Well, André 3000 eventually gave us his real debut solo album we were waiting for a few years back. It most likely didn’t turn out the way everyone wanted it to. But it’s now something that exists in the world. I haven’t listened to New Blue Sun, but I’m sure it’s interesting at least. I think I’d have to be in a certain kind of mood or physical space to listen to the whole thing. In the world of respective individual releases by he and Big Boi after the splitting of OutKast in 2006, even though the latter has three albums to his name, I think it’s still Big Boi’s 2010 Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty that’s the best out of the lot of them. I was looking back on some posts for blog maintenance’s sake and saw I gave a whole backstory on my experience with that album in the first Big Boi post I did on here. I did have a good time with it back in those early 2010s. I haven’t listened to it fully in a while. But I have my favourite tracks from there, a few of them I’ve already covered, and ‘The Train, Pt. 2’ is another one.

In name only, the track’s a sequel to “Part One”, which appeared on OutKast’s swansong Idlewild. That saw Big Boi reminiscing on his career up to that point, potentially hinting on leaving the rap game. On ‘Pt. 2’, the ‘train’ theme continues, but here the artist provides a bit of commentary on the music industry, progression in technology, and on rappers constantly faking their wealth on the TV and getting the naive youth to believe in it. “Got them bay-bays believing that bullshit”, is how he puts it. On the choruses, Sam Chris expands on the notion of lying and exaggerating events, singing that these kinds of things happen on a daily basis – a never-ending cycle presumably in the music business – but if no one’s hurts by them and it’s all for a good laugh, then it’s all fine at the day, right? The answer should be no. But it is yes in a way too. A kind of negative action causing a positive reaction? I think it’s the ambivalence about it all that’s the main issue here.

I don’t know who came up with the repeating rhythm guitar line that plays almost throughout, but it’s essentially that element which acts as the foundation beneath everything else that happens in ‘The Train, Pt.2’. Sam Chris delivers the chorus impeccably, I remember being instantly hooked to his vocals, and Big Boi rides the beat with his flows as well as ever, even if it took a little longer to fully digest what he was talking about. What I feel I enjoy most is how Big Boi bounces off Sam Chris during the chorus, I think from the second one onward. “Lying to yourself like it really happened (Really happened)”, “Riding on a never-ending train (Choo choo)”, “Pick a stop (Pick a stop), pick a lie (pick a lie)”. You get the idea. These vocal echoes that create this sense of endless motion on the vocal front. “I think I (I think I, He said, he said, he said) Sometimes I think I love it…” A great part there. Could have ended the album with this song, to be honest, but ‘Back Up Plan’ does do the job in bringing things home. Also, the track’s really 4:43 in length with the remaining time taken by an unrelated samba(?)-inspired interlude, ’cause what’s a hip-hop album without a skit or two?