ATLiens is released

Why it matters

ATLiens came out August 27, 1996, on LaFace. It is OutKast's second album. Big Boi and Andre 3000 are now twenty and twenty-one, two years after Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, and they are visibly evolving in real time. Organized Noize still produces a chunk of the album, but Big and Andre take co-production credit on most of it as Earthtone III, which is the first signal of what would become their full creative ownership of their sound by Aquemini. The album is the one where OutKast pulls away from the Southern-funk register of the debut and starts inventing the more cosmic, more interplanetary register that would peak on Stankonia. The title track, with Andre's verse about staying high to deal with the world's nonsense, is the announcement. "Elevators (Me & You)" was the lead single and a slow-burning crossover hit. "Wheelz of Steel," "Two Dope Boyz (In a Cadillac)," "Mainstream." By 1996 OutKast had stopped being a Southern rap group and become a rap group that happened to be from the South. The distinction matters. The rest of the catalog (Aquemini, Stankonia, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below) depends on it. You should listen to ATLiens to understand the pivot.