Welcome to the Defector Music Club, where several of our writers come together to talk about an album and share our favorite new music. This month, Israel Daramola, Lauren Theisen, Luis Paez-Pumar, Patrick Redford and Giri Nathan come together to talk. about Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, Outkast’s heavy, indulgent and impressive double album that turns 20 on September 23.
A defector listens to an album: Outkast – Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
Luis: What is your past relationship with Speakerboxxx/The Love Below and Outkast paintings in general?
Lauren: I had two Outkast CDs when I was little: Speakerboxxx/The Love Below and the 2001 compilation Big Boi and Dre Present. . . Outkast. Now I understand why he listened to me so much more.
Israel: Outkast is my favorite rap organization of all time. I’ve had a huge obsession with them since I was a kid and first heard “Rosa Parks. “When I bought my first car, the two CDs I spent the most were Weezer’s. Blue Album and ATLiens from Outkast. I learned a lot about life and how to be a user of those guys. When Speakerboxxx/The Love Below dropped out, I was in high school, it was very important, either because of the singles or because they were liberating. their solo projects together.
People have been facing Big Boi and Andre since the beginning. Who is the best rapper?Who added what to the songs?What were Big’s strengths, what were Dre’s strengths?Was André homosexual or just weird?Was Andrew the deepest, Big only rapped about pimps and Cadillacs?Simply the stupidest in the world that persists to this day. I got Speakerboxxx/The Love Below very early through an illegal download through completely valid means. I enjoyed it, but I already learned how imperfect it is. itArray yet discovered those fascinating flaws.
Giri: When I was a kid, I knew singles as bar mitzvahs, at 16. A friend of mine led a rendition of “Roses” in an art class in high school, modified to describe a classmate’s sister, which (I think) earned him a D and a verbal exchange with the teacher. I was inspired through the “B. O. B. ” Music video.
It took me a while to realize that Outkast had a lot more to offer than their singles. I bought Speakerboxxx/The Love Below from a really smart record store (bravo PRX!), and then those CDs lived in my car for up to six. years. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s one of two CDs that are permanently locked in my car’s outdated CD player. Some of my favorite songs are on this double album, but, maybe because I listened to them to extinction at the time, I’m going back a lot more to ATLiens and Aquemini lately. Altogether, Outkast is one of the artists I’ve listened to the most in my life. Any guest verse of André 3000 is an opportunity for me. Sir Lucious Left Pie de Big Boi: Chico Dusty’s son has some successes. I think André was pretty smart in this new Kelly Reichardt movie, and I’m glad he can hang out and play the flute in an unusual setting.
Patrick: I don’t forget the first three Outkasts. La first time I heard music from this (these?) album was a week after its release, when my friend’s cool older cousin, Brandon, took my brother and me back from elementary school. school. He wanted to show off those powerful new speakers that filled the entire back of his damn Toyota Camry, and the song he was betting on to show us that, if played often enough, the speakers would make all the nuts vibrate. and screws. In the car was the “Tomb of the Boom”.
I became addicted instantly and as I grew older and my musical tastes gradually deteriorated and then slowly improved, I stayed true to Outkast as a constant listener throughout my teenage years. The first time I heard “B. O. B” it was an equally moving song. mother to me; I didn’t think music could be so dense and alive. When I put it on my mother and she said I was too crazy for her, that’s when I knew there was something here for me. The first time I heard “Spottieottiedopaliscious,” I thought, “Mmm, it looks like having sex would be really cool one day. “
Luis: I listen to Outkast basically at the same time I download music from Napster and then from Limewire. My earliest memories of Outkast are probably watching Stankonia’s singles on MTV, but my most productive memories came from playing Final Fantasy IX in silent mode while betting on Outkast as a soundtrack. It worked better than it looks; During one game, my cousin and I faced Kuja, the penultimate boss of this game, while “The whole world” screamed. It overturned.
As for Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, I don’t forget to ask my brother to buy the albums for me on the day of their release and I listened to them repeatedly for days. I heard them on the bus ride to school. I would gamble other video games at home and usually, for about a month, all the times I was awake when I wasn’t in class. I tried to memorize all the lyrics, and sometimes I succeeded, unless it was some of Big Boi’s faster rap verses. Half of Andre 3000 was much less difficult in that regard, and while I didn’t really know who Prince was and therefore who was imitating Three Stacks, I enjoyed how weird it was and not Outkast.
Lauren: The last sentence responds to what bothers me about this version, especially from Andrew’s side: why would you do anything other than Outkast through Outkast?
