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The Outkast Vibe

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 In 1994. a number of outstanding Hip Hop albums were burning up the charts worldwide– Nas’ “Illmatic”, Notorious B.I.G’s “Ready to Die”, Common’s “Resurrection” & Warren G’s “Regulate…G Funk Era” to name a few.  When Outkast first hit the scene at that time with their seminal classic Southernplayalistcadillacmuzik, you sensed right away that these brothers were about to join the aforementioned artists & expand the genre in a big yet different way. They were fast & furious out the blocks & it didn’t hurt to have the hottest production team on board,Organized Noize, to orchestrate their debut. Five additional  hit albums to the present moment, this innovative pair have set themselves apart from the pack with their groundbreaking work. Who else can give you Dirty South, G-Funk, soul, pop, electronica, rock, spoken word poetry, jazz, blues & funk on the same album w/ a twist of socio-historical consciousness on top of that? You take a cut like “Rosa Parks” which was not directly about the pioneering Civil Rights activist, but used as a metaphor for the overturning of hip hop’s old order & the establishment of something new. That’s the brilliance of Hip Hop, &some are just better at it than others. To this day, their music still sounds better than most of what we’re hearing now. Indeed, I feel that Hip Hop (commercial Hip Hop, that is) has bottle-necked into some type of predictable, apolitical & flavorless sap with little redeeming value, generally speaking. Nonetheless, I am hopeful that the next batch of trailblazing groups will pick up where Outkast, Tribe Called Quest , Gang Starr, De La Soul & Wu-Tang left off & take the genre to unknown territory. The Roots are the only group on the commercial scene right now who have done so, in my opnion.

Recently, there has been a lot of discussion about Michael Eric Dyson’s course at Georgetown University called “Sociology of Hip Hop: Jay-Z” . Dr Dyson approaches racial and gender identity, sexuality, capitalism and economic inequality through the lens of Hip Hop. Not a bad springboard for analytical discourse, but in terms of lyrical content, Outkast (or Nas) would have been a better first choice–that’s my 2 cents on that!

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