Tag Archives: outkast

#1448: OutKast – Unhappy

Leave a reply

Guys, I swear, I do like songs by OutKast that aren’t on Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. Not that it should matter whether I do or not. But you click on the ‘outkast’ tag at the bottom of this post and see that the only songs by the group on here are from the double album, you might think it a little strange. I was eight years old during that era of OutKast. ‘Hey Ya!’ and ‘Roses’ were everywhere. ‘The Way You Move’ to a lesser extent, but that was in the UK. I liked ‘Hey Ya!’ just like everyone else. I wanted the single. My aunt got me the double album. And so, that was from where I got the OutKast songs to put on my iPod, iPhone, whatever, up to 2021, which was when I decided I needed to stop adding songs and eventually bring an end to this entire series. Any additional tracks of theirs are in my Liked Songs playlist on Spotify. But in this space, it’s the double album all the way. There are much worse options out there.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve come to prefer Speakerboxxx over The Love Below. The latter has the big, big hits, it was the first big artistic statement of André 3000. But I find myself returning to Big Boi’s half more often. There are more posts on the blog from Speakerboxxx than from The Love Below, so my feelings on the two were always kind of present. One of the songs on Speakerboxxx that I’ve been going back to for a while now is its third song on there, ‘Unhappy’. I didn’t really get around to this one until about 2010 or something. Think it came up on an iTunes library shuffle session when I was playing a FIFA game at the same time. Or maybe I just decided to listen to the whole double album one day… Either way, I got to know the song a lot better. I feel like ‘Unhappy’ could have been a single. But maybe it’s the pessimistic overtone of the lyrics that prevented it from being so. “Might as well have fun ’cause your happiness is done, and your goose is cooked” is the hook. Sung with a real warmth with all the vocals alongside the upbeat production, there’s that melody that sounds like a ringtone in the right channel chirping for most of the track. The “flip that smile upside down now” phrase, first sung by Big Boi (I’m sure) and then later by Debra Killings, are almost childlike in their respective deliveries. But I think it’s all a trick to distract you from what’s relayed in the words.

Scattered in between the hooks come Big Boi’s three verses in which he provides some life lessons and gives the listener a look into his own experiences. Just a couple of those lessons as detailed in the first verse include staying out of harm’s way and to prevent people from taking advantage of you. He tells us that happiness can’t be bought and ties that in with how his mum and dad would earn enough money to get by and keep up appearances, only to end up in debt by the start of the new year. He reminisces on a time in 1979 when things weren’t particularly great within the household. But then he grounds himself in present-day 2003, where he’s confident with who he is as a man and proud to have achieved the success he has. So there’s a little light there by the end. I once read an interpretation in a comment somewhere that the finished happiness as referred to in the chorus is that of the true kind you had when you were a child. Less inhibitions, the innocence and all of that. So the hook is telling us have as much as we can in this life, ’cause we’ll never truly be happy as were when we were young. And the way the hook repeats with a fade-out to silence, makes it feel like a very unresolved type of situation. Had to bring the mood down a little after ‘Ghetto Musick’ somehow, I guess.

#1264: OutKast – Spread

Leave a reply

‘Spread’ is a track from André 3000’s album, The Love Below. Technically his first solo record, but we all know it as one half of OutKast’s hefty Speakerboxxx/The Love Below double LP from 2003. It’s the only OutKast album I physically own. It’s an anecdote I’ve told before. I wanted the ‘Hey Ya!’ single as a present. My aunt got me the album instead. And I was only eight or something, so I didn’t have the bandwidth to sit down and listen to two hours and 15 minutes of music. Back then, ‘Hey Ya!’ and ‘Roses’ were enough for me. But somewhere along the timeline, I came across ‘Spread’ and thought it was a song I could see myself revisiting many a time. Think this initial feeling happened when I was playing FIFA while having my whole iTunes library on shuffle and the song came up. It was a time when I really had no responsibilities at all, believe me.

