OutKast

Hip-hop duo

For the Record…

Selected discography

Sources

Upon its release in the fall of 2000, Stankonia ushered OutKast—the Atlanta-based duo of Andre “Dre” Benjamin (who also answers to the name “Andre 3000”) and Antwan “Big Boi” Patton—into the center of the hip-hop world. In the rap business, where risk-takers rarely reap the rewards of commercial success, OutKast stand as true music mavericks. Not only did they succeed in creating something different to satisfy their own need for self-expression, they also found fans willing to accept their sound. The double-platinum album, which appealed to college kids and urban youth alike, has received much more than popular acceptance. Critics and peers likewise praised Stankonia, featuring the quasi-political hit “B.O.B.” (“Bombs Over Baghdad”), for its inventiveness and creativity, overwhelmingly calling it the best hip-hop album of the year and crediting OutKast for taking the rap genre to a new level. “’B.O.B.’ was maybe the most exciting thing I heard [in 2000],” stated former Rage Against the Machine singer Zack de la Rocha, as quoted by Spin magazine’s Sacha Jenkins. “It defies definition, and that’s the dopest kind of music. They’re an incredible group.”

Rather than relying on samplers during recording sessions, OutKast instead opted for live instrumentation, along with a varied range of influences that included everything from funk to rock to electronica. “It’s like a picnic,” explained Benjamin to Rolling Stone contributor Mark Binelli. “Your auntie might bring peas; somebody else might bring collard greens. You gotta sit back and say, ’What can I bring to the table that’s gonna make this whole meal right?’ And we felt like, in hip-hop, there wasn’t no driving type music. Everything was real chill and laid-back. We’re trying to crank it back up. I like a lot of techno music, but some of it sounds soft, so I’m trying to make our own American style—harder, like hip-hop, instead of ambient and pretty.” OutKast call their music “slumadelic,” a sort of dance music for the slums.

Benjamin and Patton, who share a love of artists such as George Clinton, Sly and the Family Stone, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, and Prince, became friends after a chance meeting at a mall in the early 1990s. At the time, both were new students in the tenth grade at Tri-Cities High School—also the alma mater of R&B groups TLC and Xscape—in the East Point neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia. Despite different backgrounds, the two hit it off immediately. Benjamin, an only child, lived with his mother during his early years before moving in with his father at age 15. In contrast, Patton grew up with several brothers and sisters in Savannah, Georgia, before settling in Atlanta with his family as a teen.

The two friends began rapping together soon thereafter. At school, Benjamin and Patton held impromptu competitions during lunchtime in the cafeteria to try to out-rhyme one another. As their skills progressed, the

For the Record…

Members include Andre “Dre” Benjamin and Antwan “Big Boi” Patton.

Met while in the tenth grade at Tri-Cities High School in Atlanta, GA; signed with the LaFace label and released first single, “Player’s Ball,” 1993; released debut album Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, 1994; released AT- Liens, 1996; released Aquemini, containing the single “Rosa Parks,” 1998; released Stankonia, 2000.

Addresses: Record company —Arista Records, 6 W. 57th St., New York City, NY 10019, phone: (800) 6-ARISTA, fax: (212) 830-2248. Website—OutKast Official Website:http://www.outkast.com.

duo set out to break into the hip-hop industry. They met their future producer, Rico Wade, in a parking lot where they rhymed their own version of “Scenario” by A Tribe Called Quest for him. “Them cats was about sixteen and took the bus up to this little plaza where I owned a beauty supply shop and video store,” Wade, who made his name as one-third of the Organized Noize production team and has produced for the likes of TLC, Eric Clapton, and En Vogue, recalled to Anthony Bozza of Rolling Stone. “They came out with an instrumental of ’Scenario.’ And for seven minutes them cats went back to back. I didn’t even stop them, I was so in awe. I closed the store, we got in my Blazer and went straight to the Dungeon.”

Although Patton and Benjamin planned to visit several producers that day, the Dungeon, a pre-production studio in the basement of an old house, was their first and only stop. According to Benjamin, as quoted by Bozza, “the beats they had were some of the most original music from Atlanta we’d ever heard.” After that day, the two teenagers began frequenting the studio on a regular basis to learn from beat makers like Raymon Murray, also of Organized Noize, as well as other local hopefuls such as Big Gripp and Khujo, who would later form the group Goodie Mob. Benjamin and Patton also formed their own group called 2 Shades Deep. During his junior year, Benjamin dropped out of high school to devote himself entirely to music, while Patton completed his education, graduating with a 3.68 grade point average.

