Outkast's "Ms. Jackson"

Hey OneSongNation, we're off this week, but we'd like to revisit one of our favorite early episodes of the pod, our episode on Miss Jackson by hip hop legends, Outkast. That's right, Diallo, this is the Grammy Award winning song that Rolling Stone placed at number 55 on their list of best songs of the 2000s. Outkast isn't just from my hometown, we grew up in the same neighborhood. This one's very special to me. So until next week, enjoy our OneSong episode on Miss Jackson. Woo! The music you're listening to right now is by Andre 3000. It's off of his new album, New Blue Sun. And if you're wondering why I am using my NPR voice, it's strictly to point out that some of you actually fell for that. Some of you actually thought that that was music from his album because you have not listened to it. You're telling people you've listened, you haven't. No, as you can tell from what luxury is now playing, we're going further back in time to the year 2000. This episode of OneSong goes out to all the baby mamas, mama mamas, baby mamas, mamas, mamas, all the mamas, and all the babies. That's right. On this episode of OneSong, we're apologizing a trillion times and talking about Outkast's seminal three times platinum billboard chart topping owed to complicated relationships. That's right. We are talking Outkast and the song Miss Jackson. If you're nasty. Different Miss Jackson. Oh, for real. I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ D'Ala Riddle. And I'm producer, DJ, and songwriter, luxury, AKA the guy who sometimes frequently, often even, talks about and even whispers about interpolation. And this is OneSong. My friend, I am so excited to be talking about not just Miss Jackson, but about Outkast. I mean, this is I've been waiting for this episode. I am so stoked to. We were fooling around earlier, but I was playing it in the style of jazz food because Andre 3000 announced that he was dropping a new instrumental album called New Blue Sun. So perfect timing. We've had a chance to all culturally absorb this record. I feel like Outkast is back in the public eyes, back out there in the zeitgeist. And what a perfect time to talk about not just their crazy career path, but in particular, the Stankonia album, which is sort of like at the halfway mark of their career. So I think what better timing could it be? All right. So let's talk a little bit about Outkast. Let's talk about Stankonia, first of all, just to set the stage on how central this album and the song is to hip hop culture, if not global culture. Stankonia not only was it three times platinum, but the single Miss Jackson was the first Outkast single to hit number one on Billboard. At the 2001 Grammy Awards, it won two Grammys, one for Best Rap Album and Miss Jackson won for Best Rap Performance by a duo or a group. And out of the pantheon of all time albums, it's ranked 64 on the 500 best albums of all time, not just best hip hop albums, just best albums. So Diallo, I want to start by asking you this. Miss Jackson drops in 2000. So right around hip hop's 25th birthday, what does this song say about the evolution of the genre of hip hop? It's so interesting. I feel like it's a group maturing, and it's also a genre maturing. If you think about it, this song is about the sloppiness of breakups. And I mean, having children out of wedlock, one would assume, there's no surprise here. Andre had been in a serious relationship with Erica Badu. The Miss Jackson in the song is based on her mom. But it's a very mature thing to be right. If you think about it, it was literally only, okay, this is 2000, 15 years earlier, you still got like, you know, Run DMC, it's like that. That's the way it is. You know, you still got Curtis, like these are great songs, but these are essentially like party songs. Party rockin', brekkadocio. Party rockin', yeah. Some bragging going on, my Adidas, my shoes are better than yours. Like this is literally talking about the intricacies of a relationship. So it's almost bizarre that, you know, hip hop's been around for 50 years, and exactly the halfway mark for hip hop, you know, you've got this great, you know, flowering and maturing that had been kind of coming along throughout the 90s. I mean, like I feel like the 90s is when hip hop starts taking on more complicated subjects, and albums like The Miseducation of Lauren Hill, you know, the Outcast Records, you know, there are more and more people, you know, trying to sort of expand what the genre can talk about. Well, talking about expanding the genre, we're literally talking about that moment at the Source Awards, expanding the geography of hip hop. You wanna talk a little bit about what happened in 1995 at the Source Awards? Those who know me know I'm from Atlanta. You know, Outcast, when he was at the Source Awards saying, you know, the South has something to say, like, you know, we heard that, and we had been supporting Outcast. I wanna take a step back and just talk about Atlanta real quick, and you know, Atlanta's sort of an interesting city from on the hip hop map at the time, you know, you basically had two camps. You know, I figured like... This is the inside of you, because you're growing up, you are in Atlanta. You're growing up in Atlanta. I am in this, okay, I went to high school, they're older than me, but I went to high school with the Goody Mob, you know what I mean? I went to the same mall as Outcast, Goody Mob, or Gimab's Noise, oh, we all went to Greenbrier Mall. And actually, that's something I wanna talk about too. So real quick, the hip hop map is that Atlanta at that time was between three places. We had Miami Booty Shaked Music coming, you know, from Miami. We had West Coast, and I'm gonna lump, sorry, Texas, I'm gonna lump the Texas rappers like Scarface and Rapalot. You know, you had, you know, the West Coast rappers and NWA and Dr. Dre and that whole sound. And then of course, you know, some of us, I feel like in white schools, the punks didn't get along with the new romantics. Well, in my high school, there were clearly camps. Like, there were the kids who listened to West Coast and Texas, you know, for the lack of a better term, gangster rap. And then there were, you know, sort of my clique, which, you know, we were nerdy, we got the homework done, y'all. And we were more into Daylaw Soul, Tricolq Quest. Is the backpack kinda crew? Yeah, there was a lot of, you know what group from Atlanta gets forgotten a lot as a rest of development? Right. You know, like the way that those guys dressed. Outcast is not the first, are they? Like, outcast are not technically the first, the rest of the development's on the radio. They have hits. Listen, Atlanta had rappers. And I'm glad you bring this up. Atlanta had rappers, but, you know, like, as far as establishing an Atlanta sound, I don't know that we had that, like, speech and the rest of development, they felt very much like they went to, you know, Morehouse and Spelman, like what we call the Atlanta University, you know, the AU schools. Like, and I had people at my schools who dressed like that and they had like, Diggable Planet style names. There was a guy in my high school, his name was Hashim, but everybody called him Grasshopper. You know, like, there was, it was like that, see, they dressed like hippies a