Hello, more rap coming your way today, after the New York party rap of the early eighties and the militant respons later that decade, the first half of the nineties saw a blossoming of Westcoast's ego tripping gangsta rap and a breakthru towards mainstream not in the least supported by MTV's eagerness to play the videoclips of scantly dressed 'ho's' dancing around the golden chained hip hoppers. It wasn't all that one dimensional but obviously it was supported by enough teen spirit.
Today's duo is one of the most successful hip-hop groups of all time, having received six Grammy Awards as well as selling 25 million copies of OutKast's eight releases,
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André "André 3000" Benjamin (formerly known as Dré) and Savannah, Georgia-born Antwan "Big Boi" Patton attended the same high school in the Atlanta borough of East Point, and several lyrical battles made each gain respect for the other's skills. They formed OutKast and were pursued by Organized Noize Productions, hitmakers for TLC and Xscape. Signed to the local LaFace label just after high school, OutKast recorded and released "Player's Ball," then watched the single rise to number one on the rap charts.Their debut album, Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, hit the Top 20 in 1994 and was certified platinum by the end of the year. Dré and Big Boi also won Best New Rap Group of the Year at the 1995 Source Awards.
OutKast returned with a new album in 1996, releasing ATLiens that August; it hit number two and went platinum with help from the gold-selling single "Elevators (Me & You)" , as well as the Top 40 title track. Aquemini followed in 1998, also hitting number two and going double platinum. There were no huge hit singles this time around, but critics lavishly praised the album's unified, progressive vision, hailing it as a great leap forward and including it on many year-end polls. Unfortunately, in a somewhat bizarre turn of events, OutKast was sued over the album's lead single, "Rosa Parks," by none other than the civil rights pioneer herself, who claimed that the group had unlawfully appropriated her name to promote their music, also objecting to some of the song's language. The initial court decision dismissed the suit in late 1999.
Dré modified his name to André 3000 before the group issued its hotly anticipated new album, originally titled 'Sandbox', the pair's fourth album, Stankonia was released in October 2000 to excellent reviews. The album was seen as a change in the group's musical style, as it had a more commercial and mainstream appeal, compared to their previous three albums which were darker and deeper. Riding the momentum of uniformly excellent reviews and the stellar singles "B.O.B." and "Ms. Jackson," Stankonia debuted at number two and went triple platinum in just a few months; meanwhile, "Ms. Jackson" became their first number one pop single the following February.
In September 2003, OutKast released a double album, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. It is essentially two solo albums, one by each member, packaged as a single release under the OutKast banner; the two members also appear on each others' discs for a few songs apiece. Big Boi's Speakerboxxx is largely a funk and Dirty South blended party record; André 3000's The Love Below features only brief instances of hip hop, presenting instead elements found in funk, jazz, rock, electronic music, and R&B.Speakerboxxx/The Love Below won the Grammy Award for the 2004 Album of the Year, becoming the first album consisting solely of hip-hop to receive the honor
Members began working on a joint film, Idlewild, directed by OutKast music video director Bryan Barber. Idlewild, a Prohibition-era musical film set to a blues-influenced hip-hop soundtrack, was released on August 25, 2006 The album was released early 2006 by August it reached platinum status. Big Boi announced plans to release a full fledged solo album, titled Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty. Meanwhile André 3000 returned to rapping in 2007, appearing on various remixes, and has been working on a sole album. Outkast are set to release a new album early 2012.
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Unlike their debut, Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, in which the two portrayed themselves as Southern pimps, many songs on ATLiens feature more unconventional subject matter for hip hop. It also has a notably more laid-back, spacey production sound, which they would continue to a certain extent on their follow-up album Aquemini. Two-thirds of the album is produced by Organized Noize, OutKast's primary production team. The rest is produced by Earthtone III, a production team that includes OutKast themselves and Mr. DJ..
Largely abandoning the hard-partying playa characters of their debut, Dre and Big Boi develop a startlingly fresh, original sound to go along with their futuristic new personas. George Clinton's space obsessions might seem to make P-Funk obvious musical source material, but ATLiens ignores the hard funk in favor of a smooth, laid-back vibe that perfectly suits the duo's sense of melody. The album's chief musical foundation is still soul, especially the early-'70s variety, but other influences begin to pop up as well. The Organized Noize production team frequently employs the spacious mixes and echo effects of dub reggae in creating the album's alien soundscapes. In addition to the striking musical leap forward, Dre and Big Boi continue to grow as rappers; their flows are getting more tongue-twistingly complex, and their lyrics more free-associative. The album broke new ground for Southern hip-hop and marked OutKast as one of the most creatively restless and ambitious hip-hop groups of the '90s.
