“Ms. Jackson”— Outkast

Hey, it's Craig Horrell back here to tell you that the NFL is back whether you like it or not. And we are covering all the latest news, trades, rankings, and more on the Ringer Fantasy football show with my two co-hosts who are both named Danny. Check the Ringer Fantasy football show out on Spotify or on our new YouTube channel. I hung up his poster on my bedroom wall and I left it there all through high school, all through the 90s. A long rectangular poster of him, six feet tall or so, hung between my two bedroom windows on this narrow stretch of wall, angled slightly outward so he sort of leaned, he sort of loomed over me. And even more importantly, he loomed over my stereo. My stereo, the classic 90s triple combo, right? Single CD player on top, radio tuner in the middle, dual tape deck on the bottom. My stereo sat on an upside down milk crate on the floor right beneath his poster. Look, just so you understand the grave importance of this. This is my teenage bedroom. My teenage bedroom is where I keep my stereo and my CD collection. And my stereo and CD collection are my whole reason for existence, my whole personality, my whole universe. My raison d'etre, as the French say, however the French pronounce that, I got no idea. I took Spanish. My stereo is my most prized possession. It is a legitimately sacred object. If my house is ever on fire, then my stereo will pick me up and carry me out of the house. And thus, there is a legitimately shrine like aspect to this arrangement, the celestial light pouring through my two bedroom windows with my beloved stereo perched royally on the milk crate between them and his poster looming high above it. He confers additional greatness onto my stereo and my stereo confers additional greatness onto him. These details interest me. This giant poster of him that hung on my bedroom wall all through high school interests me. The fact that I had no other posters, only him, this interests me. His shameless commodification interests me. His wanton global deification interests me. His undeniable and distinctly tyrannical greatness interests me. Another thing that interests me about him is that I fucking hated him. Gets the ball from E. Evans. Hey, looks. Hey, looks. Hey, looks. He gives to Jordan. Jordan to the circle, puts the shot in the air. God, the game's over and the bulls have won. When I took that personally on May 7, 1989, Michael Jordan hit a buzzer beater in the deciding game five of the first round NBA Eastern Conference Playoff Series between his detestable Chicago Bulls and my beloved valorous doomed Cleveland Cavaliers. This is the shot officially known in eternal NBA lore as the shot. Jordan over Craig E. Low, right at the free throw line. I keep playing that clip just now and listening to the announcer. I was like, gets the ball from Hugh Evans. The Bulls had a guy named Hugh Evans. No, Hugh Evans was the referee who handed the ball to Brad Sellers with three seconds on the clock and Brad Sellers inbounded it to Jordan who hit the shot. So, you know, fuck Brad Sellers. Also the shot rattles in the games over, E. Low collapses on the sideline and Jordan does his stupid iconic triple fist pump as 11 year old me screams various obscenities at my television. Why is Michael Jordan's poster on my wall? I am a devout Cleveland Cavs fan. My teenage bedroom where I keep my beloved stereo and CD collection is located in my house in suburban Cleveland. Michael Jordan is my sworn enemy. Michael Jordan is the bane of my stereo based existence. I cannot frickin believe I just voluntarily played you audio of the shot. My parents are going to disown me. I am disgusted with myself. Yo, pardon me for 10 seconds while I restore balance to the force. On June 16, 2016, LeBron James executed a breathtaking late fourth quarter full court chase down block of Andre Iguodala's feeble ass attempt at a go ahead layup. During the stage for my beloved valorous victorious Cleveland Cavaliers to defeat the detestable Golden State Warriors in the deciding game seven of the NBA Finals, a block forever known in NBA lore as the block. So suck it. The Cavs won the title. The Warriors blew a 3-1 lead. Excuse me. Why is Michael Jordan's poster on my wall? In my suburban Cleveland bedroom all throughout the 90s when he killed the Cavs every year. Back when I still played Yahoo Fantasy basketball, I preferred team names that were puns on the names of late 80s Cavs players. So what? Mark Price is right. I did that one. L Ron Harper. Hell yeah. Hot Rod Williamsburg. Absolutely. Leisure suit Larry Nance. No, that's dumb. I did Dority. He was our center and it took me forever to think up a name for him. But finally I nailed it. Friends of Dority. Oh well. Excuse me. Why is Michael Jordan's poster on my wall right above my beloved stereo if I hate him so much? Because he was the best. 17 seconds. 17 seconds from game seven or from championship number six. Jordan open Chicago with the lead. On June 14th, 1998, Michael Jordan had a game winning jumper in the closing seconds of the concluding game six of the NBA finals, vanquishing the Utah Jazz and giving Jordan and the whole Chicago Bulls. But really it was just Jordan. His sixth and blessedly final championship. I watched this live and I was absolutely rooting against him. He pushed off. I rooted against him even when he wasn't demolishing my team specifically. I vehemently rooted against Jordan because he was the best and I reverently hung a poster of Jordan dunking on some dude from the Clippers I think on my wall because he was the best. Because when you are the best, you inspire that singular deadly mixture of anger and awe. Abject frustration and total adulation. Jordan watches you and wants to see you fail even if they not so secretly realize that of course you won't fail because you're the best even if you did push off. And then sometimes when you've been the best at something for so long that you get restless and bored and dissatisfied, maybe you shock the world by quitting the thing that you're the best at so you can go not be the best at some other thing. There's another hit. A drive down to serve baseline. The tying run may score. These are round third races on the plate. Amazing call by Harry Carey here. First of all, the DFI Chicago announcer and institution Harry Carey, RIP. Harry manages to make this call while there are apparently 12 full bratwursts crammed into his mouth, including the buns, a truly disconcerting saliva situation transpiring within Harry Carey. At this exact moment, Harry Carey was the best also, obviously. Michael Jordan has tied up the ball game with a ground double of a and this crowd has seen what it came here for. On April 7, 1994, during a heated showdown between his own Chicago White Sox and their crosstown rivals, the Chicago Cubs, Michael Jordan, hit an electrifying game tying double that ultimately this is an exhibition game. It doesn't matter. It's not a real game. In 1993, three-time NBA champion Michael Jordan shocked the world by quitting basketball so he could go try to play pro baseball for the Chicago White Sox. Instead, and he mostly sucked. I was going to play you clips of Michael Jordan striking out. Actually, just so I could go, haha, you suck. But these clips are harder to find on the Internet. Jordan never actually made it to the pros. Just the minors. He played for the White Sox double A team, the Birmingham Barons. Let's see here. One season, 436 at bats, 202 average. That sucks. Three home runs, whatever. 30 steals. That's good. 18 times caught stealing. That's funny. And 11 outfield errors tied for the league lead. One time, somebody hit a long fly ball to Michael Jordan and he totally biffed it and the ball bounced off his head and over the fence for a home run. That wasn't him, obviously. That happened to Jose Canseco, but that's still one of the funniest things I've ever seen. And then after that one season, Jordan quit baseball and went back to basketball. He went back to the Bulls and won three more NBA championships, including that last one where he pushed off. But what a strange interlude that was. Michael Jordan refusing to do the thing he was the best at because he'd rather go to Alabama and strike out and get caught stealing and take routine from the White Sox. And take routine fly balls off the dome. That wasn't him instead. What a surreal, what an almost offensive sight. Is that not a direct affront? Is that not an insult to those of us who are not the best at something? Why would you ever do that? Why would you ever not do the thing you were the best at? Well, maybe you just really like playing the flute. This is a song from 2023. This song is 12 minutes and 20 seconds long. And with no further context whatsoever, there's already plenty to talk about like musically. Yes, the unhurried elegance of this flute riff that starts out alternative and staccato. But the riff gathers force. It gathers confidence. It gathers elegance as it goes. The melody smooths out and it peaks right when that symbol crashes. And that climactic moment there. