Check out your Valentine's Day message from Outkast here.
Outkast will win big at the Grammys tomorrow night - here's why:
Outkast's double-CD extravaganza, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below their fifth album, the two members of Outkast (winners of three previous rap Grammys) have taken the audacious gamble of recording two completely separate discs — Antwan "Big Boi" Patton's Speakerboxx, and Andre "Dre 3000" Benjamin's The Love Below — and releasing them together in a single set.
What could have easily felt like disjointed, double self-indulgence, instead feels like two sides of a very large platinum coin - different but of a piece, and a remarkably effective piece it is.
Big Boi's Speakerboxx fits more comfortably within the hip-hop sphere, and continues Outkast's southern-fried exploration of rap, smooth soul, gritty funk and electronica. "Ghetto Musick" opens the side with a sparkling amalgam of frenetic '80s electro funk, and slow, gentle interludes setting the tone for the inspired schizophrenia to come.
"Bowtie" swings rakishly on New Orleans syncopated horns and Clintonian (George, that is) group funk vocals, then gives way to a spare, emblematic electronic snare and DEEP bass-drum groove, such has been rattling the neighborhoods where the cars go BOOM, and BOOM again, for many a moon. You don't so much hear as FEEL them. You know that intro is leading somewhere special, and special it most assuredly is, as Boi commences to speedy, tricky-tongued rapping down a narrow, echoing alleyway that suddenly opens to this broad, beautiful boulevard expanse of a chorus:
"I like the way you move (dah dum-dum)
I like the way you move (dah dum-dum)
I like the way you move (dah dum-dum)
I like the way
I like the way"
Like the smoothest Earth, Wind & Fire reverie dropped in the middle of a craggy concrete jungle, "The Way You Move" is an irresistible classic. And though nothing else connects with quite the immersing totality of "The Way You Move," there is much satisfying, surprising, inventive goodness the rest of the way.
"War" lays it out straight that the squabbles and internecine warfare within the rap world look even more petty and foolishly insular than they did before, in light of a massive tragedy like 9/11. "Knowing" invokes the righteous ghost of Curtis Mayfield, and "Reset" floats on a jazzy, ambient P.M. Dawn-like groove.
Article comments
1 - ej
I would definitely have to agree with you on that one. Arguably the best album last year, hands down.
2 - Dew
I am inclined to follow the crowd here. After nabbing a grammy (Frikkin' FINALLY) for Stankonia, 'Kast only came back harder - MUCH HARDER - with the double lp. I can't wait to see the sweep.