Meanwhile, just prior to Patton’s graduation and with the help of Wade, the duo inked a record deal with the L.A. Reid and Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds LaFace label. Their first single, “Player’s Ball,” arrived in 1993. An instant hit, the song topped the rap charts for six weeks that year and earned gold status. The following year saw the release of OutKast’s debut full-length set.Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, recorded when Patton and Benjamin were 18 years old and largely produced by Organized Muzik, proved another commercial as well as critical success.

Unlike other rap groups outside Los Angeles or New York, the duo presented themselves as simply who they were, highlighting their Atlanta roots, filtering their lives through their music, and implementing rich, live production techniques. OutKast also struck a balance between positive messages and street stories, a hallmark of their music ever since. The album spawned two hits in addition to “Player’s Ball” : the title track and the song “Get Up and Get Out.” Eagerly soaking in the duo’s tales about life as they saw it and image of self-empowerment, the hip-hop community embraced OutKast. By the end of 1994, Southernplayalisticadil-lacmuzik reached the platinum sales mark.

In 1996, OutKast’s second album, ATLiens, reached the number two position on the rap charts and sold over one-and-a-half million copies, cementing the duo’s status as the soul-bearers of a new, regional style of hip-hop known as the “Dirty South.” The album, an illustration of the pair’s fascination with space travel and the raising of consciousness, spawned another gold single, “Elevators (Me and You).” Around this time Benjamin introduced the outrageous image that he is famous for—wearing large wraps or dresses and platinum wigs and turbans, an appearance that often led to frequent rumors about his sexual identity. But like Parliament’s Bootsy Collins or Jimi Hendrix, Benjamin simply wanted to look like his music. “You gotta know Dre,” Patton said to writer Isaac Guzman in the Los Angeles Times. “Dre could put up some Levi’s and some Jordans in a minute. You never know. It just depends on how he’s feeling. When you’re on stage, you want to look like the music feels.”

OutKast’s ascent continued with the release of their 1998 album Aquemini, which sold over two million copies. Despite rave reviews in publications such as Rolling Stone and the Source, the multiplatinum album was not without controversy. The Grammy-nominated single “Rosa Parks” angered the civil rights matriarch, and her attorneys levied a lawsuit against the group, accusing the duo of exploiting her name for commercial purposes. Although a federal court judge ruled that OutKast had not misused Rosa Parks’ name, her attorneys, who additionally retained the services of attorney Johnnie Cochran, famous for defending former football star O.J. Simpson in his murder case, promised to appeal the decision.

The OutKast/Rosa Parks case remained unresolved as of early 2001, yet Patton and Benjamin insist that they did no wrong. “We won the first decision, so they’re appealing it,” Patton told Jenkins, as stated in Spin’s March 2001 issue. “But everybody knows that there was never any disrespect meant at all. If you know anything about OutKast—if you listen to the song, it’s not about Rosa Parks. When we sing ’everybody move to the back of the bus, ’ we’re just using that as symbolism.”

OutKast returned with their fourth album, the critically acclaimed Stankonia, in the fall of 2000. “Stankonia is this place I imagined where you can open yourself up and be free to express anything,” Benjamin told Sonia Murray in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Indeed, the album departed from typical rap through the inclusion of varied musical elements. The song “B.O.B.,” a political declaration of sorts about not doing anything halfway, prominently featured organs, guitar, and vocals by the Morris Brown College Choir. Other tracks of note included soul jams like “Stanklove” and “Slum Beautiful,” a keyboard-laden song about how money, for better and for worse, changes everything titled “Red Velvet,” and “Humble Mumble,” featuring the vocals of R&B singer Erykah Badu, Benjamin’s former girlfriend with whom he had a son, Seven, in 1997. Although Badu and Benjamin split earlier in 2000, their relationship inspired the lyrics for the track “Ms. Jackson,” an open letter from Benjamin to Badu’s mother in which he promises to take an active role as a father.

Benjamin and Patton, who also started their own label, Aquemini, as well as a line of clothing called OutKast Clothing, attribute their success to enjoying what they do creatively and remaining fans themselves of all types of music. “It’s about learning and paying attention,” Benjamin pointed out to Bozza. “When we listen to records, we sit down and listen to everything from blues to bluegrass to the people that really inspire us, like Jimi Hendrix, Funkadelic and Sly Stone.” Patton added, “We truly love what we do. That’s one thing I can say about us as a team.”

Selected discography

Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, LaFace/Arista, 1994.

ATLiens, LaFace/Arista, 1996.

Aquemini, LaFace/Arista, 1998.