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. There's something so arresting, so patient, so serene about it. Maybe you listen to music like this all the time and you get really salty about what people call it. New age, ambience, spiritual jazz, psychedelic wallpaper, spa core. Or maybe you never listen to music like this by choice. And you're only listening to this song because of the guy playing the flute is Andre 3000. Everyone calls this a flute album, but Andre 3000 doesn't like that very much. There's a lot more happening here. A lot of other instruments for starters. The cymbals guy, for example, is really feeling it. And yeah, so if by chance you didn't know that was super famous rapper Andre 3000 playing the flute there. Did you just now hear that same song, that same riff, that same woodwind action completely differently now that you know it's super famous rapper Andre 3000? Did you instantly project all your Andre 3000 context, all your knowledge, all your baggage, all your love, all your personal projections, all your expectations onto this lovely and serene and hypnotic and unhurried song? Of course, that's Andre 3000, aka Andre Benjamin, aka Half of Outcast, the beloved Atlanta rap duo. Also including Antoine Patton, aka Big Boy, Outcast who sold 25 million records, but haven't put out an album since 2006. And they did a semi grudging 2014 reunion tour of like 700 festivals. And I'm super pissed I missed that, but that probably ain't ever going to happen again. Outcast, not such a serene melody anymore, is it? And Andre can sense your baggage, your projections, your expectations, by the way, which is why this song is called I Swear I Really Wanted to Make a Scare Quotes Rap Album, but this is literally the way the wind blew me this time. That's the full title. This song charted on the pop charts, on the Billboard Hot 100. Charted at number 90, but still Andre 3000's long-awaited debut solo album came out in November 2023. It is called New Blue Sun. There is zero rapping. There is maximum flute. It all sounds like that and all the song titles are like that. Here's a song called That Night in Hawaii when I turned into a panther and started making these low register purring tones that I couldn't control. Dot, dot, dot. Shit was wild. Ooh, ominous, sinuous, not un-panther-like. I dig it, man. I have to say that this song, 10 minutes and 29 seconds long this time, this song really does sound like that night in Hawaii when I turned into a panther and started making these low register purring tones that I couldn't control. Dot, dot, dot. Shit was wild. Just to repeat that song title. In the word shit, instead of an I, it's the symbol for Japanese yen, the capital Y with the two lines through it. Just to clarify, I put on this record New Blue Sun in my office a little while ago and it was such a peaceful scene. Drowsy mid-afternoon light leaking through my broken window shades. I'm sipping iced coffee. One of my cats is chewing on a cardboard box in the corner and I'm sitting there trying to write this dumb thing that I'm reading to you right now and I'm super vibing to this song and I'm like, that's a really interesting, faint, percussive crunching sound in the background there. What is that? It was my cat chewing on the box. My cat really mind melded with Andre 3000 for a couple minutes there. I'm serious. I don't mean that ugly. I'm just telling you what happened. He knows. Andre 3000 knows you want him to rap more, to rap often, to rap always, to rap forever. He knows you want him to make a scare quotes rap album. He knows you want him to make 30 scare quotes rap albums. I suppose I'm assuming here that you want that, but if you don't want that, why don't you want that? Who doesn't want an Andre 3000 rap album? He doesn't. That's who. Music That's about as agitated as unsurring as Andre 3000, the woodwind player is going to sound. This is the last song on this new Blue Sun record and it is called, Dreams Once Buried Beneath the Dungeon Floor Slowly Sprout Into Undying Gardens. And even that song title is not a troll exactly, but it's an echo. It's a wink. It's a nod to the dungeon. The world famous literal basement and makeshift recording studio in East Point in Atlanta, where outcast first matriculated as part of an esteemed collective of rappers and producers known collectively as the dungeon family. I have talked extensively about outcast before in this venue. I've talked extensively about Andre 3000 before. I've talked about his affection for the dungeon before. I have quoted him saying in 2001 when outcasts were on the cover of Spin Magazine, Andre 3000 said, quote, there was a certain feeling there and I don't have that feeling no more. I want to have that nostalgic feeling of how the dungeon smelled the way certain beats made you feel. It smelled like dirt, like a mildewy basement when it rains crickets end quote. So it seems like the flute gets Andre 3000 back to that sound, back to that smell, back to the basements. And maybe rapping doesn't anymore. Maybe he's a completely different person now. Maybe it's just that he's older. In November 2023, when the new Blue Sun record came out, Andre did a cover story with GQ Magazine. He talked to my old friend, the great GQ writer and celebrity whisperer, Zach Barron. And Andre 3000 gave this great quote that got passed around a lot. Andre said, quote, even now people think, oh man, he's just sitting on wraps or he's holding these wraps hostage. I ain't got no wraps like that. It actually feels sometimes it feels inauthentic for me to wrap because I don't have anything to talk about in that way. I'm 48 years old. And not to say that age is a thing that dictates what you wrap about, but in a way it does. And things that happen in my life, like what are you talking about? I got to go get a colonoscopy. What are you rapping about? My eyesight is going bad. You can find cool ways to say it, but end quote. That line reverberated all around the Internet. Andre 3000 doesn't want to rap about his colonoscopy, even when he'd long ago proved that he can rap wonderfully about anything, even when he can rap like this. Because if we're going to do this, we ought to just do it, right? If we're going to talk about how Andre 3000 and Big Boy are two of the greatest rappers of all time, we ought to just go straight to B.O.B. Straight to Bombs Over Baghdad from the fourth outcast album released in 2000 and called Stankonia. In part, it's the sheer overwhelming unfathomable speed of Bombs Over Baghdad, the breathlessness, the audacity, the breakneck exuberance, but it's not only the pure speed. It's the tremendous personality. It's the unfathomable individual charisma despite the speed. Now, look, I genuinely don't care much about the greatest rapper of all time debate. For all my compulsive ranking and listmaking and hyperbole, I got no dog in that particular fight. E40 maybe, though. And furthermore, whenever some doofus, DJ or podcaster, whatever makes a list of the 30 greatest MCs of all time and it goes viral and everyone's pissed about it, I got a blog about it, right? And I don't want to write that blog. Okay, I'm like, ah, shit. Don't make me think about whether Fabulous is better than Joe Budden. You know, he is. But so is Andre 3000 the best rapper in the definitive singular tyrannical Michael Jordan sense? Maybe? Yes? Bleh? I don't care. Weirdly. But is Andre 3000 the rapper the best in the figurative, colloquial, vibes-based sense? Yes. Obviously, yes, but he doesn't want to rap anymore. He wants to play the flute. He wants to play double A ball for the Birmingham Barons. I can't say that name. Why can't I say that name? And steal 30 bases and get caught stealing 18 times and hit a few home runs and biff a few fly balls and just generally, perpetually do something he's not the best at. And I totally get that. I do. But every time I go listen to Bombs Over Baghdad again and rediscover that it's one of my favorite songs of all time, I get a little bummed out that Andre 3000 won't do this anymore. This song is as agitated as Unsurin, as Andre 3000 is ever going to sound rapping. He is working tremendously hard here, but he still sounds phenomenally comfortable. No? My favorite part of his BOB verse is the tie between when he says cure for cancer, cure for AIDS, and when he rhymes Armin Hammer with Baby Mama. But lucky for you, he does both of those things within 12 seconds. I had honestly never fully registered the lines, get back home, things are wrong. Well, not really. It was bad all along at the end there. The catastrophic domestic turmoil implied there. I was always having too much fun to notice that part. Y'all don't want to hear him. You just want to dance. So today in part, we have the unenviable task of discussing, of surveying, of lamenting, the disillusion of not a friendship, but the disillusion of a creative partnership, the slow motion disillusion of outcast, the slow breaking apart of Andre 3000 and Big Boy, creatively, professionally. We'll deal with that when we have to deal with it. But for the moment, while we're exalting once again in the glory of Bombs Over Baghdad, let's say clearly that Big Boy also is a legitimate best rapper ever candidate. And it's fine if you personally think otherwise, but Big Boy can rap faster than you can think. Big Things Happen Every Time We Meet is the line that always leaps out at me there. The truth of it. The childlike joy of it. The best part of Big Boy's verse on Bombs Over Baghdad is probably hold up, slow up, stop control like Janet, Planets, Dankonias, Anya, moving like Floyd, coming straight to Florida. That whole part. The best part of Big Boy's verse on Bombs Over Baghdad is probably hold up, slow up, stop control like Janet, Planets, Dankonias, Anya, moving like Floyd, coming straight to Florida. Holy shit, this song was a risk once, theoretically. This song, upon release in 2000, after outcast, had already released three fantastic and revolutionary all time classic rap albums. Bombs Over Baghdad was not necessarily what an outcast fan expected