lot. They dressed like, there was a lot of after-center clothing going on. Was that a karate kid thing? What is that? You know what? Like everybody, he tried to rap. Me and my friends, we all tried to rap. We still have those raps committed to memory. I'm not gonna do them today, but, you know, like, it was really like half the kids wanted to, you know, be about that NWA type life. And the other half were really about like that daylight soul and try to call Quest type life. And, you know, the rest of the development was there. We had a group called YALSO Stupid that was very, like very few people remember YALSO Stupid. Shout out to YALSO Stupid. Shout out to YALSO Stupid. Shout out to Parental Advisory, which was a group that was sort of in the same click as a outcast and they went first. They were inspired by Tipper Gore's warning stickers. Yeah, well, listen, I'm telling you, PA as they were short, if you listen to that first outcast record, he gives a lot of shout outs to PA. Interesting. Cause Parental Advisory was in that same, these are all proto rap groups out of the dungeon family click. And they were more tri-cities. We're gonna talk about the dungeon in a minute. We're gonna talk about the dungeon in a minute. Yeah, very important. They were more tri-cities. I went to Maze. If you know the difference, like Maze was sort of like more middle-class tri-cities was still a little bit, still a little bit wild, but like we all congregated at Lenox Square Mall, at Greenbrier Mall. And if you know the history of our part of Atlanta, and I know I'm being verbose, but I gotta get all this stuff out. If you think about our part of Atlanta, it was white until literally 1961. It was almost solidly white. And then one black family moved into Peyton Forest. And by the way, the dude was a doctor and a D-Day vet. Like ideal neighbor material. Do you know his name? He was this guy. Is he like a famous neighbor? His name is Dr. Clinton Warner, I believe. Dr. Warner. And is famously moved into the Peyton Forest area. Wow. Every white family in the Peyton Forest neighborhood, which is all part of Cascade Heights, where all of us are from, they panicked. Okay. They actually built what was known as the Atlanta Berlin Wall. And it was a wall that was to discourage any more black families from moving into the area after Dr. Warner moved in. This man is very brave. This man is very brave. Oh, he's been harassed all the time. Wow. But black families continued to move into the neighborhood, including my family, which moved there in 1974. I went around yet, but like we moved into the Cascade Heights area, our family did in 1974. But that's 1974. 1972, I think he moves in. I saw a report by 1963, by July of 1963, over 160,000 white people had moved out of Southwest Atlanta. Jesus Christ. There were only in a span of three and a half years, you went from it being an all-white neighborhood by everything but the law itself to only 15 white families left in that neighborhood. It changed literally overnight. It was like a textbook example of white flight. And I bring all that up just to say that growing up in Southwest Atlanta when I did, late 70s, it was just like a black mecca. It was middle class. It was black. The white people didn't take their golf course. We had two golf courses in our area. You had these beautiful homes with these long lawns. And it was 100% black. And the reason I bring all that up is to say that if you're black in an all-black environment, well, then suddenly you're not known as the black guy. Does that make sense? And so at my high school, the jocks were black and the nerves were black. The bullies were black. The bullied were black. And I look at Andre and I look at his path and you just realize that this is what happens when people sort of are allowed to be more than just their skin tone. And when they're able to say, okay, what's really going on inside with me? You know, it makes sense that one guy is sort of like a street guy and another guy is like this amazing artistic poetry guy. It makes a lot of sense because in the cultural stew that is Atlanta, you can be whatever you decide to be. But they're also friends and they're also kind of completing each other's sentences, two sides of the same coin. And they're also met in the mall, which is the hub of social activity in Atlanta. Atlanta was a very special place to live if you were black growing up in the 80s and the 90s. It just was. And the city's a little bit different now. But it was that unique cultural stew that we all grew up in that allowed for us and TLC and eventually the TIs and the ludicrouses and this whole wave of Atlanta artists to just blow up and do their thing. I mean, I feel like only Atlanta could have produced us when it did. So just before we get into the song, we take a quick step back, talk a little bit about the history of the band and it actually starts, it's funny little fun fact. It's funny to call him a band. I always think of the groups. They're a band. They're a duo. They're a group. Who was all of this rap band? They're a band. Well, it's funny because they are almost called the misfits. Like that was a, that's crazy, right? That's really funny to me. Yeah. Because obviously outcasts, misfits, AT-Eliens, these are all of a theme. Like these guys felt like outsiders. But once they found out, once outcast found out that there was already a band called the misfits, who sound like this, by the way? Once they found out that that band existed already, they're like, all right, we gotta find another name. Well, I think, I think they, they, they were clearly talking to a lawyer at some point because I think the reason that the K is in the name is because that there were some motorcycle enthusiasts with some black members known as the Outcast Motorcycle Club. Oh really? Right. That's why the K is in there. Right. But they had, they had an idea. They had a concept for this, for the outcast motorcycle club. Right. And they had a concept for this, for the outcast motorcycle club. Right. They had a concept for this, for the, for their artistic entity, whether or not we'll call it a band or a group or a duo. So the story of the band is, it's 1992. Y'all talked a little bit about organized noise. This is a group of three dudes, Rico Wade, Ray Murray and Sleepy Brown, who basically in, I think it was Rico Wade's literally downstairs basement, but it's barely, it's barely a basement. There's a dirt floor. So they call it the dungeon. The dungeon. And this is where they start to make music. And their production. And it was a place that they could go. Hang out. And hang out. And I think- Like another family kind of unit. And I don't think that Sleepy, Rico and Ray have gotten their flowers. I think organized noise is almost like the sauce, like we all know, but like your typical person walking around listening to music doesn't always know that these songs are produced. Everything from TLCs, waterfalls, to ludicrouses, Saturday, like all the, like they've produced so many songs. Yeah, anyway. That's right. Well, you're absolutely right. This is where outcasts as like teenagers, literally, is where Andre and Antoine as like literally 17, 18 year olds are learning how to write music and make music together. This is probably as good a point as any for me to bring