This album review celebrates the 25th anniversary of one of the most consequential hip-hop albums of my lifetime (and arguably of all time)
Genre: Hip-Hop, R&B, Pop
Label: Arista
Release Date: October 31, 2000
Vibe: 💣💣💣💣💣
👉 Click the GIF to stream the album on your favorite platform
Man … rap music used to be exciting. Game-changing, even. It used to sound like it was pushing the art form in new, exciting, uncharted directions, instead of merely slapping a couple of recognizable names and faces on whatever the pop crossover trend of the moment was. Occasionally, hip-hop still has the power to shock and surprise. I’ve covered many of those releases in this newsletter. However, weighed down by cultural baggage and commercial expectations, it feels increasingly unlikely that the genre will ever produce another Stankonia, a record that strikes a pitch-perfect balance between creative ambition and mainstream appeal. With all due respect to the likes of Drake and Travis Scott, I doubt they have it in them to step off their respective hedonic treadmills, duck into the studio, and record something this out there. You could even argue that Kendrick Lamar is probably past that now, with more than a decade of distance between his current persona and his To Pimp a Butterfly era.
Then again, to even posit those theories would mean putting Drizzy, K. Dot, and company on the same level as Outkast, a comparison that does all parties a grave injustice, most of all André “3000” Benjamin and Antwan “Big Boi” Patton. From the moment the duo burst onto the scene in 1992, hopping on a remix of TLC’s “What About Your Friends” after signing with L.A. Reid and Babyface’s LaFace imprint, they sounded different. Their first proper single, 1993’s “Player’s Ball,” established them as the smooth, funky, and, most importantly, ultra-cool kings in Kangol and Cadillacs. In short order, they rip off three undisputed classics without ever seeming to break a sweat: Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, ATLiens, and Aquemini. All certified Platinum, all producing hit singles, all flying in the face of what was expected of rap music sonically. The latter album also earned Outkast their first Grammy nomination.
André and Big Boi could’ve coasted on those successes. Run the same vibes back for another go-round in the studio. Maybe take their foot off the gas pedal a little bit and probably still drop an above-average rap record. Endlessly listenable at the very least. But that’s never been either man’s M.O. So, after Aquemini brought increased national attention to the Southern hip-hop scene, the duo began tinkering with new song ideas in the spring of 1999. That process lasted months, with André 3000 combining his rapping with soul-inspired crooning and, among other things, sketching out lyrics on the walls of his home. They also purchased their own home studio, formerly a facility used by Bobby Brown, allowing for ample experimentation. “You can sit there and f*** with just a kick and a snare all day long if you want to,” André 3000 said at the time. “You’re not working on the clock. Really, you’re just working on your mind.”
That freedom led Outkast, Earthtone III (their production duo, which also included their touring DJ, Mr. DJ), Organized Noize, and a collection of underground Atlanta musicians to fuse styles that few mainstream acts were touching. Drum-and-bass speed, psychedelic rock density, gospel choral uplift, punk urgency—it’s all there, drenched in the pair’s distinctive brand of Southern drawl. For all the impeccable melodies, there’s as much grit, distortion, and abstraction. Three Stacks does everything he can to fly off the handle at every possible opportunity, while Big Boi keeps the proceedings grounded with his signature grit and streetwise clarity. When you consider how much today’s hip-hop prizes genre-mixing, fluid identity, and sonic maximalism—calling cards that Stankonia helped permanently etch into the mainstream—it’s evident modern artistry is still being shaped by the Outkast ripple effect.
The most impressive aspect of Stankonia is how much thematic ground it covers lyrically. The true opener, “Gasoline Dreams,” sets the stage with vivid metaphors that depict the downward spiral America has found itself grappling with (and still finds itself grappling with). “Now, time to dig … low, low,” André says at one point, after he casually tosses out that Mother Nature’s is “on birth control.” “To a place where ain’t nowhere to go but up, you with me?” Boy oh boy, did I feel that one in my chest, and I wasn’t even five minutes into my relisten. “Toilet Tisha” is a hazy riff (quite literally, with those phased-out guitars) on Tupac’s “Brenda’s Got a Baby,” while the title track (stylized with a parenthetical “Stanklove”) is a spacy kind of love ballad featuring several members of the Dungeon Family. The latter hip-hop collective has counted names like Future, Good Mob, Sleepy Brown, Janelle Monae, TLC, and the late Rico Wade among their ranks, reinforcing the fact that, as Three Stacks famously put it, “the South got something to say.”
