‘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.