Saturday, October 03, 2009

971. Outkast - Speakerboxxx/The Love Below (2003)


















Track Listing

Disc: 1

1. Intro
2. GhettoMusick
3. Unhappy
4. Bowtie Featuring Sleepy Brown & Jazze Pha
5. The Way You Move
6. The Rooster
7. Bust Featuring Killer Mike
8. War
9. Church
10. Bamboo (Interlude)
11. Tomb Of The Boom
12. E-Mac (Interlude)
13. Knowing
14. Flip Flop Rock
15. Interlude
16. Reset
17. D-Boi (Interlude)
18. Last Call
19. Bowtie (Postlude)

Disc: 2

1. The Love Below (Intro)
2. Love Hater
3. God (Interlude)
4. Happy Valentine’s Day
5. Spread
6. Where Are My Panties?
7. Prototype
8. She Lives In My Lap
9. Hey Ya!
10. Roses
11. Good Day, Good Sir
12. Behold A Lady
13. Pink & Blue
14. Love In War
15. She’s Alive
16. Dracula’s Wedding
17. My Favorite Things
18. Take Off Your Cool
19. Vibrate
20. A Life in the Day of Benjamin Andre


Review

What a long, long, long album. Really it could do with some editing. However it is fortunately, a pretty great album, and in spite of having some (very few) unremarkable tracks is never actually bad. So on average it is a very positive experience.

The album is clearly divided into two parts, not only physically as discs but also in terms of title, authorship and sound. While the first disc is very much in the style of earlier Outkast, quality, inventive southern rap, the second disc is much more soulful and almost prince like.

It is in this second disc that the length really pays off, with such popular singles as Hey Ya and Roses and with a really fun mood throughout. So if the first discis very good, the second is excellent. So really a too long but brilliant album.

Track Highlights

1. Hey Ya
2. Roses
3. The Way You Move
4. My Favourite Things

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Most critics were also particularly more interesed on André's half of the album than on Big Boi's solo venture, due to the experimentation with several music genres on The Love Below. The intro of the album was already a trip on classical music, "Love Hater" has purely jazz influences (apart from a cover of "My Favorite Things", a Richard Rodgers/Oscar Hammerstein tune), and the rest was a combination of soul, funk, R&B, and hip-hop. Will Hermes from Entertainment Weekly pointed that André's album "is as strange and rich a trip as pop offers nowadays, a song cycle about love's battle against fear and (self-) deception that's frequently profound, hilarious, and very, very sexy."

Hey Ya:

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