If you were anywhere near pop and urban (ugh, sorry) radio at the turn of the century, you likely know the hits that Stankonia produced. “So Fresh, So Clean” is the funkiest of the bunch, transforming Joe Simon and Funkadelic samples into an effortless-sounding rap cruiser. The rhyming is just as slick as the accompanying music video, which sees a long-haired Big Boi describing soul great Teddy Pendergrass as “cooler than Freddie Jackson sipping a milkshake in a snowstorm.” I don’t support this shade thrown at my guy Freddie Jackson, a man I’ve praised in this newsletter before, but it’s such a good line that it makes me smile every time I hear it. Ditto for the duo’s first No. 1 single on the Hot 100, “Ms. Jackson,” a slightly chaotic appeal to his baby mama’s mama. André 3000 has been open about drawing inspiration from his tumultuous relationship with neo-soul Erykah Badu, though she initially wasn’t a huge fan of the dirty laundry the lyrics aired in public. You know who was a fan? Badu’s mother. “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,” Badu said. I can confidently say that it’s the best apology-to-an-in-law-as-a-song in music history.
But the crowning achievement on Stankonia, the track that blew the back of my head off when I first heard it back in the day, was “B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad).” It’s a runaway train fueled by rave culture and psychedelic rock, opening unassumingly with tinkling keyboards and a whispered countdown before legitimately exploding out of the gate. You also have elements of drum & bass, gospel (that choir at the end … chills), punk rock, and, according to André, heavy metal, at least in spirit. “I wouldn’t have done ‘Bombs Over Baghdad’ if it wasn’t for Rage Against the Machine,” he told Rick Rubin on the latter’s podcast. “Because I felt urgency in their music, so I was like, ‘How can I add urgency to what we’re doing?’ It doesn’t sound like Rage Against the Machine. It’s the energy.” Though there’s a hint of anti-war sentiment in the lyrics, the song was crucially released well before 9/11, rooting its political critique more in the decay of inner city neighborhoods, ones that somehow managed to find joy and even salvation amid the fear and paranoia.
Also, we should quickly touch on the music video, which is its own gonzo masterpiece. Directed by David Meyers, who’s won 12 MTV Video Music Awards for his work with artists like Missy Elliott and Taylor Swift, it features a lot of the hallmarks of an early-2000s rap video. The cars, the girls, and the grills, not to mention the vaguely embarrassing dance moves. But all of it is shot through the eyes of what I, who grew up a sheltered suburbanite, imagine it’s like to be on the best acid trip of your life. Treetops, grass, and skin all turn the same shade of purple at some point. Big Boi jumps between vintage cars and, at one point, climbs up the front of a moving bus on a flimsy rope ladder like he’s a Black Indiana Jones. He then opens the escape hatch in the bus’s roof and jumps down into some oddly charming mobile party pad, complete with a stripper pole and animal throw rug. There’s also a babboon, lots of leopard print, and a highlighter-colored church that hosts the video’s climactic scene, a religious gathering of breakdancers, head-nodders, and at least one child who’s far too young to be witnessing all this. It’s one of the most exhilarating four-and-a-half minutes you’ll ever see or hear. Any genre, any era.
The chant that wraps up “Bombs Over Baghdad” is simple: “Power music, electric revival.” That phrase encapsulates the feeling I opened this post with—the possibility that there were still uncharted waters in mainstream music and particularly in hip-hop, a genre that was, at the time, transitioning out of its shiny suit and G-funk heyday. The cultural moment was ripe for experimentation, and a group like Outkast was well-positioned to set the template for the years that followed. They certainly seized the moment. Amid near-universal acclaim, the album debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard album chart, selling north of 530,000 copies in its first week. By November 2003, it had already gone Platinum four times over and had broken out as a hit in several international markets. Today, we can look at Stankonia as a brilliant collision of styles, ideas, emotions, and contradictions. It’s a portrait of Outkast at their most expansive, daring, and unafraid. Its legacy is not just in what it changed, but in what it continues to allow. Weird art, that’s willing to rage and love all in the same breath, shouldn’t be shunned from the mainstream spotlight. Turns out you can definitely cross over and become pop giants without selling your soul.