or wanted or preferred. Something that's frantic, something that's blaring, something that's accelerated. What made each successive new classic outcast song a classic was how eccentric and shocking it often sounded on first contact. Your music isn't truly revolutionary if it doesn't initially start an argument or really start a war. There's another great thing Andre says in that GQ interview. He's talking about how historically his friends often don't like his new music at first or at all. And he tells a story about playing one of his songs for somebody close to him and the dude hated it. Andre says, quote, he said, man, if you put that out, your career is over. End quote. This was the song. Andre's friend hated Heia. Andre's friend thought Heia was career suicide. Andre's friend was incorrect. What part of Heia do you think Andre's friend hated specifically? I couldn't even speculate, but I will say it took me a couple years to make my piece with what Andre rhymes with mama here. It's no Arm and Hammer, baby mama. That's all I'm saying. Can I tell you a secret? I've been doing the show for five years and counting the 90s. This is my 145th episode, my 145th song, my 145th script. And something just happened to me that has never happened before in all that time. I wrote 90% of this script and then I decided to change the song. I got to talking about another outcast song and I wrote so much about it that I decided I'd rather do that song instead and I abandoned the original song. Is this an efficient writing method? No. Do I want this to ever happen again? No, thank you. But let's embrace the chaos of this happening hopefully once. Because my plan this whole time was to do Heia, but I don't want to. I got nothing against Heia, musically or philosophically. I have heard Heia a billion times. I suspect everyone has. But that's not Heia's fault. It's just, okay, the other song. Okay, I'm about to play this chorus for you. You've heard this chorus a billion times as well, a trillion times possibly even. But just as an experiment, try to listen to this chorus right now like you're hearing it for the first time and like you're grappling at first contact with how deliciously bizarre it is. The ooh, first of all, two oohs actually. There's the immediate bombastic punctuation mark foreground. Ooh, but then in the deep background, there's the drawn out ascending. Just to ratchet up the tension. There's the, what is that? Is that backwards masking, crackling along the edges? Like this is a cassette tape running in reverse. Is my cat still chewing on that cardboard box? What is the underlying crunching sound transpiring here? Plus the clomping descending gloriously piano recital ass piano line. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. That sounds like it's falling down the stairs. The sheer incongruousness of a massive pop chorus where a superstar rapper so openly and vulnerably apologizes. The palpable wooziness permeating all of this. Partly it's the keyboards, the piercing haunted house synthesizer line here. But really there's just an overall vibe. Like you tried to download this song from Napster and you somehow only got 65% of it. Yeah, this sounds like a gently corrupted MP3 file. This sounds like an exquisitely delicate panic attack. This sounds like a rap song so bizarre, but also so perfect that the guy singing the hook will soon decide not to even try to write rap songs anymore. I'm sorry, Miss Jackson. Ooh, I am for real. Never meant to make your daughter cry. I apologize a trillion times. Yeah, this is the one. My name is Rob Harvella. This is the 25th episode of 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, Colen, the 2000s. And this week at the 11th hour, we are discussing Miss Jackson by Outcast. From their 2000 album, Stankonia, amidst all this additional turmoil, Outcast, hereby join this podcast's hallowed two episode club. Back in the 90s, we did a whole episode on the Outcast classic Rosa Parks, because of course we did. Thus far, the two episode club also includes Missy Elliott and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Sure, I'm a little freaked out about the new song thing right now. If you want the truth, give me a second. Forgive me, but I got another ad for you, kind of. It's more of a PSA, I suppose. So Andre 3000 doesn't want to do it. But another famous beloved all time great rapper did, in fact, rap about getting a colonoscopy. You want to know who? Chuck D. If you're 45 and over listening up tonight, colon cancer untreated, you can take your life, get it right, get screened, no time to be silent, take a home test or hit your health care provider. Close enough, in 2021, public enemy luminary and objectively great American Chuck D. Partnered with the organizations Stand Up to Cancer and Hip Hop Public Health to produce a jovial animated PSA on this very topic. Fairly straightforward, this is an exceptionally worthy cause, especially when you think about the innumerable all time great rappers we've already lost so young. The earnestness here, the gentle push from a true American hero, goading all of our American heroes to keep themselves as healthy as possible, keep themselves alive. Something about the combination of whimsy and gravity in this video is genuinely moving to me. But also, heads up, Chuck D is about to rap the words, go check your colon, peace, I'm Chuck D. I suggest you talk to your family in a circle and screamin' and proactive and it won't hurt you. We all wanna live our lives the best we could be, go check your colon, peace, I'm Chuck D. So there you go, it can be done. Outcast formed in Atlanta, Georgia in 1992. Specifically, Andre Benjamin and Antoine Patton met and almost instantly bonded as 16-year-old students at Tri-Cities High School in East Point. Antoine and Andre quickly fell in with a production team called Organized Noise, consisting of Ray Murray, Rico Wade, and my eternal favorite, Sleepy Brown. That's Organized Noise with a Z in Noise. All these dudes record, often, constantly, eternally, in the mythic, mildew-smelling, cricket-sounding basement of Rico Wade's mother's house, a.k.a. the Dungeon, Home of the Dungeon Family, a burgeoning collective, top-lined, of course, by Outcast, but also including, most notably in this era, the also quite stupendous Atlanta rap group, Goodymaw. The first Outcast album, released in 1994, is called Southern Playalistic Catalac Music, and the best song on it is, you guessed it, Crumble and Herb. Look, I got a speedrun the first three Outcast albums. I got to limit myself to one song per album, or I'm gonna drive myself nuts, and possibly also drive you nuts. Player's Ball is their first modest hit, and the title track rules, but the best song on Southern Playalistic Catalac Music is Crumble and Herb. Sleepy Brown sings the chorus, and someone whispers, it's the master plan, I love it. But so here we have Andre Benjamin, then known simply as Dre, the 3,000 part of his name comes later. Here we have Young Dre rapping, wetting him up like splish, leaving him in a splash of blood, and somehow the nimble playfulness of splish and splash overpowers the tough guy menace of the blood part. Same vibe from Big Boy here, there's a majestic abolience to Big Boy, even when he's ostensibly rapping about drive-bys. Here's an example of how I can drive myself and also possibly drive you crazy, even when I limit myself to one song apiece on the first three Outcast albums. Because I hear Big Boy rap ain't scared of you motherfuckers, and I immediately think of Bernie Mac on Def Comedy Jam in 1992, one of the single greatest stand-up comedy sets of all time. One of the most astounding seven-minute stretches in recorded human history, Big Boy is the best, and Bernie Mac, R.I.P. was most assuredly the best also. So yeah, that's one song off the first Outcast album, which earns rapturous and yet somewhat tentative industry acclaim, culminating an Outcast-winning best new rap group at the 1995 Source Awards, a truly accursed night in hip-hop history wherein, among other unfortunate events, Outcast are booed by some portion of the elitist New York City crowd, and Andre responds with the immortal rallying cry, The South Got Something to Say. He says The South Got Something to Say better than I do, but that's a huge part of what The South's got to say. Okay, the second Outcast album released in 1996 is called AT-Eliens, and for years I'd screw that up and pronounce that title AT-Liens, but I finally trained myself not to do that anymore, not that I'm bragging. And the surprisingly high-charting, pop-hit elevators parentheses Me and You is a masterpiece. It peaked at number 12 on the High 100, which is impressively high for a song that gloriously weird, and the title track rules. But currently my favorite song on AT-Eliens, see I nailed it, my favorite song on this record right now is, you guessed it, Mainstream. This song is called Mainstream, as in, floating face down in the Mainstream. Outcast are not fully pop stars yet, but they are already grappling with the grave implications of being pop stars, the rude unreasonable public demands, the compromises, the homogenization, the watering down implied by the very idea of pop stardom. He rhymed the catch of the day when the recipe called for blackened. That's the Andre line that leaps out at me. He is imagining a wayward aspiring superstar rapper who abandons his southern roots and simply mimics what's on the pop charts and totally biffs it. Andre does not want to make scare quotes rap albums, if that requires him, to chase trends