this up. The first time I ever saw outcast music, I actually went to the store to buy a Wu Tang CD. And I was just going through the bins as people typically do. And I remember pulling out a CD where the guys had on Atlanta, Braves hats and I was like, what? And I look on the back and they had a, I didn't know at the time, I don't think I knew it was an interlude, but they had a thing that said, welcome to Atlanta. There's like the fourth track on the album or something like that. This is something I play a list of. I had never heard any of that music. And you're not used to seeing the word Atlanta. I was not used to it. I bought it unheard. I bought a CD, I did not know the band. I was like, they got something on here called Welcome to Atlanta, I'm down. And I was immediately blown away. I just, what's so interesting to me is that it's, I'm not the first to say it, but the geographic aspect of hip hop, the story of hip hop being such a geographic story. And if you've seen that great Netflix hip hop evolution series, like every episode is about, we start in New York and then we go, you know, there's Atlanta, there's New Orleans, there's every single city gets its own episode because every single city has its own story and every single story has very significant differences in what happened. I think every city. And I was just gonna say, just to finish that thought, while there is clearly an equivalent in other genres, like I definitely didn't grow up thinking about rock and roll being, although of course Metallica was a local band, I was kind of proud of them, Faith no more. I had some sense of the bands that were like local bands. I really, it wasn't a big part of my consciousness in the same way. Like I certainly didn't get excited when I saw that a band was from San Francisco in the same way. Jefferson Airplanes from San Francisco, whatever, who cares? Like a little bit of pride, but it didn't have the same significance to me that clearly hip hop, the geographic centrality of hip hop. Yes, there's something about hearing the local guys rap about the very local things. Representation, it's connecting. I know what that is. That's me, I feel connected to this band. I feel connected to the same. They had so much love and that, you know, again, shout out to the rest of development, shout out to y'all so stupid. It was really outcast, organized noise. Mr. DJ, who is sort of like the Alishahe Mohammed of outcasts. This DJ does not get mentioned a lot. Third or fourth guy, but he's in the crew. He's the third guy, technically, especially in the days of that first album. Goodie mob, they established what the dirty south sound was gonna be. Like they were like, you know, as much as Seattle was established by Nirvana. Nirvana and what's the other one? There's another one. Pearl Jam? Mud honey. Something trees. Screaming trees. Screaming trees. They're a Seattle grunge band, right? As much as those grunge bands said, this is the sound of Seattle, I feel like Al-Kas and Goodie Mob and all those guys said, this is the sound of the south. Distinctly the south. Not Texas, not Miami, but everything else. Alabama, South Carolina. That meant a lot to you because especially in this moment as we've been talking about Atlanta, prior to OutKast, it exists a little bit culturally on the radar when we talk about the rest of the development, but suddenly it explodes. It explodes. It's huge, it's great, you're proud. And you recognize these individuals as people. Like you recognize the art they're making, it speaks to you on many, many levels, not the least of which is that you're from the same place they are. And how exciting is that? It was a very exciting time to be from Atlanta. Another important thing about Organized Noise is that they're teaching OutKast about songwriting and production. And one interesting thing that they're doing that's a little different, it's not the first time we've got on the west coast, we've got Dre and the whole Death Row crew are doing alternatives to sampling-based music, sampling-based hip-hop. But Organized Noise in particular are really focused on how much instrumentation can we add? How much can we grab the talented bass players from the community, bring them into the studio and work with them and recreate ideas? And they are definitely interpolating and they're not sampling, but the sampling becomes more of a sonic thing, it's less of a whole taking a whole two bar loop of something and looping it. They're doing something completely different. I mean, the chronic, the chronic cannot be overstated, how huge that, I mean, the chronic is like the atom bomb of hip-hop. Chronic is the atom bomb, and it's the reason why they convinced LaFace, like literally LaFace to sign OutKast, because they're uncomfortable. It sounds like LA Read and LaFace Records are not like, it's not their expertise. These are R&B guys. They're like pop radio guys. And arrested, right? And we've got organized, noise keeps coming in and saying, hey, look, we got these great, these two guys, OutKast are gonna be the next big thing. And LA Read is not aware of, not comfortable with, not familiar with hip-hop, until the chronic comes out, sells a billion copies. He's like, I don't know much about this, but you guys keep telling me you got a hip-hop act that's gonna blow up. I'm gonna, I give, here's the green light. I'm telling you, as an intern in the summer of 1995, after OutKast's first album is actually out there. You know, like it's out there. People are happy about it. Like the city of Atlanta is happy about OutKast. You still got the sense, why is OutKast on an R&B label? And was also surprised, we had a legitimate rap label in town. We had SosoDeaf, which had a little house right at the corner of Piedmont and Peach Tree, which ironically is like walking distance to the LaFace artists, either the LaFace offices on Peach Tree. So like they were within walking distance, but they were like worlds apart because SosoDeaf was, we already knew Jermaine DePri, who, you know, he had like, I wanna say he had a relationship with MC Shidey and DJ Smurf and like, these were the guys in Atlanta who were making Miami-based records. But then they had a huge, huge crossover success with Kris Kross. Like Kris Kross' jump, like if you were alive in 1991 and had a radio, you heard jump several times an hour. Like jump was such a huge thing. Kris Kross became such a huge thing. So I imagine that between Dr. Dre selling all that he was selling and then this guy, Jermaine DePri, down the block selling a million records. We just gotta cross our fingers and jump in. Maybe in LAB we were probably like, yo, we gotta get on this rap money. Right, gotta get some of this rap money. So they do, and they put out this 1993 comp, a very LaFace Christmas with Players Ball, which is ostensibly a Christmas song. And what's funny about it, it was beginning to look a lot like what? It's beginning to look like? Followed by every step. Exactly right. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. It tricks you right off the bat with that first line. I feel like Andre came in strong. He was like, I'm already gonna reinterpret. Let's play that. You know, let's go for it. It is the version on the album. He's got this label on it still. Aw. It's beginning to look a lot like wood. Follow my every step. Take notes on how I crap. I'm about to get wind up. This is the way I treat my season. His mic. I mean, I love that version, but when they took off the sleigh bells and redid it, I like this version better, personally. No. Okay. So this is what I want to talk about. These chords. This is called the extended remix. That's right. This was very hard to find. It's beginning to look a lot like wood. Yes. Follow my every step. Take notes on how I crap. I'm about to go. I said, crank it if it ain't real ain't right. I'm like no matter what the season. Forever chill with spin. I said my fifth. I chill with what's in got my reason. Okay. So the version with sleigh bells. First off, I had all this stuff. I had all three versions, but let me tell you the version that you just played, not only is it most people's favorite, but it was extremely hard to find. Like that's not the version that got a lot of play. It's not on the album. The album version was the one that got the most play and it was in the music video and all this stuff. The version that you play, which goes by a couple of names, but I usually see an extended remix. Sometimes it's called extended TV remix. That was a really hard find. I had to literally go on the nascent web and like find it. Cause like it was on Japanese pressings and stuff like, but no, trust me, anytime you could break that one out at a party, which I did, I eventually did find the 12 inch once I started DJing. That was the version that we all love, love. And it is because of those piano chords. They're so, so sweet. Jazz, they're so jazz. Absolutely. They're freaking beautiful, beautiful chords. They're like deep house chords. You literally, I love them. Yeah. Well, as soon as you said that, about 19,000 laptops fired up and put on garage ban. So this leads us all to 2000 and the fourth album, Stankonia, which coincides with this, the artist growth, the band growth, the, the, the worldwide popularity of outcast has gone from being two teenagers in this dungeon to now they have their own studio. They're ready to break out. They actually buy Bobby Brown studio. I heard that they said they waited outside for Bobby Brown for like days on end. And he's older to them. They renamed it Stank. Stankonia. I didn't know the, the Onia part, you know, Stank is stank, you know, funky, but like the Onia, I was always like, that feels like a place. It feels like kind of like. It's supposed to be both a place and a pun, but literally it turns out to be the title of a poster in Andre's bedroom called Plutonia comes from Plutonia, which is a futuristic city. So a place I imagine you can, I think it's probably all those things. I mean, no, no, that's, that was the end. No, but I'm saying like Stankonia sounds like I'm, I'm going to put that stank on you. No, that was what I always thought it was just a pun. I think it's, it's clearly a pun. I don't know. It's a pun in a place. I mean, that's all good. That's all good. This is also at a time when Alcaz is saying like, they're like, thank you very much. Like they say that a lot in the interviews, but go ahead. I love the puns though. I love like the word play. Like, we're going to get into it later, but even Andre 3000, the new record, like all of the song titles are so funny. Like it's bring the flute out of them. He's a funny dude. This man knows. Very funny. A lot of humor between both of them. A lot of humor. And I want to, I want to talk about that at some point because I do feel like a lot of times, you know, people are like, who's better, Paul or John or Mick and Keith or, you know, Guy or Tomas to the real heads. I feel like Alcaz is strong because, you know, as much as Andre kills it whenever he does guest verses, I big boys had some amazing guest verses of his own. I like the two of them together because there is a, you know, I don't, the same way I'm like, Atlanta wasn't competing with itself to see who's going to be number one. Like I don't get the sense they're trying to occupy each other's lanes. You know what I mean? Like they respect each other's creativity. There's so much mutual respect there. They bounce off each other. They love each other's brothers. And at this point, they're ready to start producing for themselves. They gradually started acquiring other skills. Andre's there like learning to play guitar. And it turns out that he starts to write the song we're about to talk about today on guitar. And they bring in a third guy who's there touring DJ. That's David, Mr. DJ Sheets. Who's been there from the beginning. He's been there from the beginning. The three of them formed the Earth Tone, a left one, one, one production crew. So together with David, Mr. DJ Sheets, they formed this Earth Tone three production crew. And that is the new core operation. They're still working with organized noise. They actually do four songs on this record with them. Not the least of which is So Frosch and So Clean. An amazing track. Of course. And they are taking cue from what they've already learned. They're bringing in live instrumentation from Atlanta club musicians. And they're making their new record. They're making Stankonia, which brings us to the song of the day, Miss Jackson from the fourth album, Stankonia. Let's talk about it. Yeah, let's talk about it. First off, I thought Miss Jackson was the, you know, it's just a passenger time. I thought it was the first single off this album. B.O.B. was the first one, Bombs Over Bad Dag, which I really liked that song. Like, but apparently like critics loved it and audiences were like, I'm kind of weird even for Outcasts and didn't really respond to it, even though it's got like, you know, a really upbeat, drivy sound. But it's Miss Jackson that captured everybody's attention. So let's talk about it. We have, we have the stems. And what is the first stem from this song that you want to play for us? First off, can I just say, I'm excited that we're doing a hip hop song with pure stems. Like you said, it's not, not a lot of sampling. There is some sampling. There is some sampling here. There's some creative reuse of recorded material. Yeah. But if you will. But let's start with the stems. What's the first stem you got for us? Okay. So let's start with the drums because the song starts with that famous reverse sound. And this is what it is. So this is Raj Kala playing the congas. I'll play it for you as it is in the mix first. And then I'll play it backwards so you can hear what that is. Here's how the song starts. Reversed in other words, forwards. Here's what was actually performed. ["Raj Kala Playing Congas"] Wow, that's nice. Yeah. It's just a guy playing the congas. And that guy. And playing backwards, that's what gets the whr. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. That's Raj Kala playing congas and then having, and then the tape was flipped backwards. Okay. So we got that. And then we've got our beat. Let's listen to that. ["Raj Kala Playing Congas"] You can hear there's another backwards element there, that I hat. It's a backwards I hat. So in the mix you've got. Yeah. I was like, where is this from? Is that? Yeah. So that's the full beat right there. Going to the whole song. That's incredibly dope. Incredibly dope. Wow, that's really cool. All right. And then if you think that's cool, listen to this. This is on bass. We have an actual performer here as well. And what's cool is like, this guy is a legend in his own right. This is bass guitar as performed by Aaron Mills from the band Cameo. ["Raj Kala Playing Congas"] Mwah. Mwah. Mwah. Mwah. Mwah. That'll bring the beats back in. Mwah. Mwah. Mwah. Mwah. Mwah. Mwah. Mwah. Mwah. Those backwards I had. The backwards tongue goes all together. And it's when you know that it's when you learn when you learn that it's Cameo, it's like, yeah, of course. That's something. I want to hear candy. That's so clear. I got candy queued up right here for you, baby. There we go. ["Raj Kala Playing Congas"] It's a toad in this man's eye. ["Raj Kala Playing Congas"] You really feel like you have an idea of what the... We're Andre and... I want to say Andre and Andre. We're Andre and Big Boy, where their heads are at while they're making this album. Yeah, it's so funny to think about Cameo specifically because those guys are like... Those guys are funny and crazy and bringing ideas... Absolutely. ...from all kinds of different sources into the funk, right? I mean, I think humor is strong in the outcast family. Like, you know... Is it strong in Atlanta? Is that an Atlanta... Listen, I'm always going to say... Is this in Atlanta? ...such a humor? There's something... Hell yeah. I'll never forget when Andre got out of a song with Kesha of all people. He was like, I call it Kesha because she thinks it's good to work. You know, like, you know... Yeah, that was like some low-hanging Atlanta humor fruit and yet nobody beat him to it. So, you know, Andre, he was always going to come with some jokes. He's always coming with some jokes. All right. Well, let's move on. We got some piano as well. This is another live performance. This is from Marvin Chans Parkman. I don't know why his nickname is Chans, but this is what Chans... When Chans gets on the synth, this is what Chans... Music can only have one Marvin. All right, and here he is playing piano. I mean, I always thought that that was... I heard that the first time. I was like, oh, they incorporated the wedding song. That's all he's playing throughout the entire song, too. It's just that loop. And it is the wedding march. But it's also got that, you know... Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Yeah, it's got that little part at the end. So, it's not just... But it's brilliant. But that is an interpolation, if you will. Although, technically, it's more of a reference. Is that Canon and D? What is that? That is the bridal chorus from Richard Wagner's 1850 opera. Shout out to Wagner. Longer and it's long out of copyright. How do the Balqueries... Long out of copyright, so it's not protected. Anyone can... You can write a new song using that, if you like. Hey, for the Beethoven was a good change of the story. So, that's the Here Comes the Bride. It's often called Here Comes the Bride. It's not the technical name. There you go, exactly. And that also shows up, by the way, in the guitar part, which Dre is playing himself in the background. This is a little hard to hear, but it kind of cuts through the mix every now and then, especially at the end. But here's Andre 3000 on electric guitar. And then Jimmy. Oh, wow, wow, Jimmy. Jimmy Hendrix, wow, wow, there. Totally. And that's happening throughout the whole song. What's cool is that it's not a loop. He's just playing it over and over again. So, it gets a little different every time. And he's not like... He's not Jimmy Hendrix. Outcast has always... A little wonky in a good way. They start at one place, and throughout their whole career, it's such a... It's just like the Beatles in the sense that, like, even the casual observer can see, oh, the group that they are in 2000, or the group that they are, heaven forbid, by 2005, is not the same group that put out Southern Playlist of Cadillac Music in 1994. It's just not the same group. And you're on the ride with them. You know, like, it's like, no, why should they stay the same? Let them go wherever their imagination takes them. I'm excited to talk. We're gonna continue through the stems, obviously. We're gonna get to the vocals and everything else. And I can't wait to get through all of that, but I also can't wait to have, like, our big conversation about, like, the current stuff that he's doing. I'm so excited about Andre 3000's creative journey and his creative, like, idea. And I want to talk about Big Boy because I feel like he has had a journey of his own. Listen, after the break, we'll be getting deeper into Miss Jackson, so we'll be right back. Let's get back to the stems. What you got next for us? The synths, that kind of high-pitched keyboard, just the three-chord thing that goes through the entire song. It's actually credited not to any individual, but it's credited to Earth Tone 3 as a whole. And here it is. ["The Peshmode"] That's it. It's really simple. Three chords and a bass note. But can I say that is some sheer synth perfection. That is some synth. That's some Depeche Mode. I really like that. So, actually, human leg, I'd say, more than Depeche Mode. Depeche Mode would be a little more intricate. Play it again, play it again. Let's hear it one more time. I got a lot of human leg in that. ["The Peshmode"] Orchestral. Yes. This is the docker. You know what? Orchestral. For the actual tone, you're right, it's OMD. For the sound, for some reason, here, it reminded me of this just because we're talking about it. By the way, I think it's a lot of music. It's like, softly, as if I play piano in the dark. Like, I wonder if he was thinking that when he played that. Just because we have a podcast and it's fun to play music. It just reminds me of this. ["The Peshmode"] Just that. It's just a chord. Sorry, Mr. Exxon. I am moving on. Never meant to make you die to cry. Apologize to them. Me and your daughter got this thing going on. We say it's poop and love. We say it's real strong. And the human leg, like, the potential for the human leg outcast crossover. If anybody's still doing mashups, first off, you're 20 years too late. But try that. See if it works. So those are your synths. We've now heard all the instruments. And if you'd like to, we can get into the vocals. There's a lot of fun stuff. I'd love to get into the vocals. Tell me about these vocals, because these lyrics are outstanding and grown up. I was actually thinking, it might be a fun way to do this. Is there a vocal in particular? Because there's so many great lines. I'll start with one, and then I'll bounce it to you. You pick the next one. So I'm going to start with the, let's hear the, let's hear the baby's mama's intro thing. Because that's just one of many iconic moments. That just sets the whole thing off. OK. Here we go. Yeah, this one right here goes out to all the baby's mama's, mama's, mama's, mama's, mama's. Nice. Who's that in the background? Baby mama's, mama's. And then there's this whoo. I know. Go like that. I mean, it makes the song instantly a classic. We were talking about how technically Andres' first line in any outcast song that was ever released was, it's beginning to look a lot like what? Like it immediately grabs you. It's the tone. Yeah. It tricks you. And this one is the same way. It's like this one goes out to all the baby's