Tag Archives: outkast

My iPod #522: OutKast – Hey Ya!

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You’ve heard it. Still sounds good twelve years later.

I was tempted to end the post there, but that would have been just plain lazy.

“Hey Ya!” was the co-lead single from OutKast’s double album Speakerboxxx/The Love Below from 2003. Alongside Big Boi’s “The Way You Move“, “Hey Ya!” was the first single released in the lead-up toward a new album by the duo since 2000.

Despite its memorable hook and upbeat rhythm, the track is rather melancholy in tone with André 3000 singing about commitment in relationships, how love and emotions can fade over time, how two people can feign loving one another when really both of them aren’t happy at all. But as even Mr. 3000 points out: You don’t want to hear him, you just wanna dance.

Its actual meaning is probably lost on a lot of people. Maybe it’s for the better. No one would be able to shake it like a Polaroid picture in the same way again.

My iPod #418: OutKast – Ghetto Musick

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Today’s track begins the first disc out of legendary Atlanta hip-hop duo OutKast’s double album “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below” from 2003, or what can be considered to be two solo albums by Big Boi and André 3000 released together as a single package.

After the final bark on Speakerboxxx’s “Intro”, “Ghetto Musick” gets shit popping straight away with an erratic synthesizer line and with André playing the crazy hype man, preparing for you for the tiring onslaught that’s coming at you for the next four minutes or so. Despite Speakerboxxx being pretty much a Big Boi solo album to show off the man’s rapping abilities, André 3000 features heavily on “Ghetto Musick” providing vocals for the aforementioned intro, for a short verse, the pre-chorus and the main chorus. In fact, Big Boi contributes only one verse in the whole song but in it still makes his message clear: OutKast were back on some new shit; no one can fuck with them. The track is also notable for its slow bridge featuring a Patti LaBelle, and the high-pitched “Feeling great, feeling good, how are yooooooou’ lyrics before immediately switching up the tempo that is established from the start.

I remember watching the video for the track in 2004. My sister loved the track. I already had the album. But at this point, “Hey Ya!”, “Roses”, and “The Way You Move” to some extent had already got the duo the attention they deserved for the new album. “Ghetto Musick” fell a bit short unfortunately. But that doesn’t matter. “Ghetto Musick” is a track to get rowdy to, and then get close to a loved one for a few seconds before forcefully throwing them down and getting down on the floor again. The track is a train that cannot be stopped, however much you feel it should or want it to. Well, that is until it eventually ends on a pulsating beat.