OutKast has been able to reinvent itself with each album, but this time the Atlanta dynamic duo is here to change the game. Stankonia, the pair's fourth album, is not only its best, it is also one of the wittiest, the bravest and the most ingenious albums you'll hear this year.
OutKast
Stankonia
La Face/Arista
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Stankonia is a concept album with layered themes and adventurous sounds. There are just so many songs that you can bop your head to or scratch your head to philosophize on that it's impossible to do this important work justice in a few paragraphs.
Andre "Andre 3000" Benjamin and Antwan "Big Boi" Patton's work is independent of the East Coast, West Coast or the Dirty South scenes. There are some bass-thumping P-Funk influences to their tracks, but the originality here is undeniable. The complex rhymes and the vivid social commentaries told in the album demonstrate that the duo has mastered the art of storytelling.
While nearly everyone in the rap game is quickly exhausting the bling-bling and the death material, it's not exactly difficult to be original. But the duo has raised the bars a level higher. They aren't single-minded about paper chasing or street cred, while they are not so single-mindedly against those tendencies (like Common or Mos Def) either. By defying convention, the duo actually broadens the horizon of the hip-hop genre.
The relentless rant of Andre 3000 and the baller rap of Big Boi are two distinctive rhyming styles that make each song interesting by displaying two different attitudes on the same track. The two outcasts take on some pretty heavy-duty themes such as unemployment, alcoholism, teenage pregnancy, broken relationships and suicide, but they never forget to inject the appropriate humor in this anger-fueled trip.
While nothing here is exactly new for OutKast, the duo has really outdone itself this time. Stankonia is so perceptive, compelling and different that it begs to be heard. And don't let the heavy-handed stuff fool you, because the album is also too much fun for anyone to miss.