and mimic the catch of the day and sound like everyone else and cater to an unimaginative and possibly predominantly white mainstream audience. And so, just hypothetically, if Dre ever does somehow attract a massive mainstream pop audience, he's going to do it in the most flamboyant and idiosyncratic way possible. Okay, that went faster. The third outcast album released in 1998 is called A Queminine and Rosa Parks, which we discussed at great length last time, is a masterpiece. And so is the art of storytelling, part one. And so is Spatiati Doppelicious. And so is liberation, for that matter. But my single favorite part of A Queminine right now is the long fade out on the song Synthesizer. Synthesizer. Yes, George Clinton just warbled the words, said she'd lap dance on your laptop while your laptops in your lap. Go off, George. Synthesizer is a song about how technology is overpowering and usurping and perhaps even destroying humanity. There's a defiantly anti-AI slant to this song, if you're willing to be a historical and obnoxious about it. But I just love the way the super synthesized beat fades out and the acapella part starts and a bunch of striking eccentric humans snap their fingers and chant Synthesizer for 60 seconds or so. I find this song genuinely moving as well. It gives me hope for humanity. It's like a triumphant miniature musical butlerian jihad. Ooh, a dune reference. Wow, there. We made it through the first three outcast albums, fairly expeditiously. I'm proud of us. The fourth outcast album released in 2000 is called Stankonia. Is there anything else we need to say about the truly phenomenal era defining Stankonia's single B.O.B. bombs over Baghdad? Which the ringer once ranked at number one on our giant list of the 50 greatest outcast songs of all time. No, I think we covered B.O.B. pretty thoroughly. No, wait, sorry. Look out. Top five best countdowns in the middle of songs. Here we go. Number five. All right. Centerfold by the J. Giles band. I love that part. That part of Centerfold, a big hit on MTV in 1981. I was three years old. And this song is about having a crush on a pure innocent girl and then unexpectedly seeing her naked in Playboy or whatever. This is a song concept that I did not fully or even partly grasp at the time. Want to count on my being three? I love that part of Centerfold. It makes me want to run through a wall like the Kool-Aid man. Speaking of stuff I loved when I was three. All right. Number four. Countdown by Beyonce. Shout out, boys and men. Shout out, 2011. Shout out, Beyonce. Remember when Beyonce said that countdown was the song hipsters love? That's the funniest thing Beyonce has ever said. It's true, though. All right. Back to the 80s. Number three. The song is called Major Tom. The singer is named Peter Schilling. Peter Schilling is German, right? Yes. Yes, he is. Okay. Good. Big hit on MTV in 1982. Major Tom. Ominous and sinuous. Shout out, David Bowie. Shout out, me. I'm four years old now. All right. You better brace yourselves. Number two. Holy moly, Bruce Springsteen's born to run. Shout out the year 1975 when I was negative three. Sheesh. Is that the hugest, strongest, gnarliest, most electrifying shot of pure adrenaline in rock and roll history? That one, two, three, four, blah, makes me want to pick up the Kool-Aid man and suplex him through a wall. Also, for all you Sopranos fans, here's the funniest thing Christopher Moltesanti ever said. What the fuck you been? You're late. Highway was jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive. Yeah, that's actually funnier than she must have crawled under there for warmth. Don't worry about it. Oh, thank God. Finally, and the number one best ever countdown in the middle of a song. Yep. Unbelievable. The bombs over Baghdad mid song countdown is even huge, stronger, gnarlier and more electrifying for how sneaky it is. How far down in the mix they bury Andres. One, two, three, let's go. Stankonia is an exceedingly loud, brash, frantic, chaotic, unrepentantly bonkers album. A genuinely wonderful thing about Outcast overall is that they get way more famous the weirder they get, the more themselves they get. There is no catch of the day imitation. There is no compromise. There is no danger of getting caught floating face down in the mainstream. Outcast bend the mainstream to their indomitable will. Outcast compel the mainstream to reverse course and flow back upstream. With Stankonia, Outcast somehow realized their full potential as genre defining superstar rappers by making what at times sure as hell feels like a new metal album. Burn motherfucker, burn American dreams. You're not truly revolutionary until you've started a revolution. Stankonia has 24 tracks and nearly 75 minutes long. It is the classic rap album equivalent of stuffing 14 bratwursts, including the buns in your mouth. I am drawn, lately, to the moments of maximum chaos. How much of this big boy verse can you even reasonably process in real time? That's just what's happening. This is Big Boy rapping on a song called Snappin' and Trappin'. This is Big Boy, who is supposedly the more straightforward, the more conventional, the less flamboyant rapper in Outcast, both lyrically and sartorially. But what makes Outcast a platonic ideal of a rap duo is how philosophically far apart Big Boy and Andre 3000 appear to be, but also how tightly, spiritually intertwined they objectively are. Speaking of Big Boy, this part of the song I'll call before I come has made me laugh out loud half a dozen times in the past week. I would rather not explain the vast majority of that, nor, despite my usual custom, do I particularly want to provide the exact spelling of the song title I'll call before I come for you. But primarily it's the phrase, you can go back and tell all your little buddies that really does it for me. The rapping on Stankonia is so dense, so lightning quick, so jubilant, so gleefully crass, so inviting, but so daunting. I am somehow just realizing today that on so fresh, so clean, Big Boy declares that he's cooler than Freddie Jackson sipping a milkshake in a snowstorm. Never mind what he rhymes with that. Good gravy. Every time I listen to Stankonia again, I emerge six hours later, disoriented and exhilarated, and I've got 10 new favorite lines. Some of my favorite parts are eternal though. You know my single favorite moment on Stankonia when the beat drops in humble mumble. That's my favorite part when the beat drops right before Andre 3000 says Democratic Republic fuck it, we chicken nugget, we dip in the sauce like mop and bucket. That was Eric Abadou, the almighty Eric Abadou singing right at the beginning there. Eric Abadou and Andre 3000 have a son together, a son named Seven, and I am genuinely terrified to look up how old Seven is today. If you look that up, don't tell me. Anyway, the truly massive hit single off Stankonia is about Eric Abadou's mother. Big Boy raps faster than you can think, but he can also screech to a halt for just a split second and hammer three simple words into your head with truly startling force. And that's what he does right there with that's my house. Ms. Jackson is about two people who love each other very much, and they make a baby, and they dream of settling down. They dream about that crib with a good year's swing, as Andre 3000 puts it. And what a heartbreakingly beautiful phrase that is, a perfect encapsulation of attempted romance under capitalism, the good year swing. These guys find such vibrant and swaggering ways to describe anything, even the tire hanging from a tree branch in your broken dream homes front yard. These two lovers dream of being a family, but the partnership dissolves, and the family fractures, and that disillusion has a catastrophic impact on the baby, of course, but it also impacts the baby's grandparents. And given that Andre 3000 and Eric Abadou, two of the greatest pop stars of their generation, had recently had a baby together and then drifted apart, Ms. Jackson is thus canonically perceived as a song delivered explicitly to Eric Abadou's mother. And thus, given how painfully personal this subject matter is, you figure Andre 3000's lyrical perspective would dominate here. But one thing I love about this song is the glorious good cop, bad cop routine we got going with Andre, who sounds sweet and wistful and remorseful, and big boy, who sounds super ultra pissed. I've heard this song a trillion times, but we was divided. That three word phrase startles me every time, as well, the force of it, the indignation of it. I also love big boys, yeah, right at the end, big boy is super pissed, and big boys super pissedness perfectly tease up Andre 3000's almost unbearable sweetness. I remember listening to Ms. Jackson for the first time. I really do. I remember being legitimately shocked. And that shock primarily was in response to Andre's almost childlike innocence, and the silly little dog yelping and wolfing right there. The sound effects, bolstering this little Andre interlude verse are so disarming, the chirping birds, the rumbling storm clouds, plus the jaunty little ah, that's about to ring off right on the word forever. But I'll tell you the exact moment that gave me goosebumps that I still remember to this day. It's the second voice that drops in to sing. You can plan a pretty picnic, but you can't predict the weather. I gasped. Forever. You can plan a pretty picnic, but you can't predict the weather. I keep typing and then erasing the words naive loveliness to describe the phrase, you can plan a pretty picnic, but you can't predict the weather. But of course, it's not naive in the slightest. It's the devastating resigned loveliness of that phrase and the blunt children's book simplicity of it. You can plan a pretty picnic. This is a rap song. This is a blockbuster, paradigm shifting rap song, animated by both dense complexity and blunt children's book simplicity. And now Andre 3000, the best rapper ever maybe, will utilize both that complexity and that simplicity simultaneously. Fine. The quickest muscle throw it on my mouth and now decline. Can't meet Queen. Then the puppy love things. Get the dream about that crib with the good you scream. The second, the drawn out ascending in the background really pops on this Andre verse, given the relative silence all around it. So here's a foundational, eternal, classic outcast trick. Sneak a single devastating line into a pop song, but hide it behind a playful, goofy catchphrase that seemingly everyone on earth will use forever. So with these next four Andre 3000 lines, the ultra famous line is forever, forever, forever, forever, forever, the actual crushing naive loveliness there. But I submit to you that forever, ever is really just a Trojan horse for the real crushing line, which is forever never seems that long until you're grown. 