"For a start, Dre produces a handful of tracks on Big Boi's half, 'Speakerboxxx' and, as the Boi repeatedly stresses"
2004-01-30
 Photo: Alessio
Outkast Extras
Outkast : Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
OK, let's take this slowly. 'Speakerboxxx/The Love Below' is OutKast's fifth album. Two CDs. 39 songs. 137 minutes of synapse-popping, gut-reorganising, breathtakingly adventurous music. As you've probably heard by now,...read more
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"Big Boi and André each taking a CD for himself. The schizophrenia of OutKast has at last come unbound"
2004-01-30
 Since founding OutKast in the early nineties, Atlantans Antwan Patton and André Benjamin have referred to themselves as the player and the poet: Patton, known as Big Boi, is the player; Benjamin, a.k.a. André 3000, is the poet. In their music, these opposites exist side-by-side, with the duo making...read more
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"Continues exploring the future-crunk OutKast perfected on Stankonia -- bubbling psych-soul on the politically"
2004-01-30
OutKast's Big Boi sees the sharks circling, sniffing for blood. On "Tomb of the Boom," from his half of the duo's new album, he raps, "They say, 'Big Boi, can you pull it off without your nigga Dre?'/I say, 'People, stop the madness, 'cause me and Dre be OK.' "
When OutKast first hit in the early...read more
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"User Comments"
2004-01-30
H K gave it a 10:
Speakerboxxx - SIC!!! The love below - SUXXX!!!
Jesus Q gave it a 9:
Close to 10. Great record. Loved every minute of it except the weird talking skits between tracks. All hip-hop albums do that now. Makes it hard to listen to...having to skip bs stuff. I cannot get enough of...read more
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"There is overlap — Andre 3000 shows up on a couple of Big Boi's songs, and produces three of them, and Big Boi does a rap on one of Andre 3000's tracks. "
2004-01-30
OutKast, cell therapy, to cell division/ We just split it down the middle so you see both the visions," promises rapper Antwan "Big Boi" Patton, one-half of the best hip-hop act on the planet. He's referring to the widely publicized design of OutKast's fifth album, a two-disc set entitled Speakerbox...read more
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"It's one reason why Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, like no albums before, beg to be ripped, sieved and re-sequenced"
2004-01-30
Outkast
Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
[Arista; 2003]
Rating: 8.0
The twelve-lane Connector plows through Atlanta like the Nile of pavement. Along its fenced banks lie the majority of the city's attractions. Turner buildings, blossoming with neon network logos, lure Yellowjacket grads from the ad...read more
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"It's clear that Boi is ignoring boundaries, and the rest of his album follows suit"
2004-01-30
To call OutKast's follow-up to their 2000 masterpiece Stankonia the most eagerly awaited hip-hop album of the new millennium may be hyperbole, but not by much. In its kaleidoscopic, deep-fried amalgam of Dirty South, dirty funk, techno, and psychedelia, Stankonia was fearlessly exploratory and giddy...read more
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"Speakerboxxx is almost a great OutKast album by itself. Its flow gets a bit choppy"
2004-01-30
 So is it one album or two albums? Is it good? Whose is better? Are they gonna break up? Are they gonna wake up? What's up with Andre -- is he in a cult, is he on drugs, is he gay?
The new OutKast album raises a lot of questions, not the least of which is: will it be their last? But here's what w...read more
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"Hey Ya!" of course ("a-right a-right a-right a-right"), and an oddity of his choosing (say the single-mom "She's Alive") to Speakerboxx"
2004-01-30
Statistical analysis yields but one conclusion. Better for Andre 3000 to have donated "Roses" ("really smell like poo-poo"), "Spread" (Prince should be so horny), "Hey Ya!" of course ("a-right a-right a-right a-right"), and an oddity of his choosing (say the single-mom "She's Alive") to Speakerboxx,...read more
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". If Stankonia was the duo's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below is its White "
2004-01-30
OutKast
Speakerboxxx/The Love Below (Buy It!)
(Arista)
At this point in their career, it doesn't seem like much of a stretch to call OutKast's Andre 3000 and Big Boi the Lennon and McCartney of hip-hop. Like The Beatles' icons, the two markedly different artists complement each other perfectly,...read more
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"The Love Below, on the other hand, is a sonnet cycle about falling in love."
2004-01-30
re, a.k.a. Andre 3000, a.k.a. Andre Lauren Benjamin, says he’s run out of ways to express himself via hip hop. Big Boi, a.k.a. Antwan Andre Patton, says he hasn’t.
It’s difficult to comprehend just how much Outkast have done in the last ten years, and not just what they’ve done for hip hop. Beca...read more
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"The Love Below, meanwhile, barely qualifies as rap at all"
2004-01-30
With the flavour of mainstream hip-hop currently epitomised by 50 Cent's bread-and-butter gangsta rhymes, there are few artists, aside from the tireless Neptunes, able to satisfy more exotic palates. The freewheeling fifth album from Atlanta, Georgia duo OutKast, however, constitutes a full-blown ba...read more
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"No one musical entity, or group in the world comes close to the sum of their parts"
2004-01-30
sample:
Andre 3000 "Spread"
These are two albums, not one, but you know that. The most celebrated Southern American hip-hop group of all time have gone solo, together. 'Speakerboxxx' and 'The Love Below' will finally, one thought, oust the true nature of hip-hop's odd couple. Andre 3000, legend...read more
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"But there's much more to 'The Love Below' than Dre's ambitions beyond hip hop, and much more to 'Speakerboxxx' than Big's attempts to make hip hop encompass more than it already does."
2004-01-30
Released on 29/09/2003
Label: Arista
In the decade since beginning their singular journey to beyond the boundaries of what hip hop could deliver, Antwan 'Big Boi' Patton and Andre 'Dre 3000' Benjamin have seemed inseparable, counterbalancing parts of the same unified whole. But here they are,...read more
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