mama's, mama's, mama's. Like he, yes, it's almost like in a pre-TikTok age, he understood that there was a certain brain algorithm that's like, man, you got about two seconds to get me. Yeah, yeah. I saw the DLC talking about working with Snoop on nothing but a G thing. And he was like, Snoop, you know, you got to say something at the top of this song that's going to immediately draw people in. And he was like, and with that advice, Snoop wrote one, two, three into the phone. He was like, counting like everybody knows what's going to come next. But how are you going to reinvent counting? Like good rap songs, they draw him from the very beginning. That's so true. Yeah, that's such like an innovation of the medium. I mean, like we don't necessarily have that like Beatles songs aren't like, one, two, John, here I come. Like that might have been a good idea. But that might have worked. That might have worked. That might have worked. Right, back in the day. Paul and John, they left some money on the table. Just saying. They should have spelled it out. J to the O to the H to the N. L-E-N-N-O-N. I mean, that would have worked. Keep it simple. Just spell your name. All right, so now it's your turn. What lyric would you like me to isolate next? So many iconic lyrics in this one. I think like the second half of Andre's verse on this song. You know, I think when Erica Badou said she heard the song, big boys verse, she did not like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She thought it was like rude and disrespectful. A bit aggro. And but she said when she heard Andre's part, she was like, it felt, to her anyways, like truthful. So I think with that in mind, maybe something that plays like the second half of his verse, because there's one line in particular when he says, and yes, I will be present on the first day of school and graduation. Like that is such a mature line. Like going back to what we were saying earlier in the episode about hip hop is maturing at this point, but like that line, like it's so pregnant with like a relationship that must still be maintained. And yet everybody's compromising. Like that line kind of blows me away. That's beautiful. Right, right. Thoughts of he asking what happened to the feeling that her and me had. I pray so much about it. Need some knee pads. It happened for a reason. One can't be mad. So know this, know that everything's cool. And yes, I will be present on the first day of school and graduation. I'm sorry, man. Jackson. I'm glad you waited. Oh, I love it. Let's get technical with Andre's voice, because he has such a rich voice just when he's talking. Like when you hear him in interviews, you're like, oh yeah, that dude, I guess if there was no such thing as rap, maybe he would have been an announcer. You know what I mean? Like he's got such a rich voice. And yet I do hear some effect on that vocal. Yeah, there's a delay. Is that what that is? Is that a delay? Thoughts of he asking what happened to the feeling that. There's reverb, which gives it that feeling of being in a church. Yes. And then I always think like a big hallway. And then at the end of the line, you can hear a little delay tail. Thoughts of he asking what happened to the feeling that her and me had. I pray so much. Actually, I take that back. That's all reverb that we're hearing in this mix. And there's something about his lyrics. You know, I think about this a lot, because there are some rappers who I like them. But it's hard for me, even me, lifelong, if I bet. It's hard for me to understand what they say. His enunciation is so clean and clear that I've never had a doubt when I really listened what Andre was saying. And yet it's still super complicated and syncopated and off the rhythm. I'm reminded of a line on TLC's album, the last song on Crazy Sexy Cool. I believe it's a song called Something Wicked This Way Comes. And he says, I remember back in a time when the only signs we had were pickets. You know, like just from the start, he's kidding you. And then he goes into, you know, Jiang's killing brothers for colors, things that we wear for fashion. Other brothers use it for a reason to be blasting. Like it's just, it's well pronounced. And yet he still doesn't lose his Atlanta accent. I'm going to keep coming back to Atlanta. Like the Atlanta accent is not the Mississippi accent. It's not the Texas accent. It's not North Kackalack accent. It's a very specific accent. It's a very specific accent that I can fall into. Hey, if I need to fall into that accent, I can fall into that accent. Oh boy. You know what I mean? Like it's just another yellow in the world. Hey, listen, I grew up there. You know what I'm saying? And now let's listen to the iconic hook with all of its different hook, sub hooks. This is the hook with like multiple sub hooks within a hook. I'm sorry, Miss Jackson. Ooh, I am for real. Never meant to make your daughter cry. I apologize a trillion times. I'm sorry, Miss Jackson. Ooh, I am for real. Never meant to make your daughter cry. I apologize a trillion times. OK, now you have to rank the hooks. What is the top hook within a hook of that hook? Interesting. Is it the who? I mean, the who is infectious. I think you've got to have it all. I think it all comes together. Because if you take any part of it off, it's almost like outcast itself. If you take away Big Boy, it's Andre, which is amazing, but it's not outcast. I don't want to just eat the burger. I want the bun. I want the ketchup. I want the pickles. I want it all. I want all those layers. By the way, speaking of layers, I hear at least Andre vocals in the mix, like a high and a low. Won't be able to separate them, but it is interesting, because I feel like nowadays almost every rapper has a singing voice. But this is still, this was probably recorded in 1999. With the exception of Lauren Hill, I feel like not every rapper, maybe most deaf. Lauren Hill and most deaf are rapping and singing in equal parts, but this is a new look for outcast. He's singing a lot. Well, it's funny you mentioned that, because the other part I wanted to play for you, which is a really fun little moment. I think this is after the first chorus. It's really sweet. And he is, he's kind of doing a little bit of everything, as you say. I'll just play it for you and then we can talk about it. Got a special thing going on. We got a special kind of thing going on. You say it's public love. We say it's foreground. Or that we feel this way forever. You can plan a pretty picnic, but you can't predict the weather. Miss Jackson times out of nine, if I'm lying, fine. That's like a Beach Boys kind of like. That was crazy. Right? That was so pretty, babe. You know, I think what's cool about that is that, how many times have you heard that song? And I did not hear that other part of it ever. Because I was just, I was listening to the part that was on the beat, you know what I mean? But like, the, can't predict the weather. Like that's on a very different part of the beat. That was super cool. Yeah. Yeah. He's, he's playing with counterpoint and he's maybe listening to the Beach Boys. And he's talking. And he's talking. There's a lot going on there. And it's a way of having multiple different vocal ideas, almost like a Mariah Carey song. Right. We were joking on the Mariah Carey