Aquemini is released

Why it matters

Aquemini came out September 29, 1998, on LaFace. It is OutKast's third album. The title is a portmanteau of Aquarius (Big Boi) and Gemini (Andre 3000), the two members' astrological signs. Organized Noize is still on the production credits, but Big and Andre are now full creative co-owners of the sound. This is the album where OutKast becomes OutKast in the form most people now mean when they say "OutKast." "Rosa Parks" was the lead single (which prompted a 1999 lawsuit from Rosa Parks's estate, eventually settled). "Da Art of Storytellin' (Part 1)." "SpottieOttieDopaliscious" (with one of the most distinctive horn lines in any 90s rap record). "Aquemini" itself. The album sold two million copies and confirmed OutKast as the most ambitious, most musically restless rap group of the late 1990s. By the time Stankonia hit in 2000, the rest of the genre had been studying this album for two years. You can hear, on Aquemini, the moment Atlanta becomes a creative center of rap in a way that did not stop being true.