OutKast

Bio

OutKast is the most ambitious rap duo in the history of the genre. That is not a small claim. The defense is the catalog.

The duo is André 3000 (André Benjamin) and Big Boi (Antwan Patton). They met at Tri-Cities High School in East Point, Georgia, just outside Atlanta. They formed a duo at fifteen. By 1992 they were signed to LaFace, a label run out of Atlanta by L.A. Reid and Babyface. By 1994 they had a debut album, Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, that sold gold. The 1995 Source Awards in New York gave them Best New Rap Group. André made the famous "the South got something to say" speech at the podium that night. The New York press dismissed the speech as bluster.

The press was wrong. Over the next decade, OutKast made six studio albums and won basically every major award in popular music. ATLiens (1996) is the consolidation, the album where the New York / LA framing of hip-hop got rerouted to Atlanta. Aquemini (1998) is the artistic peak — the album that the Source gave 5 mics, the album that has "Rosa Parks," "Aquemini," "SpottieOttieDopaliscious," basically nothing on it that isn't classic. Stankonia (2000) is the commercial peak — "Ms. Jackson," "B.O.B." Speakerboxxx/The Love Below (2003) won Album of the Year at the 2004 Grammys, the second rap album ever to win that category. Idlewild (2006) is the soundtrack to a movie that did not work.

After Idlewild they essentially stopped. Big Boi released solo records. André started showing up on features and not rapping on most of them. They did a reunion tour in 2014 for the 20th anniversary of Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik. They have not made another album.

What OutKast did, beyond the chart performance, was open the conceptual range of what rap could attempt. Their records have funk on them. Their records have rock on them. Their records have gospel and electronic and Prince worship and theatrical sketches and twelve-minute songs. They proved, in a way no other 1990s rap duo proved, that you could be commercially gigantic and conceptually unhinged at the same time.

They are still alive, both of them. They are still credited as one of the most influential acts in popular music of the last forty years. André is doing the flute thing. Big Boi is still rapping. They have not officially broken up. They are not officially recording. Whether they ever make another album is, at this point, mostly a question for André. If you have only listened to one OutKast album, you should listen to two. The catalog rewards the attention.