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 came to you home. Maybe once upon a time Andre 3000 thought he'd rap forever. He will pull this trick again on Hey Ya, a song I enjoy very much even if it turns out I didn't want to talk about it very much. I mean no offense. Hey Ya seems to be animated entirely by playful, goofy catchphrase energy, right? But shake it like a Polaroid picture, etc. is really just a Trojan horse for the entire crushing second verse. I know you know what Andre says here, but all the stuttering and ambient silliness deliberately obscures these lines somewhat. And so, if what they say is nothing is forever, what makes love the exception? So why are we in denial if we know we're not happy here? Ain't as much fun without all the stuttering. Now is it? So why are you, why are you, why are you, why are you, are we so in denial when we know we're not happy here? Ya'll don't wanna hear me, you just wanna dance. Ya'll don't wanna hear me, you just wanna dance. So that's what makes Hey Ya, the most emotionally devastating blockbuster pop song you're guaranteed to hear next time you go to a wedding. Anyway, at the end of Ms. Jackson, Big Boy gets super duper ultra pissed. I don't mind telling you that his last line there also makes me laugh out loud every time, every one of the trillion times I've heard this song. Erica Badu, who didn't necessarily love the song Ms. Jackson, Erica Badu did an interview with Rap Radar in 2016 and they asked her what her mother thought about the song Ms. Jackson and Erica said, quote, how did my mama feel? Baby, she bought herself a Ms. Jackson license plate. She had the mug, she had the ink pen, she had the headband, everything. That's who loved it. End quote. Families are resilient. You might not get the crib with a Goodyear swing, but you may still reach something like familial contentment, or at least detente. Well, this is awkward. The sixth outcast album released in 2003 is in fact a double album, a double solo album called Speaker Box the Love Below. Speaker Box is Big Boy's album, The Love Below, featuring Hayah. That's Andre 3000's album. There are a precious handful of crossover moments when Andre and Big Boy appear on a song together, but mostly they don't. But so awkwardly, due to time constraints, I am only able to offer three brief observations about Speaker Box the Love Below. Brief observation number one, don't do roses at karaoke. I know you like to bang, but she don't stand, but lean a little bit closer. See roses really smell like boo boo boo. Yeah, roses really smell like boo boo boo. I know you'd like to think it sounds totally hilarious to do roses at your next karaoke night. Roses is on The Love Below, but Big Boy joins Andre 3000 on this song. That's nice. Big things happen every time they meet. I bet you're imagining you'll start this song and you'll go Caroline and everyone in the room will go Caroline. That's a great call and response opening, and utilizing call and response opportunities is the key to truly elite karaoke. I bet it sounds like fun to go boo boo boo boo boo during the chorus, but I am here to tell you that fully the last 60 seconds of roses is just this. Crazy bitch, crazy bitch, crazy bitch, crazy bitch. Alas, as progressive and inclusive as outcast objectively are, this sort of doodly rancor does color their music from time to time. Jazzy Bell off AT-Eliens. I nailed that title again. I really dig that song, but it also bums me out a little. But so you don't want to be standing in front of your coworkers or friends or whatever, holding a karaoke microphone, looking at the teleprompter TV screen that gives you the lyrics, and you just see crazy bitch repeat 50 times or whatever. That's going to be a dark moment for you. That's about to be the longest 60 seconds of your life. That didn't happen to me, but I did watch it happen to another guy, and he handled it with a reasonable amount of dignity. But nonetheless, in conclusion, don't do roses at karaoke. Okay, brief observation number two. Speakerbox The Love Below is the best-selling rap album of all time, technically. It sold 6.5 million copies in the United States, and it's a double album. So officially, you double the sales, which means that it's technically sold something like 13 million copies in the United States. If you think that's cheating, the best-selling single disc rap album of all time is the Eminem Show by Eminem. So that's what you get for complaining. Speakerbox The Love Below also won the 2004 Grammy for Album of the Year. It was the second rap album to win Album of the Year after the Miseducation of Lauren Hill, and it is also the last rap album to win Album of the Year. No rap album has won Album of the Year in the past 20-plus years. That's funny. Also, you know what record was nominated for Album of the Year at the 2025 Grammys? New Blue Sun. Andre 3000's Not a Flute and Definitely Not a Rap Album. That's also funny. All of that is funny. I love the Grammys. Speakerbox The Love Below is also Outcast's only number one album on the Billboard Album Chart. This is all part of brief observation number two somehow. Outcast put out six albums total and four of them peaked at number two on the Billboard Album Chart. Four number two albums. That is hard to do. Getting four number one albums is way easier than getting four number two albums. I assure you, and maybe you don't need this information, but I do. So in 1996, Outcast's AT-Eliens peaked at number two, beaten out only by Pearl Jam's No Code. I'm sorry. No offense, but that's absurd. Even Eddie Vedder would say bfff in 1998. Outcast's Aquamanai peaked at number two, beaten out only by Jay Z's Volume Two Hard Knock Life. Maybe. That's not quite bfff, but it is. In 2000, Outcast's Stankonia peaked at number two, beaten out only by Jay Z's The Dynasty, Colin Rock La Familia. No offense, but that's a bigger bfff than Pearl Jam. And in 2006, Outcast released their final album called Idlewild, the soundtrack to their feature film also called Idlewild. And that album also peaked at number two, beaten out only by Danity Kane, the self-titled debut album by the girl group Danity Kane. Unfortunately, that's not as funny as I hoped it would be. I have no response to that. Also, we don't have any time for Idlewild, like at all. That's just an objective fact. I'm sorry. Brief observation about Speaker Box The Love Below at number three. Speaker Box is better, but The Love Below is weirder and more interesting. Every time I go back to these records, I conclude yet again that Big Boy's Speaker Box is the better overall record. And I reach this conclusion at this exact moment on the song, The Way You Move. Shout out to Sleepy Brown on the hook there. He's the best. Speaker Box is better overall, but The Love Below, which is more of a Prince album than a rap album and features, to pick just one example. It includes a five-minute drum and bass version of My Favorite Things. The Love Below is much weirder and more interesting. And also, the single greatest individual sound on either record occurs on The Love Below. And that sound is Oof. Oof. The Oof hasn't happened yet. This song is called Spread. The chorus to Spread is excellent. Andre 3000's falsetto on Spread is excellent. But also, there's a brief instrumental interlude during Spread, once again featuring Ms. Jackson type childlike sound effects. But this time, these sound effects depict Andre 3000 and a young lady racing to get home so that they can engage in sexual activity. That is only my interpretation, of course, but my interpretation is correct. So, like this. So, they're out of the car now and they're going to walk up to the house and into the house and dispose of their keys and so forth right now. Like this. Oof. There was the Oof right there. That's the single best moment on the best-selling rap album of all time, technically, featuring one of the greatest rappers of all time who won't rap anymore, but he gave us enough, I think. Let this man play his flutes and play his piano and whatever else he's got going on. Because who are we to judge Andre 3000? If he decides he's got better things to do than be the best. What a treat to be joined today by Charles Holmes and Cole Kushner, co-hosts of the Splendid Ringer podcast, Last Song Standing. You can find Charles also over