OUTKAST BIO
(courtesy of LaFace/Arista)

Let’s start with a simple introductory exercise. Put on your copy of Grammy-nominated rap duo Outkast’s fourth album and inhale deeply. Just do it.

OK, breathing in?  Deeply?

Feel the rush of yet another brand new direction in hip-hop in which rappers can harmonize, music is actually played—not sampled, musical boundaries are non-existent, and the lyrics are otherworldly in their delivery, although every line hits home?

That’s Stankonia (pronounced Stank-O-nee-ya), a place where “there’s a certain type of freedom going on in the music, used in a liberating way,” according to the group. It's an album that will only add to the accolades for hip-hop’s beloved Outkasts.  

With the Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik album, then 18-year-old Andre “Dre” Benjamin and Antwan “Big Boi” Patton introduced themselves to those unaware of the ways of the S.W.A.T.S. (Southwest Atlanta Too Strong). Outkast always has to come up with something different, including the platinum blonde wig Dre was known to don during their last sold-out tour with Lauryn Hill. And granted, “different”—done well—often gets critical nods, like:

The top, “classic” ranking of five mics that The Source gave the Atlantans’ last whiff of real rap innovation, Aquemini. Though the widely respected magazine had only given such praise seven times before in that decade, once you start off saying Outkast embodies the term genius…and its 1998 album “possesses an uncanny blend of sonic beauty, poignant lyricism, and spirituality that compels without commanding”—what else can you do but give it up?

Four stars (also the highest rating) from the Los Angeles Times, which called Aquemini a “brilliant” slice of hip-hop,” while noting that Dre and Big Boi “masterfully” practiced relaxed, hyper, distorted, speedy, and conversational presentations. Tackling topics such as emancipation, drug addiction, and problematic relationships, they explore the bleakest aspects of humanity while encouraging their listeners to examine themselves.

And an “A” for Aquemini in Entertainment Weekly, a Number 35 position for the same effort on Spin magazine’s “90 Greatest Albums Of The ‘90s list, four stars (its highest ranking) from Rolling Stone, and of course the Grammy nomination for best performance by a rap duo or group.

But “different” doesn’t always mean commercial success—although for Outkast it does. Since the 1994 release of Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, its audience has consistently grown. One million people came to the “Players Ball” featured on Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik (including apparently Macy Gray, as the fellow Grammy nominee borrowed from Outkast’s "Git Up, Git Out” for her first single “Do Something.”). And with a little help from “Rosa Parks” (lawsuits aside) Aquemini (a combination of Big Boi the Aquarian and Dre the Gemini) hit the back of the bus, and the 2 million mark.

“Now with Stankonia I’m thinking at least 5 million," Big Boi says with utter confidence.  

“We’re doing new things like taking different rhythms, different tempos, to reflect what is going on in the world,” Dre adds. “I feel like people are kind of like lingering around trying to see what’s going to happen next. This music has a kind of urgency to it, making you do—feel—something!”

Like stand back as the kinetic first single from Stankonia, “Bombs Over Baghdad,” drops onto hip-hop.

“We were overseas when we came up with that, and a war was about to jump off,” Big Boi says of the song's origin. “And it turns out we were bombing milk factories and everything but a real target. And we just thought, you know, don’t come with the big guns unless you’re really going to do something."

“Musically, it reflects the chaos that was going on in me and Big Boi’s life,” adds Dre. “Everything was going really fast. We were coming off Aquemini. We had new children.  People were saying things like, ‘Andre, why is he looking like this?’ ‘Dressing like this?’ ‘Talking like this?’ ‘Are they going pop?’ ‘Going to break up?’ And with everything coming at us, we just had to charge right back!”

Listen closely underneath that battle cry and you’ll hear the guitar part Dre came up with.  "We’re trying to get better as musicians and songwriters,” explains Big Boi, who’s focused on being a classical pianist.

So in addition to producing most of the album—along with three offerings from fellow Dungeon Family members Organized Noize (Goodie Mobb, TLC)—Dre played the riff on what Big Boi calls “the ghetto‘Waterfalls’,” the slowly enrapturing notice to the baby mama’s mama, “Miss Jackson.”

Exercise number two: Read this chorus and commit it to memory (before the radio and fans of a real hook make you do it involuntarily): “I’m sorry Miss Jackson/Oooh!/I am for real/Never meant to make your daughter cry/I apologize a trillion times.”

“It seems like so many young black men think, Man, the mother-in-law, she hates me,” says Dre, who sings on the chorus. “And it’s not like we get into it to leave, things just didn’t happen the way we planned it. So we just wanted to touch on that a bit.”

“Taking hip-hop back,” Big Boi says, was the objective on “So Fresh, So Clean,” an old soul revival of a time when “fresh” was an adjective used to describe something other than food and the guy playing bass on this single, Aaron Mills, was in the cameo.

“And to the flossers out there who’ll die for the diamonds and Bentleys," Big Boi says, “we’re serving up a big plate of 'Red Velvet.' It’s just a little something for all these people out here talking about they’ve got all this money, got all this cake…Well, there’s somebody out there hearing you ready to turn your pound cake, that brain, into 'Red Velvet.’”

Rapper Killer Mike and future reggae titan J Sweet—both on Outkast’s new label Aquemini—prove their worth on the percussive “Snapping And Trapping.” The Dungeon Family’s Backbone and Big Gipp (of Goodie Mobb) chime in on the syncopated parody, “We Love These Hoes.” And Erykah Badu, Dre’s former girlfriend (and mother of their son, Seven), lights a vocal match to the salsa in “Humble Mumble.”

“This does have its chill moments though,” Dre offers. “I don’t want to say it’s a sexy hip-hop album, because I know people don’t think hip-hop is sexy. But this is. A female energy came into the album. Something sensual and pretty.”

“I’ll Call Before I Come” is a good example, Big Boi says, as the bluesy team-up with Gangsta Boo and new Aquemini artist Echo “is about not getting there before the girl does. You know, everybody getting pleased.”

And while you’re, uh, “pleasing”—“and it’s just so good and so real you’ve got to frown your face up,” Dre says—could there be a better soundtrack then the sleepy intoxicant “Stank Love”?

“'Stank Love’ is the visual musical experience us hip-hop fans just ain’t getting enough of,” Big Boi claims.

“I think hip-hop as a whole is still good, but people got the formula together now,” adds Dre. “It’s too easy to get the equipment, the keyboards, and whatever else and duplicate what’s out there selling. You don’t have to work too hard. But it’s not fun anymore once everybody can do it the same way. So we just came different. Had to. We’re not singers, but I hear a lot of melody in this album. We’re taking it back to before hip-hop. To the music that rap music has sampled. To the funk.”

That’s Stankonia. And it’s all inside you now. You may exhale…if you want.