I didn’t intend to receive Speakerboxxx/The Love Below as a Christmas present in 2003. I was eight years old and ‘Hey Ya!’ was everywhere. I just wanted the single; my aunt got me the full double album instead. At that young age, I had no patience to listen to the whole thing. A dumb decision, no doubt. But kids don’t know any better at that age. Fast forward to about 2010 – I was fifteen, playing FIFA a lot of the time due to no one being in the house. I’d play with my iTunes library on shuffle in my ears. ‘Knowing’ came up one day and it would regularly play on other days. I realised there that it was a jam.

‘Knowing’ is the thirteenth track on the Speakerboxxx half of the album, which is more or less a Big Boi solo album with The Love Below being André 3000’s. There are only a few moments where the two members are on each others tracks throughout the double album; ‘Knowing’ is one of them, with Andre 3K singing the chorus and providing the distorted “From this point on, it only gets rougher” line. Big Boi takes the lead on the verses and tells a story of a woman named Wanda who gets her money by stripping, spends it all on clothes and accessories when she could be spending it on food and things that actually matter. She goes on to buy a car but then loses her job, turns to robbing to earn some cash but leaves some ID at one occasion and gets her comeuppance when she gets caught out.

It’s not the most optimistic of songs. But it’s real. It’s an unfortunate tale of a person in the midst of a community filled with people who are struggling and trying their best to get by. The beat is killer with those echoing clicks and emphatic bass, and with Andre 3000’s vocals on top it creates a very uneasy and quite anxious tone. Big Boi does his natural thing of telling a story with impeccable flow and wordplay and rapid fire flow. It’s always best when the two members are on a song together, and this is a prime example.

And that’s it for the Ks. That wasn’t very long, only took a month to get through them all. The Ls will roll in soon.