at the Midnight Boys, etc. You can find Cole over at Dyssect. Gentlemen, it is an honor and a delight to talk to you both. Thank you so much for being here. We're honored. Yeah, thanks for having us, Rob. Our villain, Nikila, my two favorite white men besides Charles here. That's incredibly kind of you. Two out of three. Okay, the third season of Last Song Standing, where you picked the best song by an artist, was devoted to Outcast. You have both thought and talked extensively about Outcast. You are both younger than me, but not offensively so. Like I'm not upset about it. How do you think younger newer rap fans perceive Outcast? Are they like a rap dad rock situation where you respect them but they don't feel present tense? Or is there still an aura around Outcast, even today, even for younger listeners, where they have an enormous amount of respect still attached to them? Cole? Charles, you're younger than me, so you take the lead on this one. I think I've been called a contrarian, Mr. Negative over here, but I think my take will surprise y'all. I think Outcast is Teflon at this point. I think they're, to me, they are hip hop Beatles, where it's like, yeah, every kid is probably going to have a phase where they try to get like, I had that phase where I'm just like Beatles, fuck, suck. But then he's just like, oh no, actually they had bad jams. And I do think that not just because the music is unimpeachable and perfect, but also because the videos that came along with it, the album are, I still think that if you go into an Urban Outfitters or you go into a college kids fucking room, they're going to have a poster of Stankonia, even if they weren't alive for it, just because it is on that illmatic reasonable doubt level where it's like, okay, if I want to have taste, I like, even if I haven't listened to this, I got to have a shirt, I got to have the poster, I got to have the vinyl. Is that too far off, Cole? No, that's actually mirrors my thoughts exactly. I think the iconography of the band is so strong at this point. It is, to your point, it's like the Pink Floyd, it's reached that level of iconography and cultural just ubiquity that, yeah, it's Teflon, it's unassailable. And so I feel like so much has to do with it, because we'll talk about their unique chemistry, I think, in a little bit here, but specifically Andre being so forward thinking and such an alien and ahead of his time and such an icon, the closest thing that we have to it, a Hendricks, I think, in this generation in terms of just someone that's just fucking cool. And I think his, specifically his brand of cool is timeless. And if Outcross were two big boys, I think this is a much different conversation, because I don't think Big Boy's brand of cool has aged as well as Andre's, but their unique chemistry, I feel like, which we'll talk about, is what has sustained and has made them so timeless. Okay, so just to talk about that chemistry immediately, I guess, that's interesting to me. Do you think that Outcast worked so well because of the differences between Andre and Big Boy or the similarities? Like, right, like the cliched view of them, you know, is that Andre is the space cadet and Big Boy is the down to earth one, and that's, you know, they grounded each other in that way. But do you think that they worked so well together because of the space between them or because they were always closer together, you know, artistically, philosophically than people thought? I think there's a perfect Venn diagram, you know, I think they're, they are the absolute perfect Venn diagram where the overlap is enough to where they sound cohesive, yet the contrast between them is what makes them so interesting, not just project, you know, not as singular as a chemistry in terms of one single project, but also in the way in which they evolved, in the way they allow the differences to guide that trajectory and not at least till the end, right, where they actually did splinter and you kind of see the warts on either side, I think in the love below and speaker box when they did separate, but in their prime, at least what I consider to be their prime, it is, yeah, it's the perfect Venn diagram. I don't know, Charles, what do you think? I think what was funny when we did our season was we did episodes on Andre's solo work, which is mostly just features, and then Big Boy's, and I think the thing that we both found is as maybe kind of overrated as Andre's run has become, when you look back at it, there was a feeling of like, oh, there is something missing. I always feel like people think that Andre 3000 was just the reason outcasts are who they are. And it was just like, when you go back, actually, when you think about who was the engineer of a lot of those early hooks, putting those big, those bigger songs together, I think unfairly Big Boy like is the also ran. And I think we're recording this when the clips come out, like Pusha T has said something similar, similar about clips where he's like, yo, there was always something that in my solo career, I couldn't reach and the fans wanted from me. And I always knew that I can't get there. That's malice. And I think that's true of outcasts as well, where it's just like, I would much rather listen to an Andre verse followed by Big Boy than just Andre by himself and vice versa. Right. Because I think you're both, you know, I love the first Big Boy solo album, Sir, which is Left Foot. I know you talked about it, like, that's far and away my favorite sort of post outcast project, you know, across all of Andre's features. So I guess I was going to ask, like, you is hearing Andre by himself and then hearing Big Boy by himself, do you just always want the other half? Or do you think that one of them has been a little better, like makes a little more sense as a singular unit now? I'm going to be honest. There's a reason to me that Andre 3000 hasn't released a solo rap album. And that's because I don't think he's a solo rap album artist. And that's nothing that gets his like skills. If he made a rap album, we would all love it. And it would be great. But I think he is very, very good in short, contained bursts of ideas, where there's a reason why we love his feature work, because he's going to show up on a Kanye album and deliver one of the best verses that you've ever heard. But I don't know if he can sustain that or has that much to say over the course of an entire album. Because I think the thing that even Big Boy at their height was getting annoyed at is that Andre's a perfectionist. He will like toil forever over a song and a melody and an idea. And I just do think what works about Outkast is like Big Boy can do a lot of the heavy lifting. He can get the beats together. He can he can do the hook. He could do like so when people are like, Oh, we need the Andre 3000 record. I'm like, some people are sprinters and some people are long distance runners. And to me, Andre is a sprinter in the best way possible. Yeah, yeah, I agree. I mean, it's there's a reason why for at least for me, like when we do get the formal break in terms of speaker box and love blow up being solo projects, like there's a reason ghetto music and roses are the two best songs across that entire project. And they just so happened to be together. They are together. And I think those two are so far and above anything else on either of those projects that it does seem to prove the point that they are better together than separate. And for all the reasons we're talking about Big Boy being this grounded foundational giving Andre that foundational element that he seems to need. And are Andre offering innovation and forward thinking in a way that I don't think Big Boy has ever showed us, you know, so again, the chemistry is what makes them unique. Yeah. So I don't want to spoil any aspects of the Outkast season of the last song standing, but I wanted to ask, you know, did you have your opinions changed, your favorite songs, your favorite albums, your favorite eras, you know, over the course of re listening to a ton of Outkast to do that season, you know, a decade plus has passed now, since they were active, you know, since they were recording, certainly, you know, are your feelings about your favorite Outkast songs changing or were they always sort of set in stone, you know, in the past 10, 15 years have only solidified, you know, what you know to be the absolute peaks for this group. Outkast to me was actually our hardest season to do because I realized that what makes them a good group, what makes them a great musical act is that by the day, by the month, by the year, my favorite Outkast album and song does change where as a kid, it was stankonia because obviously that's that crossover moment, it's just Jackson is VOV. But then I going through the season, I was just like, I think obviously, objectively, their number one album is Equemini, but ATL is the one that I've returned to now as like a 32 year old man. And I'm just like, actually, I think that this is I know it's the backpacker opinion, but I'm just like, that's the one I want to listen to in my car. And it's not their best wraps. But to me, it's almost their purist expression before like they get very pop and they're very good at doing pop records. But there's something about ATLians to me where I'm like, fuck, this is this is the foundation of everything I love about music. Yeah. Yeah, I think their discography is like a lot of quality discographies that where you're it's kind of like Kendrick's in terms of like, everyone's going to have their own rankings of them. But