OutKast – ATLiens ( 343mb)
01 You May Die (Intro) 1:05
02 Two Dope Boyz (In A Cadillac) 2:46
03 ATLiens 3:50
04 Wheelz Of Steel 4:03
05 Jazzy Belle 4:12
06 Elevators (Me & You) 4:25
07 Ova Da Wudz 3:48
08 Babylon 4:24
09 Wailin' 2:00
10 Mainstream 5:18
11 Decatur Psalm 3:58
12 Millenium 3:09
13 E.T. (Extraterrestrial) 3:07
14 13th Floor / Growing Old 7:50
15 Elevators (ONP 86 Mix) 4:36
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Speakerboxxx/The Love Below represented a departure from Outkast's previous work. First of all, the album worked as two albums on a single set, with the first (Speakerboxxx) working as a Big Boi solo project and the second (The Love Below) as an André solo album. Although both albums have their own distinct character, 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. 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. The album is OutKast's biggest commercial success yet, having debuted on the Billboard 200 albums chart at number-one and stayed there for several weeks, it eventually sold over five million copies.
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.
OutKast – Speakerboxxx ( 391mb)
01 Intro 1:29
02 GhettoMusick 3:56
03 Unhappy 3:19
04 Bowtie 3:56
05 The Way You Move 3:54
06 The Rooster 3:57
07 Bust 3:08
08 War 2:43
09 Church 3:27
10 Bamboo (Interlude) 2:09
11 Tomb Of The Boom 4:46
12 E-Mac (Interlude) 0:24
13 Knowing 3:32
14 Flip Flop Rock 4:35
15 Interlude 1:15
16 Reset 4:35
17 D-Boi (Interlude) 0:40
18 Last Call 3:57
19 Bowtie (Postlude) 0:35
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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 it's that Dre disregards any rules on a quest to create his own interior world, right down to a dialogue with God. Meanwhile a 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 to the strange one-man funk of "Roses" and the incandescent "Hey Ya!," where classic soul and electro-funk coexist happily. 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.
OutKast – The Love Below( 493mb)
01 The Love Below (Intro) 1:27
02 Love Hater 2:49
03 God (Interlude) 2:20
04 Happy Valentine's Day 5:23
05 Spread 3:51
06 Where Are My Panties? 1:54
07 Prototype 5:26
08 She Lives In My Lap 4:27
09 Hey Ya! 3:55
10 Roses 6:09
11 Good Day, Good Sir 1:24
12 Behold A Lady 4:37
13 Pink & Blue 5:04
14 Love In War 3:25
15 She's Alive 4:06
16 Dracula's Wedding 2:32
17 My Favorite Things 5:14
18 Take Off Your Cool 2:38
19 Vibrate 6:33
20 A Life In The Day Of Benjamin Andre (Incomplete) 5:11
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Today's duo is one of the most successful hip-hop groups of all time, having received six Grammy Awards as well as selling 25 million copies of OutKast's eight releases,
xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
André "André 3000" Benjamin (formerly known as Dré) and Savannah, Georgia-born Antwan "Big Boi" Patton attended the same high school in the Atlanta borough of East Point, and several lyrical battles made each gain respect for the other's skills. They formed OutKast and were pursued by Organized Noize Productions, hitmakers for TLC and Xscape. Signed to the local LaFace label just after high school, OutKast recorded and released "Player's Ball," then watched the single rise to number one on the rap charts.Their debut album, Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, hit the Top 20 in 1994 and was certified platinum by the end of the year. Dré and Big Boi also won Best New Rap Group of the Year at the 1995 Source Awards.
OutKast returned with a new album in 1996, releasing ATLiens that August; it hit number two and went platinum with help from the gold-selling single "Elevators (Me & You)" , as well as the Top 40 title track. Aquemini followed in 1998, also hitting number two and going double platinum. There were no huge hit singles this time around, but critics lavishly praised the album's unified, progressive vision, hailing it as a great leap forward and including it on many year-end polls. Unfortunately, in a somewhat bizarre turn of events, OutKast was sued over the album's lead single, "Rosa Parks," by none other than the civil rights pioneer herself, who claimed that the group had unlawfully appropriated her name to promote their music, also objecting to some of the song's language. The initial court decision dismissed the suit in late 1999.
Dré modified his name to André 3000 before the group issued its hotly anticipated new album, originally titled 'Sandbox', the pair's fourth album, Stankonia was released in October 2000 to excellent reviews. The album was seen as a change in the group's musical style, as it had a more commercial and mainstream appeal, compared to their previous three albums which were darker and deeper. Riding the momentum of uniformly excellent reviews and the stellar singles "B.O.B." and "Ms. Jackson," Stankonia debuted at number two and went triple platinum in just a few months; meanwhile, "Ms. Jackson" became their first number one pop single the following February.