There’s a comment on the YouTube page where the above ‘Spread’ is, which says something along the lines of “André 3000 was definitely listening to Prince’s Sign o’ the Times when he was making this! laughingface emoji laughingface emoji” I listened to that album just a few months back, and I can see where that commenter is coming from. 3 Stacks even has a high-pitched vocal here like Prince uses on some tracks from Sign…. But the huge similarity comes in the lyrical subject matter. ‘Spread’ is about André 3000 eyeing a woman he likes that he immediately wants to have relations with, and he makes those feelings clear – be it in the spoken/talking first verse or the rapid-fire rapping second verse that comes after. I think we can at least appreciate that André wants there to be a mutual feeling of interest between he and this fascinating woman. But he wants the listener and the lady to know that he is ready to go to the bedroom and have a fantastic night of passion.

Thinking back to when I first heard the song, I’m gonna say that the first thing that grabbed my attention was the song’s chorus. Apart from the mood-setting keyboard intro, the chorus is the beginning section of the song – one in which André 3000 sings each respective line in a higher key, culminating in the soaring falsetto ‘Spread, spread for me’ lyric followed by the campy “I can’t wait to get you home’ refrain. It all got stuck in my head very quickly. The aforementioned second verse where 3 Stacks starts rapping like his life depends on it, so unexpectedly after the serenading opening verse, is a big highlight too. The way he delivers the words, matching the frenetic programmed drums behind it. Makes my head move in all directions. The track is the beginning of a little three-part suite in the album, with following skit ‘Where Are My Panties?’ capturing André’s and the woman’s internal thoughts during the early morning while they’re both lying in bed and ‘Prototype’ where he hear André contemplating on whether this lady could be the one for him. A good little run in this experience of an album.

#1140: OutKast – Roses

2 Replies

I don’t know if anyone else has felt this, but I don’t see OutKast’s ‘Roses’ pop up in a topic of conversation anywhere these days. ‘Hey Ya!’… well, everyone knows it. And I’ll see ‘The Way You Move’ or ‘Prototype’ on TikToks and Instagram posts. Never ‘Roses’ though. Can’t understand it myself, ’cause I remember when it was being played everywhere. In the UK at least, once ‘Hey Ya!’ seemed to be fading away from airplay, ‘Roses’ came right in and got the roof raising again. The video was a mainstay on MTV Base. I’d be singing the chorus with friends during my years in primary school. It was funny stuff. I’ve got a lotta love for it still, never heard it to the point where it fell out of favour like I did with the other big OutKast hit of that time.

I guess, possibly like many, many people, the big appeal for my initial interest in the song came from its entertaining music video. Featuring cameos from Katt Williams, Paula Abdul and a bunch of recgonisable faces, it shows André 3000 performing the song onstage in a school auditorium with his “Love Below” troupe, while the ‘Caroline’ character in the song’s lyrics watches on among the other students. Big Boi and his Speakerboxxx crew crash the proceedings and a hilariously chaotic fight ensues. Katt Williams whisks Caroline away with his charming ways, leaving 3 Stacks screaming after her as he’s carried out of the building. When it was played on the TV, the video’s intro was usually cut out, which left out the reason why Big Boi’s gang goes to the school in the first place. It’s ’cause Caroline gives a “Maybe” response when Big Boi asks if she’ll be his valentine. Nice to have that plot hole sorted out.

The song is essentially a roast of this girl called Caroline, who’s not based on a real person but is rather a representation of all those beautiful women who possess ugly personalities. 3000 pulls off a majorly expressive vocal take, stretching out his syllables, wailing and adlibbing in the background (particularly in the background during the final chorus), providing his own ooh-ooh backing vocals at points. Might even come off as unhinged at times, the way he changes his delivery so much. Must be symbolic of how these Caroline-types make the guy feel. Big Boi joins in and reinforces the song’s theme with the only appearance he makes on the Love Below half of the duo’s 2003 double album. He makes his mark in the time he has. Though the ‘crazy bitch’ outro he delivers might be pushing it a bit. I can take it, though.