Stankonia, LaFace/Arista, 2000.

Sources

Periodicals

Atlanta Journal-Constitution, November 4, 1999; November 5, 1999; October 30, 2000; October 31, 2000; January 4, 2001.

Billboard, January 23, 1999; April 17, 1999; September 23, 2000; November 4, 2000.

Boston Globe, December 7, 2000.

Jet, April 16, 1999.

Los Angeles Times, September 27, 1998; October 22, 2000; October 28, 2000.

New York Times, October 29, 2000.

People, November 27, 2000.

Rolling Stone, December 10, 1998; December 24, 1998-January 7, 1999; February 4, 1999; May 13, 1999; April 13, 2000; November 23, 2000; December 14-21, 2000; December 28, 2000-January 4, 2001; January 18, 2001.

Spin, March 2001.

USA Today, October 31, 2000; November 3, 2000.

Village Voice, November 7, 2000; December 5, 2000.

Washington Post, December 4, 1998; November 8, 2000; November 10, 2000; December 31, 2000.

Online

Wall of Sound, http://wallofsound.go.com (April 21, 2001).

—Laura Hightower

OutKast

Hip-Hop duo

Met Producer at Shopping Center

Adopted Unique Visual Style

Won Two Grammy Awards

Selected discography

Sources

From the beginning, hip-hop music has had its nonconformists—free spirits who diverge from the music’s dominant trends and take to heart the creativity, playfulness, and stylistic mixture inherent in the hip-hop genre. Following in the tradition of such groups as the Wu-Tang Clan and A Tribe Called Quest is the Atlanta duo OutKast, whose 2000 album, Stankonia, propelled them to mainstream success. The album capped a nine-year career marked by increasingly bold experimentation. While many entrants in the hip-hop arena have faded after one or two creative outings that exhaust their new ideas, OutKast has continued to hold the attention of musically aware hip-hop audiences.

OutKast consists of Atlantans Antwan “Big Boi” Patton and Andre “Dre” Benjamin, also known as Andre 3000. Both were native Georgians, born around 1975. They met in an Atlanta mall and discovered that they were both new tenth-grade students at Atlanta’s Tri-Cities High School, as well as admirers of the line of funk running from Sly & the Family Stone to Prince, a line that was one of hip-hop’s direct ancestors. Soon they were holding rhyming competitions in the school’s cafeteria and wondering why Atlanta, with its wealth of local musical talent—their own high school had spawned the R&B groups TLC and Xscape—had not yet spawned a distinctive hip-hop tradition comparable in importance to the competing East Coast and West Coast schools.

Met Producer at Shopping Center

The duo met TLC producer Rico Wade in the parking lot of a plaza where he owned two stores, and was impressed with his ability to play several musical instruments live—a contrast with other hip-hop studio wizards whose expertise was exclusively digital. The favorable impression went both ways; Wade was so riveted by their version of A Tribe Called Quest’s “Scenario” that he closed both his shops and drove Patton and Benjamin to the Dungeon production studio. Wade’s Organized Noize production team would remain with OutKast and become heavily involved in shaping the duo’s first several albums.

OutKast’s debut single, “Player’s Ball,” was released in 1993. Extolling both pimps and marijuana smoking, it gave evidence of the duo’s innovative ways only in its intricate rhymes. When a complete album, Southern-playalisticadillacmuzik, was released the following year, it contained a wide range of songs, including one that advised “Don’t spend all your time tryin’ to get high.” Entertainment Weekly praised the album, pointing to its “casual funk” sound and delightful rhymes such as “ain’t no thang but a chicken wing.”

At a Glance…

Born Antwan “Big Boi” Patton, c. 1975; born Andre “Dre” Benjamin, c 1975.

Career: Worked with producer Rico Wade of Organized Noize production team, early 1990s; released debut single, “Player’s Ball,” 1993; signed with LaFace label; released debut album, Southemplayalisticadil-lacmuzik, 1994; ATLiens, 1996; Aquemini, 1998; Stankonia, 2000; launched OutKast Clothing line, 2001.

Selected awards: Five Grammy award nominations and two awards for Stankonia, 2001.

Address: Label —Arista Records, 6 W. 57th St., New York, NY 10019.

Nevertheless, Patton told the Los Angeles Times, “A lot of people got the message of our first album mixed up. They just heard ‘Player’s Ball’ and thought it was all about the pimps, the cars, and all that mess.”

Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik sold more than 850, 000 copies in its first five months of release, giving OutKast considerable creative latitude for their second release, ATLiens. The title is a thoroughly characteristic pun combining the word “aliens” with the conventional three-letter abbreviation for Atlanta. That album diverged from the hip-hop trend of sampling earlier songs wholesale. “While everyone else is content to steal an old hit song and add a new rap verse over it, we always start from scratch,” Patton told the Los Angeles Times. “Picasso had plenty of influences, but you’d never catch him trying to remake another artist’s work in the exact same way. We feel the same.” The comment pointed toward the artistic ambitions of OutKast’s music, but, like funk master George Clinton, the duo had a knack for experimenting without losing a connection with ordinary music fans. USA Today later detected a useful creative tension between Patton’s streetwise perspective and Benjamin’s socially conscious texts. ATLiens sold more than 1.5 million copies.

Adopted Unique Visual Style

In concert and on video, Benjamin began to cultivate an outrageous visual style that reminded industry observers of another member of the 1970s funk scene, “Bootsy” Collins. Encountering Benjamin in an Atlanta airport concourse, Atlanta Journal and Constitution writer Sonia Murray described” royal blue pants—fringed at midcalf—with some kind of flowery silver pattern. Then a black-and-orange football jersey. And finally, a floppy red-and-black crocheted hat, tilted to one side, over his meticulously Farrah Fawcett-flipped hair.” The more conservative Patton expressed himself in another way: he took up breeding pit bull dogs. “People discriminate against them before they even get to know them,” he pointed out to the Toronto Sun. “It’s like how white women clutch their purse when they see a black man walking toward them.” He added, “She don’t even know you but she’s scared of you.”

Both sales totals and creative achievement continued to rise with OutKast’s third album, 1998’s Aquemini. OutKast began to show up on newspaper music critics’ year-end best album lists, and the group’s fame began to spread beyond the hip-hop community. Some of the publicity, however, was negative. One of the album’s singles, “Rosa Parks,” was intended as an oblique honor to the civil rights pioneer, still alive and well in Detroit (the lyrics do not mention her specifically, but refer to “the back of the bus” and evoke Parks’s time with a sharp harmonica solo). Parks, perhaps incensed by the profanity used in some of OutKast’s music, charged the duo with unauthorized exploitation of her name for commercial purposes. An initial court decision came down in OutKast’s favor in 1999, but appeals continued.

In March of 1998 Patton and Benjamin purchased an Atlanta studio formerly owned by R&B star Bobby Brown. They renamed it Stankonia, combining a slang term meaning “funky” (”stank”) with “Plutonia,” the name of a futuristic city depicted on a poster in Benjamin’s bedroom. For the duo, the name had overtones of a place with untrammeled creative freedom, and Stankonia became the name of their fourth album, recorded over about a year beginning in the spring of 1999 and released the following year.

Won Two Grammy Awards

A true creative tour de force, Stankonia garnered five Grammy nominations and won two, for best rap album and best rap single. The latter award was for “Ms. Jackson,” a song inspired by the breakup of Benjamin’s relationship with the innovative neo-soul vocalist Erykah Badu. The lyrics address Badu’s mother, promising to remain involved with the upbringing of Benjamin and Badu’s son, Seven. OutKast’s label LaFace/Arista marketed the album heavily among white college music fans, and “Ms. Jackson,” especially, became a huge success across the board, rising to the top of Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart. The rest of the album was a splendidly varied lot, with the leadoff single “B.O.B.” featuring organs and a college choir on vocals, a rap piece in the mold of Public Enemy (“Gasoline Dreams”), the keyboard-drenched soul piece “Slum Beautiful,” and many other songs that ranged from humorous to deadly serious. Stankonia contained 24 tracks in all, and many buyers found that it took repeated hearings to fully grasp the music.

OutKast released a greatest hits compilation at the end of 2000 in advance of the 2001 Grammy awards. Their energies in 2001 were partly consumed with the launching of a men’s clothing line, OutKast Clothing, intended to put their own imprint on the close symbiosis between hip-hop music and the fashion world.

With Stankonia having sold nearly four million copies, observers wondered what the next level of OutKast’s success might be. Perhaps it would involve the increased incorporation of live instruments into hip-hop—the duo was known for bringing musical instrument instructors along with them on their tour bus. Even before they released Stankonia, Benjamin had predicted a creative renaissance for hip-hop. “I think you’re about to hear some different rhythms, you’re about to hear some different styles,” he told the Houston Chronicle. “I think it’s about to get to live, wild.”

Selected discography

Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, LaFace, 1994.

ATLiens, LaFace, 1996.

Aquemini, LaFace, 1998.