Luis: I think since I only had Stankonia as a reference before those albums, I enjoyed a break with what I knew about them before. I wasn’t fully aware that part of Andre 3000 would be an outlier in their entire discography. It wasn’t until I listened to Aquemini, ATLiens and their beginnings that I discovered how different they really were, and I think in retrospect, I felt better about it. It wasn’t Outkast, but it was actually Andre 3000, and those two. things can coexist in the same version, as Speakerboxxx is actually an Outkast disc that Andre 3000 lacks.
Lauren: However, “Just Happens” is actually underrated. It’s hard for me to talk about this album globally because, for example, the five most productive tracks on both CDs are more wonderful than 99% of what’s found on any other in the universe. But as a coherent experience of about an hour each, Speakerboxxx is for me only a part of a wonderful Outkast record and The Love Below is. . . I don’t know. I guess it sounds too much like Beck’s Midnite Vultures. If I was dating Andre in 2003 to get some explanation for why and he said, “Here are some songs I was laughing at but didn’t post,” I’d think, “That’s great, but yes, it makes sense. “”For me, the ideal edition of this album is a combined major release, then a deluxe edition with all of Andre’s loose material.
Israel: Andre v. Big Boi is a point of discord not unusual among many Outkast fans. I think because the two guys are so different in their presentation and style, they say, “Well, how can those guys make music together?Which is stupid, of course. Their differences are what makes Outkast special and unlike any other rap group. We also had the feeling in Stankonia that they were starting to take an interest in other sounds. I think it’s an experiment, and like many artistswho were critically acclaimed and commercially successful at the time, they overloaded it with their own complacency.
Patrick: The Stankonia canopy itself is, perhaps only in retrospect, a useful visual clue about the coming auditory schism. One experiment I performed during the replay was to play the double album in shuffle mode, which led me to find, let’s say, “Unhappy. “” with “A Day In The Life Of Benjamin Andre”. As different as the two are, I was struck by their similarities as rappers (at least when Andre rapped on this album, that is, not often): or they intersect the rhythms. like electrons, each in their own way, and although the two albums are noticeably different (one, Speakerboxxx is compact while The Love Below has about 20 more forgiving minutes), I actually think they serve as a coherent statement. What Israel said, shared expansion is never exciting. I think it’s kind of smart that this is the only album that features Norah Jones and the Eastside Boyz.
Lauren: Yes, I mean, Lennon and McCartney also parted ways on contrary instructions after about a decade. (Probably a little less, actually. ) That’s not to say they didn’t have chemistry in combination and the ability to speak the same language. musically.
Giri: It’s attractive to hear how you talk about him. I consider it an Outkast record, just shredded and intensified. I don’t see it as a major exception in his discography. There are lull moments on each and every album where you almost long for the presence of the missing collaborator, but in terms of taste and sensitivity, I think each and every one of them fits comfortably into the wider umbrella, just a few howls from Prince.
Israel: Lennon and McCartney never directed “SpottieOttieDopaliscious. ” Before we get into the main points of this album, we’ll probably talk about the two singles, “The Way You Move” and, of course, “Hey Ya!What was it like revisiting those songs, what do you think of them?
Luis: You forgot the single!” Roses” is Outkast’s maximum song of this project.
But, for grieving singles, at first I hated “Hey Ya!”It was too disgusting and it was his own joke. During that time, I enjoyed “The Way You Move” because it felt like the herbal evolution of, say, “So Fresh, So Clean. “However, I softened with the first one, and now I see the two elite singles in very different ways. I wouldn’t put either of them at the forefront of Outkast’s songs, like I would with “Roses,” but they’re clever examples of what makes each of the guys so interesting.
That said, man, there’s also no escaping 2003. Es impressive that two very different songs from the same band, in a way, can be so great at the same time. However, the general presence of the songs took me, even at the age of 14.
Lauren: I also need to shout “GhettoMusick,” which does something wonderful and very funny that’s quiet. Did you know Patti LaBelle is in the video?” Roses” is a song I’ve never heard in a long time. I found it youthful and disheveled, but I controlled it with a kind of multi-layered grandeur of “Bohemian Rhapsody. “(Billy Haisley also does a wonderful job with this at karaoke. )”The Way You Move” is simply an incredibly tight pop-rap hit song. And then “Hey Ya!” This definitely adds to Andrew’s mythology that he never tried to go in the right direction. I can’t locate a source on this, however, I had that in mind when they were given in combination for a ton of festivals in 2014. Andre made this song with his back to the audience. Anyway, it’s great to create one of the most popular songs of all time as a little genre exercise that you get bored of in about a week.
