Outkast – Idlewild Review [3]
Posted by Michael Melchor on 08.29.2006
Andre 3000 and Big Boi almost pull off one of the best Hip-Hop albums ever. Almost.
Are they together or aren’t they? Will they remain a unit or go their separate ways? Questions like these have plagued Outkast since the release of Speakerboxx/The Love Below three years ago. Rumors have swirled, many neither confirmed nor denied by Big Boi or Andre 3000 in several interviews when asked about the future of Outkast.
One thing would keep them together, though – the pet project film/album that they’ve been working on since 1998. Back then, no studio would touch Aquemini (the original name for the project, used afterward for the album that first got them mainstream attention due to the song “Rosa Parks”), as Outkast was an unproven commodity. Fast-forward past the success of Stankonia and the explosion of Speakerboxx/The Love Below and now the studios were all over it.
It’s natural to think that, since its transformation from Aquemini, Idlewild, the 1920s jazz-soaked fantasy from Boi and Dre, has undergone some radical changes. In that time, Andre 3000 has moved away from the thug aesthetic into a more spiritual, experimental style. The contrast between that and Big Boi’s straight flow (one of the best around right now) has yielded fascinating results, but now it seems that those results are more uneven than ever. Little Hip-Hop actually remains, it seems, as many more genres are represented in an exhaustive, would-be tour-de-force of forms and fashions.
The album opens with an “Intro” featuring a snooty “Hoo-lee-ard” graduate lamenting the presence of rappers in movies, only to get shot down by several fans looking forward to the film. I can agree with this to a point; while 50 Cent has no business being in a celluloid vanity project (and the box office tallies seemed to confirm that), Andre 3000 has already logged several movie roles under his belt and has fared slightly better than could be expected.
The first swerve comes soon after, as “Mighty ‘O’” rollicks with a Cab Calloway-homage for a chorus and some excellent mic work by Dre, remembering just for a moment that he started out as an MC. Were the album to unabashedly continue forward in this manner, this would easily be the best Hip-Hop album of the year. Instead, what follows are several tracks of soul, R&B, and funk – all damn-near about the same subject – that tries the patience with the threat of dragging the album down.
Track 5, “Infatuation”, lays it out right in the name – there’s a love subplot in Idlewild, apparently, but spending so much concentrated time on it gets tiring. The breaking point almost occurs with “Morris Brown”, which starts out as a solid Rap tune but degenerates into – once again – a repetitive (although well-done, as most of them are) mantra of “girl, I wanna be with you”.
The most telling point of (obviously) Andre’s run of hyped-up love songs is “N2U”, a song that in title, feel, and subject, channels Prince at his best. This will crop up on another point in the album, as “Chronomentrophobia” reads like an update of “If I Was Your Girlfriend” from Prince’s Sign O’ The Times. Throughout many of his contributions, Andre plays the spiritual love balladeer better than anyone should have a right to. Indeed, much of Idlewild plays like a lost Prince album. At times, it blends well with Big Boi’s more rugged contributions, resulting in a sound that the album should have followed as a whole. However, Andre almost floods the album with this type of psychedelic longing. Too much of a good thing is still too much, and Andre, arguably, oversaturates a Hip-Hop album with sounds other than Hip-Hop.
Doing his best to maintain a balance – and bring Andre back to a fluid group dynamic – is Big Boi. “Hollywood Divorce” features Lil’ Wayne and Snoop Dogg in cameo roles that beckon Andre to come back to where Big Boi thinks he should be with tight, vicious rhymes about the nature of divorce, celebrity or no. Outkast comes together proper on “The Train”, where the ideals of the two are in perfect form – a soulful, sung Andre chorus and verses by Big Boi that go deep into the group’s feelings about their history. It’s an excellent head-bobber and an example of just how good these two are at their best. Another is “PJ & Rooster”, a film-related jaunt about the movie’s villain that sways and swaggers firmly in the 1920s setting of the movie, daring you not to get up and swing with your partner.
The record almost plays in thirds; Outkast coexisting to put on a clinic on Hip-Hop rooted in the beginnings of black music; Big Boi ‘s flow being as vicious as ever, mad that his partner is no longer on the same page; and Andre tripping on some old soul and funk, determined to be a master of all trades and not just a jack. The maddening thing is that the acts aren’t divided, and the journey from one to the other to the other and back again are enough to wear someone out – and not in the best way.
The 411: With the success of Outkast, Idlewild became more of a vanity project for one half of the group that anyone could have imagined. In the hands of lesser talent and restraint, the results could have been catastrophic; however, Andre knows better than to think this is a solo album (albeit barely). Big Boi, meanwhile, shines on his own but misses the funky feel of his partner. When the two co-exist in peace, they proudly show that no one in Hip-Hop – or several other genres, for that matter – can get down like they can. Altogether, it’s better than most of the pop albums you’ll hear this year, no matter where their hearts may lie. The tragedy is that the two styles (and the egos that fuel them) that nowadays clash more than they synchronize could have produced one of the best albums of this generation if they could only get back on the same page and stay there.