Stankonia, LaFace, 2000.

Sources

Books

Contemporary Musicians, Volume 33, Gale, 2002.

Periodicals

Atlanta Journal and Constitution, October 30, 2000, p. Dl; April 4, 2001, p. Dl; February 26, 2002, p. El.

Daily News (New York), November 4, 2000, p. Pulse-23.

Entertainment Weekly, May 27, 1994, p. 88; November 3, 2000, p. 81.

Houston Chronicle, March 7, 1999, p. Zest-9.

Jet, March 26, 2001, p. 54.

Los Angeles Times, December 22, 1996, p. Calendar-78.

Newsweek, October 30, 2000, p. 88.

New York Times, November 19, 1999, p. A28.

St. Petersburg Times, January 27, 1999, p. B2.

Toronto Sun, October 11, 1996, p. 65.

USA Today, November 3, 2000, p. E13.

On-line

All Music Guide, http://www.allmusic.com

—James M. Manheim

OUTKAST

Formed: 1992, Atlanta, Georgia

Members: Andre "Dre"/"Andre 3000" Benjamin (Andre Lauren Benjamin, born Atlanta, Georgia, 27 May 1975); Antwan "Big Boi" Patton (Antwan Andre Patton, born Savannah, Georgia, 1 February 1975).

Genre: Rap

Best-selling album since 1990: Stankonia (2000)

Hit songs since 1990: "Ms. Jackson," "Rosa Parks," "The Whole World"

OutKast, the Atlanta-based rap group, is one of the most eclectic and original forces in hip-hop music. Although their music differs from prevailing hip-hop styles, it is as commercially successful as more formulaic efforts.

Andre "Dre" Benjamin and Antwan "Big Boi" Patton met as competing rappers in high school. They decided to team up and were soon discovered by the production team Organized Noize, an affiliation that facilitated their signing with LaFace Records. OutKast's debut album Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik (1994) revels in a casual, laid-back style, notable in the calm, funky pace of the lead single "Player's Ball." The album went platinum. The follow-up was the futuristic-sounding ATLiens (1996), whose biggest hit was "Elevators (Me & You)." It chronicles the group's ascendance with a sobering summation from Dre: "I live by the beat like you live check to check / If you don't move yo' feet then I don't eat, so we like neck to neck."

Dre and Big Boi began to individualize themselves as unique personalities. Dre dressed like a younger George Clinton. He often performed wearing wigs and an odd array of clothes, including skirts, and his subject matter was philosophical. Big Boi boasted a traditional hip-hop image of athletic gear and mainstream rhyme topics, including the travails of life in the ghetto. OutKast acknowledged these distinctions in the group's third album, Aquemini (1998). The title signifies an amalgam of Big Boi and Dre's astrological signs, Aquarius and Gemini respectively. OutKast began producing most of their own songs on this album, with Organized Noize assuming a supporting role. The effort received a rave review in The Source magazine, which hailed it as a hip-hop classic. The album includes the jazzy "SpottieOttieDopaliscious," the Clinton-featured funk cut "Synthesizer," and a hard-core single with Raekwon, "Skew It on the Bar B." The raucous, folksy, and harmonica-assisted "Rosa Parks" brought controversy. Rosa Parks herself, a central figure in the U.S. civil rights movement, threatened to sue OutKast over the song's content. The case was dismissed in 1999.

After the turn of the millennium, Dre changed his name to "Andre 3000." OutKast released another major album, Stankonia (2000). The work is replete with a variety of sounds, from drum and bass on the political "B.O.B." (which stands for "Bombs over Baghdad"), to salsa on "Humble Mumble," to funk on "Ms. Jackson," a soulful, organ-enhanced apology to an ex-girlfriend's mother. "Ms. Jackson" became a number one pop single. By 2001, OutKast had amassed enough hits to release a greatest hits collection: Big Boi and Dre Present . . . OutKast. A new song on the album, "The Whole World," featuring rapper Killer Mike, is a sweeping statement on the testy state of the universe. In 2002, OutKast won two Grammy Awards for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group for "Ms. Jackson" and Best Rap Album for Stankonia. In a significant event for the group, OutKast was nominated in the broad categories Album of the Year and Record of the Year. In 2003, they won another Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group for the song "The Whole World." They also began work on a double album, Speakerbox/The Love Below.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik (LaFace, 1994); ATLiens (LaFace, 1996); Aquemini (LaFace, 1998); Stankonia (LaFace, 2000); Big Boi and Dre Present . . . OutKast (LaFace, 2001).

dara cook