64. OutKast, "Stankonia"

 


This big, fun as hell record gave rise to OutKast's first #1 single, "Ms. Jackson," a rap-funk hybrid about Andre 3000's relationship with Erykah Badu; the titular Ms. Jackson is Badu's mother.  Did she take it the wrong way?  No, she did not, according to Badu; "How did my mama feel? Baby, she bought herself a Ms. Jackson license plate . . .  She had the mug, she had the ink pen, she had the headband, everything.  That’s who loved it.”  The song's absolutely iconic chorus ("I'm sorry Ms. Jackson/I am for real/Never meant to make your daughter cry/I apologize a trillion times") also gave rise to one of the best tweets of all time:

But this album is so much more.  The group had recently purchased a studio in Atlanta, and freed from the constraints of studio time, were free to let their imaginations roam.  So you get an incredible pastiche of styles and beats.  "Gasoline Dream," one of the album's best songs, draws from early 90's hip hop but with Andre's immediately recognizable vocal style adapting it to the OutKast sound.  I love it.  It's immediately followed by "So Fresh, So Clean," with a smooth R&B backing sound set to skittery drums and the two's intricate raps.

"B.O.B. - Bombs Over Baghdad," a song good enough to be named the Best Song of the 2000s by Pitchfork, is really a masterpiece, a frantic, pounding, nerve shattering song that draws from metal, drum n bass, gospel, god knows what else.  Released in the brief interregnum between the first Iraq War and the Big Iraq War, the song isn't actually about those conflicts; Andre heard the phrase and liked it.  The song is about conflict; between one's past and present ("Soul-gold grill and a baby mama/Black Cadillac and a pack of Pampers"), between street life and going straight ("Before you re-up, get a laptop/Make a business for yourself, boy, set some goals/Make a fat diamond out of dusty coal/Record number four, but we on a roll").  I don't know if it's the best song of the 2000s, but when the list came out I made a playlist of the Top 20 songs and listened to it so much that I've grown to think "fuck, maybe it is!"

This album is a great contrast to Jay's Reasonable Doubt from last week.  I said that album was "too smooth and uniform for me" and there is NO CHANCE OF THAT HERE.  I really, really like this album a lot, much much more than Reasonable Doubt, and I think it's OutKast's wild experimentation and throwing everything at the wall style that I groove to, more than Jay-Z's restrained, matter-of-fact delivery.  This is like comparing King Crimson and Bob Seger in the rock genre; of course some people will prefer the former to the latter and vice versa.  

Is this album in my personal Top 100? This is right on the edge; we'll have to see when I publish my list.

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