Soulful shit, on the surface a “baby momma” song, but taking the subject serious for once, and carrying out powerfully. Beat is oddly infectious, which is to be expected with OutKast. “So Fresh, So Clean”: Singalong brag track. People making the claim that Dre is better than Boi might have to think on that one harder after hearing this album. Khujo makes his presence felt as always, and Big Boi drops a verse that lets you know cat has improved over his improvement on the last cut. Dre kills on the chorus, ain’t heard him this amped since Southernplayalistic, even surpassing the energy on the previous albums “ChonkyFire.” Actually, this song can be seen as picking right up where “Aquemini” left off, the songs are similar enough to draw that conclusion.

Let’s get a lil in depth, shall we? As always, with me, we will skip the interludes and intros, because no matter who do em, they’re almost always wack as fuck, and don’t count. This isn’t OutKast’s “Beats Rhymes and Life.” Not to say there aren’t any stumbles on this one, but they’re more like snagging the house shoe on the phone cord than slipping on the concrete an banging their head: Easily recovered from and few and far between. Earthtone’s got his thumbprints all over this one, and the results are satisfyin. The only major change in sound is that Organized Noise doesn’t handle even half of the production. What the fuck we’re ya’ll trippin on? The streak is still intact. Were the perceptions correct? Were the leaks indicative of the downfall the group was inevitable heading for? It was gonna be Tribe Called Quest’s fall all over again. People started voicing their worries that Andre (now Andre 3000) had finally gone off the deep end, that he was dragging Big Boi into some weird space shit. And the leak of B.O.B seemed to confirm that suspicion among the hardcore heads. They ventured too far into a new sound that wasn’t quite workin, stuck with it too long, and got stagnant while alienating their fanbase. And word on this 4th OutKast was that they too would fall prey to the ailments that struck down Tribe. The quality of their first 3 held steady at brilliant, but was tarnished by their failure.

Yet Tribe called quest stumbled on their 4th, and fell completely off on their 5th. Two emcees with two different styles, yet meshing perfectly together, always complementing, never canceling each other out. Different sounds, quality tracks, and classic albums you could play all the way straight through without having to lift the needle off the platter. There was some astute cat on an internet messageboard once, and he wrote probably the most accurate observation of OutKast I’ve read: OutKast is to the mid-late nineties what Tribe Called Quest was to the early 90’s.

Ms. jackson outkast album cover