Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik is released

Why it matters

Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik came out on LaFace on April 26, 1994. OutKast was Big Boi (Antwan Patton) and Andre 3000 (Andre Benjamin), two teenagers from Atlanta who had been writing rap since they were ninth-graders. The album was produced largely by Organized Noize (Rico Wade, Sleepy Brown, Ray Murray), the Atlanta production collective working out of a studio called the Dungeon. What the album does is announce, for the rest of the country, that Atlanta is now in rap. The Source Awards stage in 1995 is the famous incident: OutKast won Best New Rap Group, the New York audience booed, and Andre 3000 took the mic and said "the South got something to say." Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik is the album that made that statement carry weight. The record is dense with Cadillac-and-funk Southern imagery, conversational MCing, and a regional accent commercial rap had not heard a major-label version of yet. "Player's Ball" is the famous single. "Crumblin' Erb" is the deep cut. By the time ATLiens came two years later, the South had a roster. The roster started here. You can hear OutKast figuring out who they are in real time.