| · If a band is considered "great" for releasing one or two must-have albums in their career, then OutKast must be the best fucking band in the world.
As wildly inventive as they are successful, album after album, OutKast have been flexing their mighty artistic muscle with increasing authority.
Stankonia, their trippy-synths-meet-dirty-South masterpiece from 2000, collected numerous album-of-the-year accolades while moving units by the millions, which confirmed – even encouraged – their right to push their music in unprecedented ways. Still, record executives must have been quite uncomfortable when they heard that this latest release would essentially consist of two solo CDs from Out Kast’s Big Boi and Andre 3000. And if that wasn’t enough to set them off for some Pepto-Bismol, Andre 3000’s effort would be everything but a hip-hop record.
Of course, the same record execs are now likely taking full credit for putting forth this unprecedented stroke of genius. More than any previous OutKast album, these two CDs display the separate talents that Big Boi and Andre bring to the group, while allowing them to expand on their completely distinct visions.
Of the two, Big Boi’s Speakerboxxx is the near-linear follow-up to Aquemini and Stankonia. The super-catchy P-Funk singalong choruses are melded to classic horn blasts, old-school 808s, and shimmering production values. Big Boi’s lyrical prowess and rapid-fire delivery have never sounded more confident or better executed than it is on Speakerboxxx, making this recording about as perfect as an OutKast album can possibly get.
Andre 3000’s The Love Below is a gigantic, sprawling, beautiful opus – arguably the greatest work that Prince has never recorded. Only briefly delving into rap on a couple of tracks, The Love Below wades through other genres (funk, pop, drum ’n’ bass, rock, gospel, lounge) like a self-absorbed princess waltzing across a dance floor with careless abandon. This is a good thing because the sheer wave of (mostly sexy) energy is what carries this incredibly ambitious effort through, making The Love Below just as vital as Speakerboxxx. Where Big Boi wins on execution, Andre scores on vision and sheer audacity.
With five brilliant albums under their belts, OutKast somehow manage to keep getting better and better. How they’re going to top this double-CD is anybody’s guess. But I’m safely betting that their next effort, too, will easily garner album-of-the-year-recognition.
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