Israel: I think he did that at Coachella for several songs. It’s an open secret that he made this total reunion excursion to do Big Boi a favor.
I think there’s something very attractive about “The Way You Move” and “Hey Ya!” Especially when you compare them, that’s what they tell you about each artist. Big makes this kind of serious birthday party song about addressing girls. And Andre accidentally makes one of the world’s biggest pop songs in a completely ironic and therefore overly archaic way. These guys are so unreal.
Patrick: The guitar riff on “Hey Ya!” It’s the funniest thing in the world, I can believe a five-year-old who just started to succeed in categories. We talked about it on Bowie’s edition of Music Club, but there’s something charming and menacing about how they paint the most productive pop songs. as curses for those who create them. The position of this song on an album whose author is also interested in urgent jazz issues for sure and pretending to be Prince is also incredibly funny.
Giri: Because of the overexposure, I can pay a little attention to “Hey Ya!”more, and “Roses” also drives it (although I love it much more as a song, the way it meanders into new territories). “The Way You Move” is welcome in those areas.
Patrick: Can I say here that “Dracula’s Wedding” is one of the 3 songs on The Love Below?Peanut butter and jelly sandwich heads?
Luis: Patrick is up there for me, although he’s probably not in the top 3 (“Roses,” “Happy Valentine’s Day,” and “Take Your Cool”).
Giri: There’s no way to decipher the three-song series from “Spread” (one of Outkast’s songs, for me) to “Prototype” and “She Lives In My Lap. “
Lauren: The thing is, there’s nothing better than a Coltrane Juke remix. Sticking “My Favourite Things” towards the end is a silly decision, but in the end it encourages choice. This is a general resolution of DatPiff, on a major label release, two years before the launch of this site.
Giri: “My Favorite Things” is like platonic music on the menu of a Tekken game.
Luis: I love “My Favorite Things,” for the same reasons as Lauren and Giri.
Israel: I liked “She Lives In My Lap. ” I have a lot of strong emotions about The Love Below, many of which are negative, and I’m sure we’ll be back to them soon. I think “Unhappy” is the most productive song of this total project.
Luis: Israel, let’s communicate now. The “Andre vs. Big Boi” is reductionist and wrong, but that won’t stop me from getting you all into trouble: what look do you prefer?For what?
I’ll start: When I first heard it, I was definitely more of a fan of The Love Below, for the reasons I mentioned above. However, as I became more and more of an Outkast fan, I started to prefer Speakerboxxx. from a distance. The songs are tighter, the beats are better and I like some features. (While it’s disappointing how he evolved into a weird, pro-cop, pro-gun landlord, Killer Mike’s “You Can Follow or” Lead as Commander Picard/ You Can Have the World/ Or Settle for the Boulevard” has lived in my head for 20 years. )
However, hearing this in 2023, I’m even more drawn to The Love Below. Listening to Speakerboxxx in its entirety becomes exhausting, while The Love Below never loses its charm for me, because of the sketches (both albums are riddled with endless and excruciating sketches).
Israel: I liked Speakerboxxx more back then, I like it better now. This is obviously an incredible project. Here’s the challenge with comparisons: My biggest challenge is that I think other people don’t like Big Boi enough as an artist. What’s reductive is saying, “Well, Andre is a deep, introspective genius and Big Boi is a more typical Southern rapper. “”, which is condescending but also incredibly wrong. They’re both geniuses, the difference is that Dre is much more neurotic and mentalized, and that’s what separates the two albums for me.
Speakerboxxx feels this comes from an incredibly accomplished artist who is confident in his strengths, tastes and interests. The Love Below, by comparison, seems to come from an artist looking for something, an artist who needs to rebel. , but he is not transparent against what, so he rebels against everything. Dre obviously missed rap, but it also happens that he missed pop music. He’s looking for Prince, because that’s what you do when you need him. Venturing into the musical area in search of meaning. Everything is desirable and I can write only 10,000 words on it, but that doesn’t make the songs good.
Lauren: I think it’s hard for me to move away from the mindset that Big Boi is “more real” because he stays true to the genre that created him, while André plays an acting role for many other whims. However, it would be less difficult to dissolve this divide if Andre wasn’t so incredibly clever at rap and so reluctant to do so. In this way, The Love Below is almost a bit tragic to me, in the sense that it didn’t lead to a massive revolution in hip-hop or even pave the way for something bigger in its own career.
