. A vaguely futuristic, synthesizer-drenched album punctuated with anthemic choruses and bluesy beats, Aquemini addresses numerous topics such as emancipation, drug addiction and problematic relationships, while exploring the bleakest aspects of humanity. At one point in “Mighty O,” he invites every person in the media to “a double diamond party in the North Pole,” which quickly becomes a tournament where everyone has to pretend to be André 3000. Outkast thrives when the juxtaposition of Big Boi and 3K is put on display and Two Dope Boyz does that perfectly in under three minutes. In summation, the Atlanta group left the game as it had entered it—the best. But on “Skew It on the Bar-B,” the Chef definitely didn’t seem out of his element surrounded by some ATLiens. But Stankonia located his knack for hefty, hateful broadsides over dark, squirrely beats. It’s a journey that touches on the anxieties that come from fame and success, family, religion, the music industry, and the Black experience. One started dressing differently. Backed by a sample of Cab Calloway’s “Minnie the Moocher,” André and Big Boi came together for one last alchemic feat as a musical group. —Sayles, Like many other Outkast songs, the indisputable grooviness of “Wheelz of Steel”—which emanates from the Focus III–sampled beat, infectious hook, and unfaltering flows—can easily engulf Big Boi and André’s wisdom. —Charity, God Bless Organized Noize kingpin Sleepy Brown, genius producer, songwriter, bald-headed style icon, and sweetly crooning hook machine, who turns this crucial Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik deep cut into the most serene and profound weed jam imaginable. Fifty of them to be exact. Add image First the price point of fatigues went up in the surplus stores, and then you started to see the same silhouettes in big department stores, according to Clinton. They would satirize this on an Aquemini sketch, when a former fan tells a record store owner, “At first they were some pimps, man, but then they some aliens, or some genies or some shit. I’d be mortified. By choosing I Accept, you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Year-End Hot 100 Songs; Year-End Billboard 200 Albums; 2020 Year-End Boxscore; Google's Top Hummed Songs 2020; All Year-End Charts; DECADE-END . When their single “One Nation” hit, rather than create a new mythology around it, the group leaned into the theme of accessibility, buying the stock of Army-Navy outlets to fill their wardrobe as they went out on what he called the “Anti-Tour,” creating fashion along the way. ), Partly because it’s fun to imagine a story involving Cheesecake Factory and strawberry lemonade that could work Big Boi up this much, but also because this is one of the few Outkast songs that André isn’t on pre-Speakerboxx, which, in some small way, means that he couldn’t avow it. Antwan is smooth as a baby’s bottom rapping—and briefly singing—about putting on (and taking off) clothes culled from a variety of species of dead animals. If Idlewild—the musical film that birthed Outkast’s final-album soundtrack of the same name—was the group’s symbolic death, then “Mighty O” represents its defiant last gasp of air. Maximalism is, apparently, back, which means that maybe there’s still hope that “Morris Brown” will one day get the respect it deserves. —Lex Pryor, If you want me to add your song to my playlist of saved jawns, throw in a beat change-up. Caught a RICO, back on the street like Chico / DeBarge.” —Kermah, What gets swallowed up in the shadow of their excellence is their age. In four lines, he paints a picture of the difference between choice vs. nature, drug tourism vs. growing up in that world. A new music service with official albums, singles, videos, remixes, live performances and more for Android, iOS and desktop. Outkast - Outkast - Greatest Hits - Amazon.com Music ... Amazon Music Unlimited Amazon Music HD Prime Music Free Streaming Music Buy Music Open Web Player Settings CDs & Vinyl › Rap & Hip-Hop › Experimental Rap Share. “Hey Ya!” is an anomaly. —Keith Fujimoto. But they also had the burden of carrying a region not yet primed to run music and the reputation that they’ve ascended past their childhood peers back home. The vocals in its chorus sound like a choir of friendly ghosts. Jackson’ license plate. With two features from Dungeon Family kin Backbone and Cool Breeze, the track is a reformulation of the age-old southern work song. One moment I’m nodding my head and listening to Big Boi tell a short story about how he’ll never get caught lacking again, then all of sudden André 3000 is running through walls in my brain like the Juggernaut talking about cod liver oil and the Illuminati. On “Bowtie,” Big Boi identifies himself as Lucious Left Foot and collaborates with Sleepy Brown, who’s credited as a featured artist for the first time after years of providing some of Outkast’s more iconic hooks. Let it be known that Badu says her mother absolutely loved it: “How did my mama feel? Some user-contributed text on this page is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. And it’s fucking unstoppable. Its hook could easily work in tinkling MIDI form in a subterranean level of an Addams Family Game Boy game. It includes all the hits and classics you’ve come to love, plus the deep album cuts and B-sides that show off their versatility. “War” begins with a call to action from Big Boi on the general state of affairs in America. “We wanted our name to mean ‘apart from the norm.’” So they pulled out a thesaurus, found a word similar to “misfits” and made a slight tweak to the spelling, and just like that Outkast was born. In short, it’s Outkast doing the absolute most, and we couldn’t ask for anything more. The jam you play just before you put on your sauciest fit before the function. From ‘Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik’ to ‘Idlewild,’ from Bankhead to Mars, this is the best of the best by hip-hop’s most effortlessly cool duo of all time. Through it all, a theme emerges: André and Big Boi may have been one of the most popular and respected hip-hop groups of all time, but they achieved those things their own way. And just as my brain starts to fry from André opening my third eye, the hook and scratches courtesy of Mr. DJ come in and my feet start moving as my mind goes numb again. "Hey Ya!" From André’s chorus to the Patti LaBelle sample, the track serves as a grand introduction to the group’s most ambitious projects, the double solo album Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. —Charles Holmes, In 2003, The Love Below was the toast of critics. The second name the two chose was Misfits. And that’s what “Prototype” has in spades. Outkast’s best song is fueled by an almost dangerous level of energy. He shines, rapping over a million horns, and gets to do it for just about a whole album. —Murdock, Absolutely stupendous karaoke song. G, C, D, E—the four chords that make up “Hey Ya!”; also the first four chords André 3000 learned to play on guitar. The song begins by sampling the robotic line from the intro of “D.E.E.P.” off their first album, and what follows is a perfect back-and-forth from André 3000 and Big Boi. In combination, “Git Up, Git Out” strikes the balance between preachy and unbelievable. —Harvilla, The quintessential pre-party anthem. ET, NPR Music will host an online listening party for the 20th anniversary of OutKast's landmark album. ’ s-soul kind of way cappella over the youtube music outkast, and soon pop followed been of! A trillion times, ” goes the refrain, and 'Prototype, ' which was in! Title is a sky-splitting sonic boom ; when it ’ s over would. Add image 93 more photos, add youtube music outkast 93 more photos, Javascript required! 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