#1119: OutKast ft. Khujo Goodie & Cee-Lo – Reset

Leave a reply

Keen-eyed readers will notice that whenever I’ve written about an OutKast song on here, they’ve always been from the duo’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below double album from 2003. That was a big, big deal. I was eight at the time, but you couldn’t escape ‘Hey Ya!’ or ‘Roses’ when those songs were around. Eight-year-old me liked the former so much, I wanted the single. My aunt got me the double album instead. I don’t think she knew the difference between a single and an album. She must have just seen ‘OutKast’ in the shop and took the first thing she saw. I didn’t have the attention span for 135 minutes of music, so it wasn’t until years later that I really sat down and gave the solo efforts of Big Boi and André 3000 my undivided attention.

If you dig deeper on here, you’ll find the majority of songs I’ve covered are from the Speakerboxxx half. So, I guess that means I like it more than The Love Below? I’m not too sure. They’re both so different from each other, it’s hard to compare. I think having liked Sir Lucious Left Foot from the get-go familiarised me to Big Boi’s style, and so it seemed like a breeze to listen through compared to 3000’s more experimental effort. ‘Reset’ is another number from Speakerboxxx. It’s not one that I have a deep connection with. In fact, the first time I think I truly listened to it was when I was on my old computer listening to my iTunes library on shuffle, while simultaneously playing a FIFA game on my PlayStation 2. There must have been no one in the house at the time, and I must have been getting bored of the game soundtrack. That hushed chorus delivered by singer Debra Killings came in along with the bloopy keyboard that mirrored the vocal melody, and I think I was instantly hooked. The whole track is smooth to the core. Very relaxing. But also very contemplative, reflective and a bit philosophical too.

Overall, the track concerns the theme of being able to take the good with the bad and having to accept that at some point, times will be incredibly tough before they get better. Big Boi starts things off by stating that things get tough from the minute you’re born. Unless you’re a twin, you’re born into this world alone and you have to fend for yourself once the umbilical cord’s cut and you’re separated from your mother. He states that from the moment fertilization occurs we’re living beings and how a fleeting sexual moment turns into a lifelong commitment very easily. Khujo Goodie shouts out his “homies on the sick side” who are dying over gang wars and his own displeasure with racists and fakers. And then Cee-Lo Green gets the final say, giving an advisory verse to not give into temptations and addictions, and to focus on the things important to you that make life worth living. This could very well have ended Speakerboxxx’s proceedings, but ‘Last Call’ arrives a couple tracks later to bring things to more of a celebratory end. But for those minutes that ‘Reset’ lasts for, it doesn’t fail in making you get all existential.

#711: OutKast ft. Slimm Calhoun, Lil’ Jon & The Eastside Boyz, & Mello – Last Call

1 Reply

‘Last Call’ is the last proper song on the Speakerboxxx half of OutKast’s double album before being followed by a ‘postlude’ for the track ‘Bowtie’ from earlier. It’s a great posse track, dedicated to going to the club and getting drunk until the lights turn on and it’s time to go home. Slimm Calhoun and Mello are on here, and I have never heard anything by them or about them since. They have some nice verses, nothing to lyrical to get your head around, but perfectly suited for the ‘good times are here’ vibe that the song ultimately goes for. Lil’ Jon is also there being Lil’ Jon.

Recorded at a point where Big Boi and André 3000 were beginning to go in different directions, Speakerboxxx and The Love Below act as near solo albums for the two respective artists. There are only a few points where 3000 appears on Speakerboxxx; he does so on this track though in the role of producer. So I guess it’s him we have to thank for that fantastic synth line that repeats during the choruses, the bouncing rhythm set by the drums and those backing horns that mirror the bassline.

This is another song I didn’t appreciate until way down the line. Nothing to heavy or sentimental about it. Just a good party song. And we all need that sometimes.