Tag Archives: outkast

#705: OutKast – Knowing

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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.

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.