In September 2003, OutKast released a double album, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. It is essentially two solo albums, one by each member, packaged as a single release under the OutKast banner; the two members also appear on each others' discs for a few songs apiece. Big Boi's Speakerboxxx is largely a funk and Dirty South blended party record; André 3000's The Love Below features only brief instances of hip hop, presenting instead elements found in funk, jazz, rock, electronic music, and R&B.Speakerboxxx/The Love Below won the Grammy Award for the 2004 Album of the Year, becoming the first album consisting solely of hip-hop to receive the honor
Members began working on a joint film, Idlewild, directed by OutKast music video director Bryan Barber. Idlewild, a Prohibition-era musical film set to a blues-influenced hip-hop soundtrack, was released on August 25, 2006 The album was released early 2006 by August it reached platinum status. Big Boi announced plans to release a full fledged solo album, titled Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty. Meanwhile André 3000 returned to rapping in 2007, appearing on various remixes, and has been working on a sole album. Outkast are set to release a new album early 2012.
xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
Unlike their debut, Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, in which the two portrayed themselves as Southern pimps, many songs on ATLiens feature more unconventional subject matter for hip hop. It also has a notably more laid-back, spacey production sound, which they would continue to a certain extent on their follow-up album Aquemini. Two-thirds of the album is produced by Organized Noize, OutKast's primary production team. The rest is produced by Earthtone III, a production team that includes OutKast themselves and Mr. DJ..
Largely abandoning the hard-partying playa characters of their debut, Dre and Big Boi develop a startlingly fresh, original sound to go along with their futuristic new personas. George Clinton's space obsessions might seem to make P-Funk obvious musical source material, but ATLiens ignores the hard funk in favor of a smooth, laid-back vibe that perfectly suits the duo's sense of melody. The album's chief musical foundation is still soul, especially the early-'70s variety, but other influences begin to pop up as well. The Organized Noize production team frequently employs the spacious mixes and echo effects of dub reggae in creating the album's alien soundscapes. In addition to the striking musical leap forward, Dre and Big Boi continue to grow as rappers; their flows are getting more tongue-twistingly complex, and their lyrics more free-associative. The album broke new ground for Southern hip-hop and marked OutKast as one of the most creatively restless and ambitious hip-hop groups of the '90s.
OutKast – ATLiens ( 343mb)
01 You May Die (Intro) 1:05
02 Two Dope Boyz (In A Cadillac) 2:46
03 ATLiens 3:50
04 Wheelz Of Steel 4:03
05 Jazzy Belle 4:12
06 Elevators (Me & You) 4:25
07 Ova Da Wudz 3:48
08 Babylon 4:24
09 Wailin' 2:00
10 Mainstream 5:18
11 Decatur Psalm 3:58
12 Millenium 3:09
13 E.T. (Extraterrestrial) 3:07
14 13th Floor / Growing Old 7:50
15 Elevators (ONP 86 Mix) 4:36
xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
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.
OutKast – Speakerboxxx ( 391mb)
01 Intro 1:29
02 GhettoMusick 3:56
03 Unhappy 3:19
04 Bowtie 3:56
05 The Way You Move 3:54
06 The Rooster 3:57
07 Bust 3:08
08 War 2:43
09 Church 3:27
10 Bamboo (Interlude) 2:09
11 Tomb Of The Boom 4:46
12 E-Mac (Interlude) 0:24
13 Knowing 3:32
14 Flip Flop Rock 4:35
15 Interlude 1:15
16 Reset 4:35
17 D-Boi (Interlude) 0:40
18 Last Call 3:57
19 Bowtie (Postlude) 0:35
xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
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 it's that Dre disregards any rules on a quest to create his own interior world, right down to a dialogue with God. Meanwhile a 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 to the strange one-man funk of "Roses" and the incandescent "Hey Ya!," where classic soul and electro-funk coexist happily. 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.
OutKast – The Love Below( 493mb)
01 The Love Below (Intro) 1:27
02 Love Hater 2:49
03 God (Interlude) 2:20
04 Happy Valentine's Day 5:23
05 Spread 3:51
06 Where Are My Panties? 1:54
07 Prototype 5:26
08 She Lives In My Lap 4:27
09 Hey Ya! 3:55
10 Roses 6:09
11 Good Day, Good Sir 1:24
12 Behold A Lady 4:37
13 Pink & Blue 5:04
14 Love In War 3:25
15 She's Alive 4:06
16 Dracula's Wedding 2:32
17 My Favorite Things 5:14
18 Take Off Your Cool 2:38
19 Vibrate 6:33
20 A Life In The Day Of Benjamin Andre (Incomplete) 5:11
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Please could this Outkast set be re-upped sometime?
ReplyDeleteThanks in advance