episode. We talked about how there's this sort of church like moment where we have four or five different melodic lines that are playing off of each other. Yeah. And in the mix, it doesn't feel chaotic. If you just listen to it out of nowhere, it's like, what is this chaos? Yeah. It makes sense because over the course of time in the song, it's built to that moment. Also, it's building, building, building. He was, he was obviously going out with and had a child with Eric Abadou. There's something about his falsetto flourishes that sounds like Eric Abadou around that time. You know what I mean? Like the, you know, I need a rimshot baby. You know, like, you could, she rubbed off, she rubbed off on him. Well, it also reminds me of Sleepy Brown himself, who's doing hooks like that in their previous, in their previous songs, right? He's doing his, he's doing his Curtis Mayfield S kind of thing. Players, there's no way to think. All the players play. Right? By the way, shout out to Big Rube, who's a major part of all those early outcast records. He, yeah, it's interesting because they were obviously in the studio with organized noise. And, and the same way I'm saying, some of that Eric could probably rubbed off on Andre. Some of that organized noise clearly rubbed off on them when it came time for Andre and Big Boy to produce their own song. Yeah. Because when you're in the room with someone creatively and you see them doing it, it is, representation matters. That is like, oh, that is something I can, oh, I can do that. I can try to do that. Right? Right. But let me also say, because I don't think it's said quite enough, especially in this world of Andre's flute album, that Big Boy is such an important part of outcast to me. Because again, it's like, it's like the two sides of Atlanta. There's like the very down to earth side. And there's like the aspirational artistic side. And I think that's why outcast means so much to us. And that's why so many of us really love Big Boy just as much as Andre. If you're a real outcast fan, you love Big Boy. And that's why I actually like to see Big Boy shout out to Daddy Fett Stex. He had a lot of work that he did solo. He did work with artists in the electronic. I mean, like if anybody has ventured out into electronic music, it's actually been Big Boy. He's just left foot. He's just left foot. He's done a lot of. So I would ask anybody listening to this. And he was one of the first people, I mean, people forget when Janelle Monae, I first heard about her as a member of the Dungeon family. So, you know, like, I feel like he's also been a good steward and he's done features with artists who were up and coming. And Killer Mike. And Killer Mike. Killer Mike is like the second generation Dungeon family. I guess future would be the third generation. You know, like Dungeon family has had some amazing careers launched out of that clique. We should never, ever underestimate or under appreciate. Let me ask you how often, how often should we not do it? Should we never, ever? Should we never, ever, ever? Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever? Not at all. Let's hear that. Ever, ever? On the oak tree, I hope we feel like this forever, forever, forever, ever, forever, ever, forever never seems that long until you're grown and notice that the day-by-day ruler can't be too wrong. Pause it. The other thing that Andre does a lot in his verses that I really appreciate is he's got a very sort of like, wise sort of like sense of like beginnings and endings. Let me explain that. One of my favorite, this might be, this might be my favorite outcast line of all time. It comes from Elevators. He talks about running to that guy in the mall that he hasn't seen a long time. You know, but he's standing there, facial expression, look at silly and that. And like he talks, he says, the line that he says, sort of like this thing about the day-by-day ruler can't be too long. He talks about when the record gets to, oh, it's not Elevators, it's Rosa Parks. When the record gets to skipping and slowing down, I hope you can still say them brothers had their crown, but until then, what's that fuss? Like he's very much talked about, there may come a time when there is no outcast or people aren't checking for outcasts. He comes back to that often, almost as much as like Tupac talked about dying or getting shot. Like Tupac talked a lot about that. And Andre talked a lot about, there may come a time when there's no more outcasts. And I've always- He's been telling us. He's been saying for a long time. Because we're gonna get into this more in a minute, but there's a lot going on in Andre's creative brain. And he is looking to do things that are interesting to him exclusively. That is his life's mission. And of course, he needs to feed his family. Of course, he needs to keep shoes on his feet. He's got ambitions. He's got an element of him that enjoys fame, but there's also something that drives him, which is just purely exploration and creativity and improvisational creativity at that. That to me is why I'm so inspired, especially by his most recent moves, after giving up the greatest hip hop act of all time, according to many, and certainly according to the sales of Speaker Box and Love Below, and go on to do what he wants to do with his days. Even though he put success down and he left it there. And everyone wonders why, well, because he's driven by creativity. I listen, I appreciate that. I think that, look, I listened to the flute album over the weekend, a friend of mine was like, yo, this album is gonna bang in the spa. And I kind of agree. Yeah, I think he went to, that's not a joke to him. He's like, he knows what this is. He's in on it, but listen, I will say this. If you really loved Outkast and you are missing Outkast, and this obviously does nothing to make you not miss Outkast. I mean, like, I give props to, I give props to Leslie Jones, who did an extended riff at the Daily Show. Like, what are you doing? Like, I totally get where that comes from, not because we don't appreciate artistic change. It's just that if Outkast is or was what it was for me and presumably Leslie, just your favorite hip hop group, there is a part of you that, that a, that a rhyme-less instrumental flute album, it only sort of exacerbates your like desire to like hear from him. You know what I mean? I remember 2007, Outkast by that point had broken up and Andre personally had like an amazing year of features. He's on the walk it out remix with a, you know, DJ, and on keys and throw some D's on it. He's on that remix and crushed it. He's, that was the year that he came out with that epic other flow he did about marriage on the International Players Anthem by UGK. Like, 2007, it's like the second Outkast broke up. He was like on, I think that's the year he did his verse on party with Beyonce. You know, like he was coming with all these amazing verse after verse after verse. And there's a part of us that misses that. I don't want to belabor it because again, I think that we're unified in thinking that like an artist needs to go or an artist needs to go. But you've heard this from me before. In my opinion, Outkast is very much like Daft Punk. Like they came out with albums and they define genres and they defied genres and then they broke up. And