FEATURE:
Gasoline Dreams
OutKast’s Stankonia at Twenty
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EVEN though its anniversary is on….
31st October, I want to get in ahead and celebrate one of the best albums of the past twenty years. It is an absolute masterpiece of an album and, the fourth album from OutKast, Stankonia is overflowing with amazing songs, sounds and innovative moments! I think it is one of the finest and most important albums in all of Hip Hop, and it is due for a twentieth anniversary edition. NME provide further details:
“Released on October 31, 2000, the fourth studio effort from the Atlanta duo – aka André 3000 and Big Boi – contained the singles ‘Ms. Jackson’, ‘So Fresh, So Clean’ and ‘B.O.B’ (‘Bombs Over Baghdad’).
This October 30, fans will be able to hear instrumental, a capella and remixed versions of the aforementioned three tracks through new streaming bundles. Featured in the ‘B.O.B’ set will be a reworking of the song by Rage Against The Machine’s Zack de la Rocha.
The full ‘Stankonia’ album, meanwhile, will be available digitally in 24 Bit and 360 Reality Audio. As Pitchfork reports, Vinyl Me, Please is offering an exclusive 2LP version on black-and-white galaxy vinyl to subscribers.
Following the album’s release, André 3000 and Big Boi picked up the Best Rap Album and Best Rap Performance By A Duo Or Group awards at the 2002 Grammys. The record reached Number 10 in the UK albums chart”.
Recording in OutKast’s Stankonia Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, and produced by Earthtone III, Organized Noize, and Carl Mo, OutKast’s André 3000 and Big Boi were free from constraints. Their previous album, 1998’s Aquemini, was recorded at Bobby Brown's Bosstown Recording Studios and Doppler Studios - both in Atlanta. I love their previous album, but Stankonia is a broader and more adventurous album. About to enter a new century, perhaps OutKast felt that they needed to create something that was bigger than anything they had ever done. We get elements of Rave, Funk, Gospel, Rock and so many other genres in an incredibly rich and eclectic album. There is more melody and a different approach to rapping, not just in terms of OutKast’s work but a lot of other Rap/Hip Hop albums. Stankonia is a sharper, faster and busier album than anything they put out before, and the duo touch on themes such as race, parenthood, misogyny and politics. Again, maybe OutKast felt that they needed to change things up for the twenty-first century, and it is clear that the Hip Hop landscape was changing and, as drugs such as ecstasy were more prevalent in Hip Hop and among teenagers, this made an impact on the duo. Although they knew that the drug scene and changing habits was a bad thing, they also felt that their music needed to reflect a faster lifestyle; speak to their peers in a different way than they had before. OutKast were drawing in new influences, ironically, from classic artists like Little Richard rather than the modern Hip-Hop of the late-1990s.
They managed to filter classic Soul, Rock and Gospel into their own music and give it a unique spin and modern sound. As a lot of their peers in the Hip Hop scene were still embracing slower jams, OutKast were nodding to the rave scene and employing sharper, more frantic tempos. I think this was a revelation for Hip Hop and a wider musical world, and it is no surprise that Stankonia was so well-received upon its release! It is an album that has frequently appeared in the best albums of the 2000s (as in the first decade of the century) lists, and the best albums of all-time. The experimental nature of the album has influenced scores of artists, and OutKast’s music was opened up to a wider audience. In their review of Stankonia, this is what AllMusic had to say:
“Stankonia was OutKast's second straight masterstroke, an album just as ambitious, just as all-over-the-map, and even hookier than its predecessor. With producers Organized Noize playing a diminished role, Stankonia reclaims the duo's futuristic bent. Earthtone III (Andre, Big Boi, Mr. DJ) helms most of the backing tracks, and while the live-performance approach is still present, there's more reliance on programmed percussion, otherworldly synthesizers, and surreal sound effects. Yet the results are surprisingly warm and soulful, a trippy sort of techno-psychedelic funk. Every repeat listen seems to uncover some new element in the mix, but most of the songs have such memorable hooks that it's easy to stay diverted.
The immediate dividends include two of 2000's best singles: "B.O.B." is the fastest of several tracks built on jittery drum'n'bass rhythms, but Andre and Big Boi keep up with awe-inspiring effortlessness. "Ms. Jackson," meanwhile, is an anguished plea directed at the mother of the mother of an out-of-wedlock child, tinged with regret, bitterness, and affection. Its sensitivity and social awareness are echoed in varying proportions elsewhere, from the Public Enemy-style rant "Gasoline Dreams" to the heartbreaking suicide tale "Toilet Tisha." But the group also returns to its roots for some of the most testosterone-drenched material since their debut. Then again, OutKast doesn't take its posturing too seriously, which is why they can portray women holding their own, or make bizarre boasts about being "So Fresh, So Clean." Given the variety of moods, it helps that the album is broken up by brief, usually humorous interludes, which serve as a sort of reset button. It takes a few listens to pull everything together, but given the immense scope, it's striking how few weak tracks there are. It's no wonder Stankonia consolidated OutKast's status as critics' darlings, and began attracting broad new audiences: its across-the-board appeal and ambition overshadowed nearly every other pop album released in 2000”.
On its twentieth anniversary, I hope there is a lot of attention for such a magnificent album. I know so many different people have connected with the album and, with epic cuts such as Gasoline Dreams, So Fresh, So Clean, Ms. Jackson, and B.O.B., Stankonia is rightly hailed as a classic!
I just want to bring in another review, as Pitchfork made some interesting observations:
“Stankonia is easily the group’s most expansive and abrasive effort. It’s more accomplished than their biggest seller, the double-disc Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, which lacks the tension and dichotomy of André and Big Boi locked in a studio, warring with each other and themselves to the extent that created numbers like “Humble Mumble,” Stankonia’s breakbeat-ish, Caribbean-tinged track where Big Boi admonishes a simp with “Sloppy slippin’ in your pimpin’, nigga/You either pistol whip the nigga or you choke the trigger,” before André recalls speaking with a rap critic: “She said she thought hip-hop was only guns and alcohol/I said ‘Oh, hell naw!’/But, yet, it's that too.”
OutKast had always consisted of a politically conscious pimp and a spiritual gangsta, but on Stankonia, those identities came to the fore with a greater distinction that paradoxically allowed them to sound closer together than they had since their inception—even as André sat out songs like “Snappin’ & Trappin’” and “We Luv Deez Hoez.” On Stankonia’s first proper song, “Gasoline Dreams” Big Boi raps about their clout and the limits thereof—“Officer, get off us, sir/Don’t make me call [my label boss] L.A. [Reid], he’ll having you walking, sir/A couple of months ago they gave OutKast the key to city/But I still gotta pay my taxes and they give us no pity”—while André throttles out a brainy hook: “Don’t everybody like the smell of gasoline?/Well burn, motherfucker, burn American dreams”.
Ahead of its twentieth anniversary on 31st October, go and spend some time with Stankonia, and enjoy one of the most important and stunning Hip Hop albums ever. It is such a fascinating and compelling record that will resonate and inspire artists for generations to come. André 3000 and Big Boi were remarkable on Aquemini but, on 2000’s Stankonia, they moved up…
TO a different league!