and none of them are wrong, because the discography is that strong. And so when we did the season, there's definitely like individual songs that I came to appreciate much more than I did before, particularly the song Equemini ended up being like one of the finalists for the the whole season for us. And that was not something I predicted where the song that we did eventually land on, I think both Charles and I kind of had our eye on that. And that was kind of the one to be in it and nothing ever eventually beat it. But every episode, we focus on one album in their discography. And when I was doing each episode and researching it and playing it, you know, constantly, I was like, maybe this is my favorite outcast album. Yeah. My rankings just my rankings just changed like whatever album I was listening to, even their debut, Southern Player, I was like, God damn, this is really good. And it's a really good. I had underrated in their catalog because it was before my time. I think Equemini was really when I was just like just aware of them. But Southern Player, I was just like, oh, shit, they all like they always had like this is they always had the thing. Yeah. So this season, your first episode is about Stenconia. And I broadly speaking, what you talk about is like the hugest hits off that record, of course, Ms. Jackson, B.O.B. So Fresh, So Clean, like there's a divide between the hits and the rest of the record, right, which is like super long and chaotic and noisy and weird and maybe a little more dated, you know, two, two thousand, you know, then the 90s records are the 90s and so forth. Like does did Stenconia feel shocking then, you know, at the time or when you first came across Stenconia? Or and does it feel shocking to you now in the context of the rest of their catalog? For me, it's the one that did actually age the worst. And I love Stenconia, but I didn't love it as much as I remembered loving it when it came out. So it is, I think for me, one of those albums that, yeah, in the moment when it came out, it felt really fresh. You know, those blaring guitar solos on that opening track and like, you know, it being hip, hip hop group duo, and that felt sounding so innovative and fresh in the moment where I don't think some of the sonics on the album, at least for me, didn't didn't age as well as like AT-Lians and even Aquamanai, where they I think they struck a better balance between the innovative aspects and the more traditional hip hop instrument instrumentals. But the standouts are among the standout tracks on Stenconia are among the best songs like ever written, like ever written across all genres. So the highs are incredibly high. The lows are a little bit lower. But I don't know, Charles, what do you think? There's two perfect songs on Stenconia that are so perfect that I would even argue that it just it just cast this wide shadow over their career where obviously like they do it again with the next album. But I, Stenconia and Love Below speaker box are kind of paired to me where I'm just like, you can feel it. Listen to I'm like, oh, this is the end where it's like, yeah, to the chemistry of them is like when they're both locked in, you're just like, oh, no one can match this chemistry. But it's just you can feel it's like, oh, these guys are not long for this musical world. And rightfully, I think rightfully so, because I mean, we've now seen a lot of legacy acts, quote unquote, try to keep making records consistently and right sometimes feels like a disservice to their their legacy in some ways. I'm glad we only have one bad outcast. Like, going back, I was just like, hey, you know what, so many we look at like the Wu Tang clan and just the bunch of other just like dip say all this shit, it just gets sad and outcast has never been sad. Like even with like, we could talk about Andre's flu albums, jazz and all this shit. It's never felt desperate with outcasts. And I can't say that about 90% of aging hip hop groups and it just aging hip hop acts in general. Did either of you see the reunion, the 2014, you know, 700 festival, you know, grudging outcast reunion tour? I did not see it. Did you think that I could afford that tour at the age of most probably like 14? Okay. I mean, I remember watching like grainy, like you have to imagine like this was like this was still very early YouTube and shit. I remember watching like grainy footage of that shit. And I just also because this was the time where I was reading you Rob is like, I feel like you were like a writer around this time. And I don't know if you remember just the feeling of people being like, I can't believe outcast is together again. And I remember all of the right after being like, that was a mess. Andre 3000 didn't want to be here. Prince basically had to be like, do you know who you are? By Prince. That's a rough that's a bad scene. Want to avoid that. Actually, that was the only moment to me where outcasts did get a little sad. Where the potential to get sad, they didn't do it long enough. They didn't keep going to the They bailed out. Yeah. Yeah. Andre specifically, like you mentioned, like it was clearly his heart wasn't in it. And it seems like Andre is the type of guy that's not going to do anything his heart isn't fully in. And what was that verse where I think Andre has, isn't it a recent verse where like Andre is very talks about it, like talks about just kind of like that time and like knowing that he's costing his best friend millions of dollars, which is also what I think is so interesting about outcasts, which is like that Coachella performance to me was indicative of what makes them different as as artists. Where I think big boy likes being a celebrity. Big boy likes rapper. He likes stunting. He likes strip clubs. He likes what comes with this life. He loves that version of hip hop. He's that big year. And Andre is like, good at being cool, but terrible at being a celebrity. Like just say it. Like you just can't. Like I was in New York when you could just walk around Chinatown or wherever be like, yeah, I saw Andre 3000 and you could just I would never want to go up to him. It's just like he doesn't like he does not want this life that he wants to rap and he wants to make music. I think we would have get it. What do you guys think about this? Do you think if Andre 3000 was like 50% less famous, would have gotten a solo record from him? Yeah, I think so. There is feels like there's a lot of weight put on his shoulders in terms of this pressure for him to continue to rap and to make a solo rap project to the point where it's like almost like Lauryn Hill level of pressure. It's like there's just it feels impossible to to live up to those kinds of expectations. And I actually, as much as me kind of would want to hear where he would go with the hip hop album now, I totally support his decision not to do it. I think he's totally if his heart's not in it, I think the right decision is actually not to do it. And it is to do things like interesting things like the flute album and the piano albums, which objectively maybe aren't the greatest albums, but he has built up so much are like positive artistic equity that we're just interested in what he's has going on. And we're going to get whatever he's decides to put out, we're going to give it a listen. And I think that's the best way forward for an artist like him, like for me personally, someone that loves people like Andre and likes artists taking chances and using massive influence to introduce people to an album like the concept of the flute record is actually more interesting than the record itself is that like, I want you to hear me learning how to play the flute in real time. That to me is an interesting artistic concept, whether it's an album you play all the time, whatever. But like at this point, that's super interesting to me. Like I actually really engaged in something like that. Yeah, I agree with you guys that like, I think we're probably better off without the Andre album, everyone thinks we want and like Andre is 100% better off, you know, without trying to make that album. Rob, do you remember how we were all asking for Dr. Dre follow up and then he dropped it on Apple and we never talking about like, whole thing has been memory holds, you know, we don't want what we want. We don't want what we think we want. It's the classic you leave him wanting more. If you can leave him wanting more in your career and it's like Eminem is a good counterpoint in terms of like, we've got too much Eminem, like, we have a great deal of them. You want to know what's an even better counterpoint have either of you like we have a new Kanye album that's come out that I have not even listened to. Like I literally was just like, I've just been like, I never thought we would get to the point where I'm like, I'm not going to listen to a new Kanye album and I'm like, you could not pay me. Like to just put it on. And now I'm just like, can you imagine if like Andre 3000 had gotten to the Kanye point? I'm like, I jumped off the book. I'm like, why, why would I fucking want? It's nothing sacred. Yeah. Okay, I did want to talk about Hayah and Ms. Jackson because I went into this episode assuming it would be on Hayah. But then when I got to Ms. Jackson, I was just so fascinated by it. And I wrote so much about it. And I found it to be such a rich text still that like Ms. Jackson was clearly the one to me. So I, I'm wondering if the ubiquity, you know, the pop ubiquity of Hayah especially has affected the way you think about these songs. Like Hayah, especially