Patrick: Speakerboxxx has the most productive beat (“Unhappy”), the most productive rap as rap (not to mention most), and the most productive song (“The Way You Move”). As Israel said, Andrew’s interpretive strangeness can easily be over-adored and lead one to think that Big Boi is just a guy, the straightforward guy who creates the basis for Andre to leave and invent new colors or whatever. I don’t believe it, and although Speakerboxxx is indeed the tightest album, it’s quite extensive, and besides, Guerra
Israel: I think many other people have learned The Love Below classes, the same way they learned the bad things from The 808 and Heartbreak. The Love Below has become the way to make a rap album that wasn’t a rap. album by adopting a kind of false transcendence that can pass for something more artistic. You can see a lot of them in what Tyler, The Creator is doing lately or on Childish Gambino’s newest album. Even someone like Juice WRLD does The Love Below combined with Simple Plan.
Patrick: It’s crazy to pay attention to those albums, whether it’s the beginnings of Teezo Touchdown and the long, worried conversations about the state of hip-hop at 50.
Giri: Or, speaking of Israel, Lil Yachty’s newest album. Given the divergent visions of this double album, I liked the fact that the most productive futuristic space rap song is actually on Speakerboxxx: “Unhappy”. The influence of Big Boi is contagious to his guests and extracts from Ludacris the most beautiful photographs related to the pistachio in “Tomb of the Boom”. I love both sides of this record, but the simplest way to describe the contrast is to frame it with the negative. – the weak moments in Speakerboxxx bore me, and the weak moments in The Love Below literally bore me.
Lauren: Perhaps that’s a clever passage to the question I’ve been pressing since I reviewed it and found it rather tedious: when would you need to pay attention to The Love Below, as a whole?
Luis: A lot! Maybe more than Speakerboxxx as a whole, because man, there are moose killers in that. I have more of a penchant for the weird parts of The Love Below that are blatantly indulgent. That said, I’m back to express more songs on Speakerboxxx. ; either single, of course, but also “Unhappy”, “Flip Flop Rock”, “Church” is fun, etc. I just think Speakerboxxx works best as a collection of smart songs, if you forget about the bad ones and the parodies, whereas The Love Below seems better to me as an album, which is supposedly diametrically opposite to how you all feel.
Israel: Valentine’s Day.
Lauren: But Array I don’t understand its purpose. It’s not as smart a party record as Speakerboxxx; it is no more introspective than André’s most productive verses from the beginning of his career; and, while sex permeates all of that, Andre is rarely very Barry White. Like a used condom, it indicates sex, but does not motivate it.
Israel: I think other people will read this and feel like we’re overdoing it with Andre, a lot of other people’s “GOAT rapper,” and that’s not really the goal here. It’s actually a cliché, but he was the first to show me that it was smart to be crazy. I love him as if he were part of my family, but I think music in general has replaced to suit his image. There are good and bad things in it, as there are with influence. . I just wish it had gotten a little more out of my head. Even today, when we pay attention to him in interviews, he talks about writing with such neurosis, to the point that it prevents him from making music. It sucks for us as fans, but it actually sucks for him. It’s not a smart mindset to get stuck in. It’s kind of like Jay-Z, where other people have mythologized it for so long that you can feel the desire to write correctly. Too much.
Giri: Let me explain my amazement when I heard Jay-Z’s voice here on “Flip Flop Rock. “He had completely forgotten.
Israel: It’s the 50th anniversary of hip-hop (supposedly), so we want to let you know about this Grammy Award. It is the second rap album to win Album of the Year, following Lauryn Hill’s Miseducation in 1999. No rap album has won since, and that was in 2004. VeryArray and even r who won this task expresses. That’s how commercialized rap is and is part of the public consciousness today, and yet it doesn’t seem to have any more reputation today than it did in the beginning. It’s just a source of money for what’s left of the music business.
Patrick: Andre’s outfit that night is a true classic, like anything Bad Bunny only wishes he could wear in WWE. With that in mind, Israel, it’s kind of a cosmic joke that, if you need to take the Grammy Awards as a criterion, “Hey Ya!” It is the most outstanding song from the latest rap album to win the album of the year award. Also appealing is his Grammy win over Outkast, who was booed at the Source Awards in 1995 for representing the South. At the time, regionalism felt like rap’s defining divide, and even if that hasn’t faded a decade later, and even if this double album is rarely very free of any of its southern idiosyncrasies, we may already see the raw, appealing exterior. of hip-hop being sanded. It’s not his fault or that the album itself represents this phenomenon as such, but it’s still so sinister that only two rap albums have ever won and that this art form has been marketed so ruthlessly. This shouldn’t have been the climax, and yet.
