At a time when experimentation is taboo in most overground rap, that?s all Outkast seem intent on executing. Firstly, this double CD has no cohesive link, other than the fact that it sounds like a pair of solo albums stitched together to demo exactly how Andre?s yin works to augment Big Boi?s yang. Andre 3000?s Love Below disc rates as the more eclectic of the two, given that he?s turned in his emcee credentials to become a full-on funk-soul-jazz vocalist who mostly sings about items of love ("Happy Valentine's Day"), carnal lust ("Spread"), and female adoration ("Prototype"). Minus the big band schmaltz of "Love Hater" and cheesy cover jobs ("My Favorite Things"), Andre?s disc is sick (meaning great). As is to be expected, the Big Boi disc is less arty, more gangsta and worldly, and features the less-progressive guest raps of ATL crunk purveyors Lil? Jon and The Eastside Boyz ("Last Call") and Jay-Z who rhymes the hook on "Flip Flop Rock". Unlike Big Boi, Andre keeps his collabos to a minimum, once crooning alongside Norah Jones on the cool yet sappy "Take Off Your Cool", and once with Kelis. Boi fulfills his Dungeon Family duty with flying colors by flipping some dirty southern up-tempo raps over electro beats on "GhettoMusick". By the time Cee-Lo sermonizes on "Reset", Speakerboxx and Love Below rate mostly as majestic and inspiring, with the remaining 23 per cent being just plain incredible --Dalton Higgins
Outkast
Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
[Arista; 2003]
Rating: 8.0
The twelve-lane Connector plows through Atlanta like the Nile of pavement. Along its fenced banks lie the majority of the city's attractions. Turner buildings, blossoming with neon network logos, lure Yellowjacket grads from the adjacent campus cluster with the sweet nectar of Powerpuff Girls money. Across the way, The Varsity serves grease between buns, communicating with an enigmatic fast food lexicon that rivals rhyming Cockneys. Tourists walk the overpass to the ghostly Olympic park, built on the graveyard of Techwood projects, in the shadows of Vick's pastel dome. Hipsters and reluctant yuppies settle in the gentrified Five Points and Cabbagetown, giving their quaint subdivisions more verdant "___________ Park" monikers. And finally, there's Turner Field, reverberating collective October sighs, before the highway splits back into its tributaries in East Point, the cultural fountainhead. The hip-hop id to New York's ego: the home of Outkast.
Lauded retroactively in 2000, upon the release of Stankonia, for a formula that had been perfected by teenagers on 1994's Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, Outkast charged up the public with silly amounts of reserved anticipation for this double-disc marathon. Since dropping that debut nearly ten years ago, Outkast's singles have charted a steady incline of genre-defiance and pop virtuosity. But now, in the wake of the commercial and critical smash that yielded such classic tracks as "Ms. Jackson", "B.O.B.", and "So Fresh, So Clean", Big Boi and Andre 3000 have, for the first time, chosen to work in separate corners, like Beatles after India. Here, on the resulting Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, the two wander down the blacktop from East Point, each plotting their own distinct course: Andre, like I-85, shoots off to the airport and sky-high trips before dipping into the Mardi Gras marshes of New Orleans, while Big Boi rolls deep down I-75 into south Florida, home of booty bass and baby blue.
The consensus in rock circles had unfairly anticipated that The Love Below would reign supreme over Big Boi's Speakerboxxx, since Andre was the one with the guitar in the fuzzy boots. As it turns out, his Prince-mimicking fusion looks a lot better on paper than it sounds in your ears. On too many songs, Andre repeats space-playboy choruses over repetitious, unfinished digifunk. As the brief orchestrated outro to "Pink and Blue" suggests, each track feels like it's missing something-- strings, guitars, harmonies, organic instruments, and, oh right: Big Boi. Andre does have his moment, though: "Hey Ya!" glitters and towers like the silver Westin hotel over an 80s Atlanta skyline, blending Flaming Lips-like synth-bass and ebullient acoustic guitar with the rebellious joy of "Little Red Corvette"-- and like all classic songs, it introduces new vernacular with a genius that transcends product placement. Even indymedia.org feeders will shout "Polaroid!" while miming spanking at this fall's Not-Dog cookouts.
Of the few other tracks on The Love Below that come close to reaching "Hey Ya!"'s apex, the one that most succeeds is "Spread", which showcases trumpets and piano weaving through a rubber bassline and scattering rimshots. Its chorus has Andre putting on his Camille voice, while the verses contain some of the only moments on the album in which he actually flows. When he does, he's tight enough to pose the question of why he decided to cut back on rapping at all-- particularly since, frankly, he ranks just above Pharrell Williams on the "brilliant but mosquito-throated crooner" list. Elsewhere, the quite literal "Dracula's Wedding" boasts guest vocalist Kelis over whistling squelches, while Norah Jones' lovely turn on the acoustic "Take Off Your Cool" hints at the true stylistic breadth Andre is capable of achieving. "Baby, take off your cool/ I want to get to know you," they both sing over plucks and strums. Heed your lyrics, Andre. (Except for that "become the master of your own bastion" nonsense.)