then you just had to just resign yourself to the fact that no, there's not going to be another Outkast album. There's not going to be another Daft Punk album. Oh, one of the members is coming out with an album and it's all classical music. Okay, I hear that. And this is the narcissism of fandom though. Like fans want, but fans already like. It's totally selfish. And by the way, there are enough Outkast albums that we can always go back and revisit those. In fact, I'm going to suggest to anybody who has never listened to Southern Playlist, they kind of like music, you know, even though there's some lyrics in there that are probably not cool by today's standards, go back and listen to a young Andre and young big boy. And you'll still hear a lot of what you appreciate in later Outkast records. It's not that these groups, Outkast and Daft Punk, don't leave a musical legacy. It's just that, you know, there is a part of us that would love to see the band get back together and just do one song for us. You know what I mean? All right, so Diallo, this is the first time you've heard this song this way, broken up into those isolated chunks. How was that experience for you? Did it change your appreciation for the music? Yes. Look, I always knew there was something different, sonically happening with Outkast and almost any other group that was out there. I think somewhere in the back of my brain, even though I didn't understand, you know, music creation back then, the way I do now, that there was probably some more live instrumentation. I didn't realize the live instrumentation. Looking back now, you know, 20 years later, more than 20 years later, it does feel like, you know, that was one of the things that made their production special. It makes the texture different. Yeah. In a hip hop song, in a rap song, of this era especially, you know, it changes the nature of, the musical bed itself is definitely different. How it was made was different. It's performed, not only is it performed, but there are no loops or very few loops. Yeah. The percussion, there are loops. And I was definitely... There are loops in the beat, but the rest of it is a human playing through for three minutes, which is significant, because it's the sound of a band playing. And there's something amazing that I will defend as much as you will to the nth degree about sampling. And what loops do you feel? The feel of a loop, the feel of a loop is its own special thing. The feel of Kraftwerk, Metronomic, Precision, Daft Punk, but also the feeling of a band or performers performing is a special thing too. I think the part of Outcast is that. Love Outcast. I love the way their music sounded different than anything else, not just on the radio, but almost anything else in hip hop. So yeah, we support live musicians and we support drum machines. And we support sampling and we support interpolations. We love it all. A lot of ways to skin a cat or to make a song, which is why is skin a cat? That's a strange expression. Please don't skin cats out there. Shout out to not skinning cats. So it's been 20 years since Ms. Jackson was released, longer actually. It's been a little bit longer. Yeah, it's been a little bit longer. Where does it stand for you in the hip hop pantheon? Quarter century later. Look, I personally have a hard time comparing or like coming up with like a top 10 anything because ultimately we're comparing art and I tell my kids all the time, like, not everything has to be a freaking TikTok list. What about within the Outcast catalog? But within the Outcast catalog, look, I love this song. It means a lot to, you know, Outcast fans in the sense that like by this point, you really know that these guys are maturing because they're coming with deeply personal material that is not, like you said earlier, it's not bragging. It's not descriptions of street life. And like, no, this is like, hey, this is what's going on with me today. So it's way up there. You're in your top three. What is your top three Outcast? My Outcast top three. Man, I'm on the spot. Okay, here we go. Number one, gotta go with Player's Ball, that remix that you played earlier. It is absolutely one of my favorite songs of all time. Um, I would say number two, I'm gonna say she lives in my lap just because it is a song that could not have been on Southern Playlist of Cadillac music. Like to me, that song and all its wonderful atmospheric goodness is like a truly just an amazing song. Chow to Rosario Dawson on it. It's just an amazing song. It's just a great song. She lives in my lap. It almost sounds like Prince. I love the story about, we don't have time to get into today, but after they did the reunion show at Coachella, Prince called Andre to like give him advice and basically rate the show. And I'm like, who gets calls from Prince like that? And then my number one is a very bizarre song considering that I really love Outcast for their rapping, but it's the spoken word masterpiece, Spodeo-ty, double licious, but to this day, there are so many classic moments in that song from a masterful big boy line. The post office they call you back cause you had cloudy piss. Cause you fell to drunk test. That's what he's talking about. And then, you know, Andre's description of a night out that goes drastically wrong when a fight breaks out. And he says, one dude got his shirt off saying, who want to fuck with Hollywood coat? Which listening to, I always thought he said Hollywood Coal, which I thought was the most bad nickname of all time. But he says Hollywood Court, which someone reminded me, I was like, once he said Hollywood Court, I was like, oh, we used to call the projects in Atlanta. A lot of times they had names like Court. So there was like Kimberly Court. And Hollywood Court was a particularly bad one. I want to say it was over near Niskey Lake, which was really nice. Like that was where some black folks had houses on a lake. Like I briefly dated a girl over on lived on Niskey Lake. And we went out on her boat, but like, but some of the projects that were over there were like really rough and Hollywood Court was one of them. To me, Spodeo-ty musically, it's been sampled so many times. They've done house remixes of it. But to me, like, and I think why to, to finish out this answer, my favorite album, standalone album by Alcast, I want to say it's a love below in speaker box, but it might be a Quimini. Cause a Quimini was more than AT-Elians. I feel like it's a lot of people's favorites. A Quimini was just a fan favorite. It was, it was masterful. And there's so many good songs on that album. So, you know, again, I hate comparing art to art. It's not what I do. I think it's better in sports than in the world of art. But yeah, I think Spodeo-ty takes the top spot. And I think a Quimini takes the top album spot. All right, man. Help me in this thing. All right. Well, I've been luxury. I am luxury. I continue to be luxury. In spite of my illness, I am still producer, DJ and songwriter luxury. So I am. And I am actor, writer, sometimes DJ and forever AT-Elian, D'Ala Riddle. That's right. And this has been one song. We will see you next time. Peace. Yeah. I don't like this. I'm sorry, Miss Jackson. Woo! Can't not do the woo. No one can't do the woo. No, no, you can't. You can't not woo when it's time to woo.