Luis: Looking at the other nominees, it is objectively true that this one won. Evanescence?Justified?The White Stripes?All those albums include songs I like, even Evanescent, but come on. These two albums, which won the album of the year award, is funny, because it’s not coherent at all as a project, but neither is the critics here. and the choice of advertising, which is rare at the Grammys. And that’s what makes me weird: it’s an example of an award rite that rewards the smart and, on top of that, a rap release.
Giri: It’s strange. Rap has probably been the defining influence of world popular music for the past decade. No award-winning rap album since? This is partly an indication of the futility of the Grammys as a whole. That’s partly because many of rap’s most appealing occasions fall far short of the format of Grammy-winning studio albums.
Israel: Patrick, you’re right from Outkast’s point of view. It was the greatest achievement of their careers: being booed at the Source Awards and saying, “The South has something to say” to their group, more or less ending with this historic victory. I think, in general, too much strength is given to those praise organizations that, as we’ve pointed out, are actually in tune with what’s happening in the culture, but like a Cinderella narrative moment: you can’t beat it. .
The favorite topics of defectors at the moment
Mitski – The earth is inhospitable and so are we
After a small stumble with Laurel Hell from 2022, Mitski came back throwing a hundred from the mound. Her seventh album is her most contemplative to date, which says a lot for an artist who lives most often in her own mind, and may simply also be her most magnificently arranged album to date. “Heaven” is an audience favorite, gives a “back to nature” feel and makes it feel like the most sacred connection. The orchestra blossoms in the last 30 seconds, feeling weightless and breathless.
-Louis
Sylvester – “I Want to Love Tonight”
I feel like if Andre 3000 had been born 3 decades earlier and had come of age before what’s called hip-hop’s birthday, he would have been like Sylvester, who is also magnetic, passionate, and nonconformist, but still has a lot of appeal to audiences. general public in their music. Sylvester’s main disco genre, and “Mighty Real” is the big hit that stands the test of time. But this piece, released the following year in 1979, is the other aspect of the coin. She is hypnotic and patient, not being left behind, as Sylvester’s charming voice slides down a captivating and indirect hook. Its emotional success extends far beyond the notes played and is a glorious nighttime descent from the classic disco formula. You can definitely stick it smoothly on The Love Below, even without rhythm.
-Lauren
Lil Pio
As I got older, I found that I became more romantic. Not just in the theoretical way I look at life, art, and the stupid moments of sporting events, but literally in the things that appeal to me the most. romance can be perverse or youthful, as is the case with New York rapper Cash Cobain’s new project, Pretty Girls Love Slizzy; it can be emo or nostalgic like the new music of Mitski or Olivia Rodrigo or Rod Wave. It may even be marketing manipulation, like Diddy’s new album. But it has to be serious, and the most romantic thing I heard was “Diamonds,” the much-talked about collaboration between past Lil Peep and IloveMakonnen. Makonnen has been a delighted favorite, a hip-hop figure in the manner of Daniel Johnston, with a knack for worms. Combined with Peep’s emo taste from the 2000s, they produce anything completely off-center and yet perfectly pop. Their chemistry is radiant and alive, their lyrics are intoxicating, and that’s precisely what romance deserves to be.
-Israel
Pavement – “EN
I just watched Pavement, so I’m really deep into Pavement for the first time in a decade. It was my favorite of the show and I was pleased to note that Stephen Malkmus can still scream as wildly as his conclusion requires. I know I don’t need to question this anymore, but everyone who was there to shape the new critical reaction to Wowee Zowee has so much egg on their face! It’s full of Pavement’s best songs, which they don’t actually sing. They are scribbles that little by little disintegrate into noise, and perhaps, in their last moments of coherence, they thank Jacob Javits for his glass house.
-Giri
Anish Kumar – “Little Miss Dynamite”, plus a TikTok
We have been writing on the blog for a long time, so although I have two recommendations, I will be brief. The first is this magical TikTok of those two guys beating makeshift drums under a bridge. The Moment is the first mixtape by Anish Kumar (album?). I came across the song a few weeks ago and felt an itch in my brain that I wasn’t aware of being scratched. It turns out that the tape fell off the same day!Good looking.
-Patrician