Big Boi's Speakerboxxx coolly upstages its counterpart: Although it, too, provides the world with one earthshaking single, it differs from The Love Below in that it also manages to maintain a consistent level of brilliance and emotional complexity. Here, Big Boi effectively asserts himself as man who wants both a stripper pole in his home and his nostalgic place saved on the pew-- "Unhappy" conveys that in its beat alone! Comparing the selection of Speakerboxxx to Andre's limper Love Below, it's clear who won this bet: Machine-heavy, horn-driven funk stomps behind "Bowtie" and "The Rooster"; reverberating woodblocks (a trademark Outkast signifier since "Elevators") starkly soundtrack pondering rhymes on "Knowing"; "Church" takes gospel into the 21st Century, accelerating aluminum Stevie Wonder disco-pop into Teutonic techno; propulsive kickdrums pump under drunken guitars, scratches, and a Jay-Z hook on the standout "Flip Flop Rock"; and "Ghettomusick", the aforementioned earthshaking single, is, emotionally, a celebration and a lament, braggadocio and beatitudes. Musically, the record shifts from punk-cadenced, cellulite-quivering woofer booms to three-wheeled slow-jams and back before snake-charming with George Clinton keyboards.
Of course, there's one department in which neither disc succeeds: Despite how forward-looking these albums can be, both members have failed to envision a future without skits and intros, which make up no less than ten of the 39 tracks here. It's one reason why Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, like no albums before, beg to be ripped, sieved and re-sequenced. Cutting out the dialog, along with The Love Below's silicon-smooth, Rainbow Children-esque jazz and lulling middle-section, and Big Boi's guest-laden, been-there street tracks, leaves one genius full-length that fits on a single disc.
-Brent DiCrescenzo, September 23rd, 2003
Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
To call OutKast's follow-up to their 2000 masterpiece Stankonia the most eagerly awaited hip-hop album of the new millennium may be hyperbole, but not by much. In its kaleidoscopic, deep-fried amalgam of Dirty South, dirty funk, techno, and psychedelia, Stankonia was fearlessly exploratory and giddy with possibilities. It was hard to imagine where the duo was going to go next, but one possibility that few entertained was that Big Boi and Andre 3000 would split apart, each recording an album on his own and then releasing the pair as the fifth OutKast album, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, in the fall of 2003. Although both albums have their own distinct character, the effect is kind of like if the Beatles issued The White Album as one LP of Lennon tunes, the other of McCartney songs -- the individual records may be more coherent, but the illusion that the group can do anything is tarnished. By isolating themselves from each other, Big Boi and Andre 3000 diminish the idea of OutKast slightly, since the focus is on the individuals, not the group. Which, of course, is part of the point of releasing solo albums under the group name -- it's to prove that the two can exist under the umbrella of the OutKast aesthetic while standing as individuals. Thing is, while it would have been a wild, bracing listen to hear these 39 songs mixed up, alternating between Boi and Dre cuts, the two albums do prove that the music can be solo in execution but remain OutKast records through and through. Both records are visionary, imaginative listens, providing some of the best music of 2003, regardless of genre. If conventional wisdom, based on their public personas and previous music, held that Big Boi's record, Speakerboxxx, would be the more conventional of the two and Andre 3000's The Love Below the more experimental, that doesn't turn out to be quite true. From the moment Speakerboxxx kicks into gear with "GhettoMusick" and its relentless blend of old-school 808s and breakneck breakbeats, it's clear that Boi is ignoring boundaries, and the rest of his album follows suit. It's grounded firmly within hip-hop, but the beats bend against the grain and the arrangements are overflowing with ideas and thrilling, unpredictable juxtapositions, such as how "Bowtie" swings like big-band jazz filtered through George Clinton, how "The Way You Move" offsets its hard-driving verses with seductive choruses, or how "The Rooster" cheerfully rides a threatening minor-key mariachi groove, salted by slippery horns and loose-limbed wah-wah guitars. It's a hell of a ride, reclaiming the adventurous spirit of the golden age and pushing it into a new era.
By contrast, The Love Below isn't so much visionary as it is unapologetically eccentric. And as the cocktail jazz pianos that sparkle through the first few songs indicate, it's not much of a hip-hop album. Instead, Andre 3000 has created the great lost Prince album -- the platter that the Purple One recorded somewhere between Around the World in a Day and Sign 'o' the Times. It's not just that the music and song titles cheekily recall Prince -- "She Lives in My Lap" is a close relation of the B-side "She's Always in My Hair" -- it's that Dre disregards any rules on a quest to create his own interior world, right down to a dialogue with God. The difference between Andre 3000 and Prince is in that dialogue, too: Prince was tortured; Andre is trying to get laid. That cheerfully randy spirit surges through The Love Below, even on the spooky-serious closer, "A Life in the Day of Benjamin Andre," and it gives Andre the freedom to try a little of everything, from mock crooning on "Love Haters" to a breakbeat jazz interpretation of "My Favorite Things" to the strange one-man funk of "Roses" and the incandescent "Hey Ya!," where classic soul and electro-funk coexist happily. So, both records are very different, but the remarkable thing is, they both feel thoroughly like OutKast music. Big Boi and Andre 3000 took off in different directions from the same starting point, yet they wind up sounding unified because they share the same freewheeling aesthetic, where everything is alive and everything is possible within their music. That spirit fuels not just the best hip-hop, but the best pop music, and both Speakerboxxx and The Love Below are among the best hip-hop and best pop music released this decade. Each is a knockout individually, and paired together, their force is undeniable.
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