While I love Tribe, Wu, Gang Starr, and NWA, in my humble opinion, OutKast is the greatest rap group of all time. I was in junior high school when their debut album Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik came out and it was the video for “Player’s Ball” which was my introduction. I watched it on channel 41 on BET on a sunny weekday afternoon after school. My parents worked at this time so I got to watch Rap City all by lonesome. That meant I was listening to it as loud as I wanted and without looking over my shoulder for my parents who were not feeling my rap love at all. I give to you, “Player’s Ball” from OutKast.
I knew I loved OutKast when I saw this unknown emcee start rapping in an Atlanta Braves jersey. I loved baseball so to see a rapper supporting his team was dope! That meant we had 2 things in common… Rap music and baseball. But this rapper was unique. He had “it” and my eyes were glued to my tv set while he rapped. He was rapping with his crew behind him out in the woods which was cool too. And the beat he was rapping over was funky. Once the rapper finished his verse we went right to the bridge and this dude starts crooning away on some whole other sh*t. This song keeps getting better…. Next I see a second MC of the group with a different rap style than the first. He was so dope in his own way too! WHO WERE THESE GUYS? The second rapper wore a Braves hat so at that point I knew they were from Atlanta, GA. I didn’t know any rappers from ATL so this intrigued me even more. I went to Tower Records that next day to go find the most current issues of The Source and Rap Pages to find out more. And of course look for OutKast’s CD which I just had to have! Shout out to Dre on the first verse, Sleepy Brown on the chorus, Big Boi on the 2nd verse, and Organized Noize on the beat.
Before I knew it… OutKast had another video out.
After buying the album, I found out that OutKast was a part of a bigger collective called The Dungeon Family and they all hailed from Atlanta, Georgia. My friends and I all bumped that first album from OutKast. While we loved our West Coast Hip Hop, we appreciated music from outside of Cali too. From Cali to NYC to ATL to Chi-Town to H-Town… we were fans of it all! On the debut OutKast album, the posse cut “Git Up, Git Out” really resonated with me. The first emcee on the track boasted yet another style that I hadn’t heard yet. The Dungeon Family crew was a force. Cee-Lo was that rapper who caught my ear and his lyrics touched me. He motivated me not to sit around and be lazy. My dad said the same things but Cee-Lo Green told me in a way that inspired me just a little bit more. On that track I also heard another emcee named Big Gipp who was dope as well. Cee-Lo and Big Gipp were a part of a separate group outside of OutKast. I introduce you to the Goodie Mob.
The song “Cell Therapy” from the album Soul Food was a Goodie Mob song that our crew loved. My homie Kentaro had a video camera in 1996 and we were always trying to get some sick footage out and about. Kentaro always had some sick gadgets from his pops in Japan and he was really good at figuring out how things worked. He was really ahead of his time in a lot of areas. He was editing our videos in post-production (trial and error!) and adding music to our shenanigans. One of our long lost home videos was scaring our homie Ryan while he watched TV at home by himself. He always sat way close to the TV so we had to mess with him one night. We crept up to his pad with video camera in hand and got footage from him through the bushes and living room window. His face illuminated from the TV screen. We scared the living sh*t out of Ryan that night and took it way too far. Like, way too far. But RP was our best friend. We were all best friends. We were homies. We are still homies. After we got the footage, Ken looped the “Cell Therapy” chorus on the video and matched it up when we were looking at RP from outside of his window. We haven’t seen this video in 25 years but we feel it was some of our best work. Now Ken…. Can you get this video already for us?!
One more track from the first Goodie Mob album….
Now, you guys all know Dre from Outkast as Andre 3000 or 3-Stacks but to tell this story and be true, I had to call him Dre at the beginning. OutKast’s first album was respected by all true hip hop heads but they hadn’t stretched over to the mainstream quite yet which didn’t make any sense. This pissed Andre off so he took the mic at The Source Awards in 1995 and let the world know that “THE SOUTH GOT SOMETHING TO SAY.” After what Andre did, the world then took notice of the South.
The buzz was building and it led to their follow up to Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik…. In 1996, OutKast dropped ATLiens which was a nod to their hometown but also let you know that these guys were from out of this world. And the album? Wow…. 1996 meant that some of my homies had cars so we had a whole new way to listen to our music. Some of us broke our piggy banks to scrounge up the cash to get some systems put in our buckets. I remember getting mine at Circuit City because DOW was too expensive. We didn’t care about our cars. None of us came from much money so all we cared about was rolling down our windows in our whips and driving through our hood bumping our music. ALL of my friends bumped ATLiens. Tony was a big “Elevators (Me & You)” guy, Ryan was way into “Jazzy Belle” and George was into “Wheelz of Steel” but me?? Sure I was into all of those songs because remember, we all were into this album. The whole thing was really good! But the song I was into most might surprise you. It’s actually a top song for me of all time. My favorite song on ATLiens was “13th Floor / Growing Old” and is such a beautiful work of art.
You had to be so patient on this song. The intro is soooooooooooo long but the build up is great. It’s pretty much the finale of the album unless you could the “Elevators” remix which I don’t. When that beat kicks in at 1:32? Straight break your neck type head nod from a young Timmy cruising around in his 1991 Volkswagon Fox. The scratching was so clean… “96 gon’ be the year…” Then Dre comes in and is so truthful in his rhymes that it stops you. Andre comes straight from the soul on his verse. The chorus stays on that same soulful vibe that looks back to the memories of our past. Big Boi comes in on the second verse and he starts by telling everybody his government name. Rappers didn’t do this back then. There also was no internet so you only really knew names from the liner notes. Big Boi aka Antwan André Patton was spitting truthful bars to stay on the same theme. The entire vibe on this song was amazing and everybody involved stayed in the pocket on it. At the very end of the song, we get to my favorite part. Andre starts rapping/singing a final hook that talks about growing old. I think it was on this song where Andre was inspired to explore the singing we later saw years ahead in The Love Below. This song has just always stayed with me as I myself get older. The song ages like fine wine and I feel like a lot of you out there haven’t given it a fair shot because of that long a$$ intro. I need you to go listen to this song right now. Just go do it. Go hide in the bathroom from your families and press play. It’ll hit close to home. I promose!
When I listen to songs like “Prototype,” I can’t help but think that it was “13th Floor / Growing Old” that helped Andre 3000 get to The Love Below. What do you think?
P.S….. Phil…. You better still have that OutKast hoodie I gave you in pristine condition. We gotta keep that in the fam forever homie! I bought it after seeing OutKast live with KevBoneSlice and Clappy at the Life is Beautiful Festival but I just didn’t rock it well. That’s why I had to pass it down to the homie Phil. OutKast 4 life!