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Outkast: Stankonia
Credit OutKast with this much: it has yet to release a "typical" album, veering from funky pimping (Southernplayalistic-adillacmuzic) to outer space tripping (ATLiens) to soulful meditations (Aquemini) over the course of three amazing records. Since Big Boi and Andre 3000's last disc, country grammar slangers like Nelly and Juvenile have spread deep into the mainstream, so it shouldn't be surprising that Stankonia sounds like a response to OutKast's previous sounds. Unsatisfied with the adoration of their core audience, they've come back to the dirtiest of the Dirty South to show these youngbloods how to do this thang properly.
Stripped-down isn't exactly the right phrase to describe OutKast's new sound, but the smooth instrumental riffs of hits like "Rosa Parks" have been reworked into something much rougher. "Ms. Jackson," a funny yet emotional play on the baby mama theme, is a patchwork track typical of the album, with standard synthesizers playing over a simple piano loop. More dramatic is "B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad)," about as typical an OutKast song as "Sexual Healing" would be a Black Sabbath tune—electric guitar, wailing organs, and drum and bass beats gone mad are all topped off with a gospel choir singing "Power music, electric revival!" "Don't pull your thang out unless you intend to bang," Dre warns on the chorus, and with all-out assaults like this, it's obvious OutKast has come to bang.
The combination of Big Boi's smoothness and Dre's otherworldliness gives OutKast the divergent chemistry that made A Tribe Called Quest and Public Enemy so memorable. The self-proclaimed "pimp" and "poet" balance each other out well, with Big Boi's traditional verses offseting Dre's surprisingly good singing on "Slum Beautiful" and Dre's avant-garde lyrics spicing up Big Boi's "Gangsta Shit." Stankonia only falters when the MCs fall into excess, such as when Dre wanders into cosmic slop on the rap-less "Stanklove" or when Big Boi just sounds too much like the rest of hip-hop on "We Luv Dez Hoez." These mistakes aside, Stankonia is yet another OutKast classic—even if the change in sound will have some of their fans calling it their best album, some their worst. We can only hope OutKast has a fifth trick up its sleeves soon to come. (La Face)
—Josh Drimmer
All materials © 2000 The Yale Herald, Inc., and its staff.
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