there was a point like everyone was sick of it, you know, and I wonder if that has affected the way we think about that song long term. Like do the big, do the, do the massive pop hits that Outkast had later in their career, you know, do they age differently just because of how ubiquitous they were at the time? For me personally, no, because Hayah to me at this point in its legacy has had enough kind of breathing room from, from it being overplayed. Cause I do remember, I loved that song, I loved, I loved it when it came out, but it did get overplayed. It just, it was oversaturated, like objectively, but returning to it now, like I play it for my kids. That's always my, that's always my gauge for like cultural like relevance in terms of like, if they like it, it's probably like has pop commercial potential and they, they love that song more than even Miss Jackson. So I think there is a timeless quality to like the best pop, sustaining pop records and songs. It's going, I feel like that song, because it's not grounded in any particular sound, it'll always sound to me, it'll always sound fresh and not of an era in a way that Miss Jackson sounds a little bit more grounded, but I actually think Miss, I think you're right in the Miss Jackson's the better song. Charles, I don't know what do you think? I think both songs are still perfect. They're so great. Yes, Hayah is overrated, but I think the difference when you're comparing perfect songs is to me, I could argue that Miss Jackson is like a top 10, maybe top five hip hop record, record of the 21st century. Like it's like, it's Hayah is good, but like Miss Jackson to me isn't just a great rap record. Like when we talk about what music has become in the 2000s and like how far that's pushed and just the layers of it from how it was made to what it means to these two guys and how it's aged. Like Miss Jackson is like, yeah, I don't know. Miss Jackson to me is like, it's a classic record. Like that's a record I'll play for my kids and they'll be like, you're so fucking old dad, like you're a fucking ancient, but I'm like, no, this is the good shit. That's not gonna play Hayah at my wedding, you know, but I would play Miss Jackson. Wait, what? You know what Miss Jackson's about? What are you talking about? Whoa, you gotta keep the future, you gotta keep the future misses on her toes, you know what I'm saying? Like, I don't know that you do, Charles. Yeah, let's. All right, guys, you are, you know, we've been over this, everyone knows I am on a trajectory to have multiple lives. So it's just like, it is what it is. I didn't know that actually, I could have guessed that if I had thought about it. I will make songs about how I hate their mothers and how they need to get the fuck out of my face. Shout out big boy. Okay, I think you're the only, you're the only guy to play a song about child support at your wedding. I mean, there's gonna be a lot of control. So it's not going to guys, come on, you know, I'm trying to get people, we got a, there's gonna be Ashiq and music, some sexy red, okay. We're going everywhere. Okay, I'm very excited for your multiple weddings, I guess. Yeah. Miss Jackson is like the perfect encapsulation of outcasts, though. I feel like if you could pick one song, it wasn't our winner, ultimately, but I think if you had to pick one song to represent outcast, that might actually be it because you get, you get, it's the Venn diagram again, it's perfect. Even in the way that each, each approach the song thematically, where they're both talking about a separation, big boy is the resentful kind of bitching about his baby mom. And then you have Andre sensitive, trying to make amends, forgiving, trying to offer forgiveness to the mother. Like it's just such a perfect encapsulation of everything we love about them. Yeah, I agree. I did want to ask about Idle Wild. Has Idle Wilds, oh no, risen in your, your estimation at all? Or is it just, you know, the last and objectively worst? No. We don't talk about that. We don't talk about that record. I like my yo, like, I like, my do is a record. Do you know what I'm saying? Right? Like there's like, there's like one or two records on Idle Wild that I'm fucking with. But as someone who remembers watching the movie, Idle Wild, and in real time, that's probably what there's like foundational moments in my life that turned me into the critic I am today where we're just like, Oh, things can be bad. Things could be so bad. Like that. That I'm just so upset. That's when you became the Joker. I see. Yes, Idle Wild watching that movie and I'm just like, this is how it ends. I was furious. I rewatched Idle Wild and it's sad to me how little they interact in it. It's sad to me how like, it's they're in two separate movies almost, you know, I just, it's, you know, just I cling to the scenes in that movie where they're together, like not acting very well, but they're together, right? You know, like the rest of the time it's like, I don't know. Okay, we won't talk about Idle Wild. All right, just to wrap up, I, it was hard to imagine in the 90s what Atlanta would become, you know, what Atlanta is now. And I wanted to ask if you hear outcast actively in, you know, newer rap music, you guys talk so much about future about, of course, Kendrick Drake, Jay Cole, whatever, you know, like the Atlanta rap now, rap as a whole now, like, do you hear outcast actively, you know, as an influence and as still like the benchmark everyone's trying to reach? I mean, as someone who, when I was still writing about music, remember that? I don't actually. Remember logs? Remember magazines? We're past that. We've pivoted to video, Charles. We've been to video for the second or third time in our music writing career. We just pivot, we're just pivoting in a 360. But during that time, I came up during a time where like Atlanta was the epicenter. And that was my generation of music. And I think the thing that I found is, it's weird how fast music moves and hip hop specifically moves, because outcast is so foundational. It's almost like, where do you even begin to like talk about what Andre and Big Boy mean to Thug or Rich Homie Kwan or Future or Migos? It's and even if you like JID, even if you go further, just bringing melody into rap, bringing very, very tight song structure, very tight hook structure. When you look at Rosa Parks or Miss Jackson or all of these foundational records from outcast, what you realize is this was a group. Like it's different from Wu-Tang Clan. Wu-Tang Clan is just as amazing, but they're amazing in a very chaotic way. And like this feels like a cypher. This feels like I'm trying to cut your fucking neck off, where outcast almost feels like we are going to show you the route to making hip hop that still has everything that you want in terms of that vibrant anything can happen energy, but can be delivered to Z100 in the most efficient way possible. And that's just not an Atlanta thing. That's what the 21st century in hip hop music became. There's no Drake. There's no Drake without outcast. There's no Future without outcast. There's no Justin Bieber without outcast. They are that important. Right. Yeah. The only thing I would add to that is I think like all timeless kind of bands and groups and artists that we've been mentioning throughout this episode is that the hallmark of those, the truly timeless acts is that they are highly influential, but never imitated. Because they created a sound that you couldn't imitate. And so I hear the influence in an artist like Kendrick or JID or even like an earth gang. And you can hear certain elements. You could hear maybe an influence and approach, but the output is always different. I think it's more of an outcast provided a mentality of experimentation, of not worrying about being limited into certain regional sounds. It was like it kind of opens up a kind of freedom to an artist's approach when they're founds of outcast in a way that I think is really beautiful to have that kind of legacy where again, yeah, I can't think of another song that sounds like Miss Jackson. However, I can think of a number of artists that approach music in a similar way now, where you'll hear songs that or even albums that kind of even like Good Kid Mad City feels like for me the closest, I can actually hear pretty well the influence of outcast on that album. And Kendrick has been pretty transparent about that in interviews. But yeah, I think their legacy is that they, part of their legacy is that they are not imitable. And I think that's that's I will also say you want to know why they're not able to be imitated like 99% of motherfuckers can't rap like that. But like if you go back to those records, like I don't want to be the old man being like, damn, but like I'm gonna be on for a minute. Most rappers ain't rapping like they was on ATLians and the Clemenine and shit. They just not. Like it was, it's we kind of lost the ability to do that in a lot of ways. And I think you see someone like Kendrick who can kind of like who can get to that level. But yeah, there is just a level I'm like, damn, it really y'all not rapping like this. Yeah, older music is better. I agree, Charles. God bless you both for being here. I will see you both at Charles's third wedding, which will feature lots of sexy red. Thanks very much to our guests this week, Cole Kushner and Charles Holmes. Thanks very much to our producers, Justin Sales, Christopher Sutton and Olivia Creary. And thanks very much to you for listening. And now let's all go listen to Ms. Jackson. By outcast. We'll see you next week.