A Blast From The Past: OutKast - Speakerboxxx/The Love Below

So I was looking back at some of my old CD's that have been lying around my house, and I stumbled upon one of my first hip-hop/rap CD's that I purchased.  I slipped the OutKast LP, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, into my fairly new MacBook computer, and loaded it into my iTunes player.  As I uploaded the CD, retagged all the songs, found some album artwork for the newly added LP, I began to realize that this is where my roots to hip-hop music come from.  I mean, I have been listening to music my whole life, and I was brought up on oldies, rock, pop, and the blues.  Then a friend of mine suggested I go out and give this band called OutKast a listen, and this is where my love for hip-hop really came from!  This is not to say that there are not other musicians who truly influenced me and caused me to fall deeper in love with the hip-hop/rap movement.  So from now on, I plan on doing a post every now and then called, "A Blast from the Past".  In these posts, I will either cover some of my favorite bands, or do a review of one of my favorite "classic" hip-hop/rap albums.  So for our first "Blast from the Past" we will be covering OutKasts' Speakerboxxx/The Love Below.

When you think of Big Boi and Andre 3000, you think of some of the big hit classics that they put out (both separate and together).  You got your OutKast favorites (you know, everyone has those songs that they hear at parties and what not), such as: "Hey Ya", "Roses", "The Way You Move", and many more.  What many OutKast fans don't realize is that their most prolific album was Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, and that this insane album had all three of those tracks featured on it!  To be completely honest with everyone out there, those three tracks are not the only reasons as to why this album is just crazy good.  There are so many other reasons, and one of the other main ones is that the lyrical flow and musical beats used on all the tracks is just unreal.  It is something hard to find now a day, and if a true music fan gives every song on the album a listen, he/she will be able to hear the smooth lyrics that flow over the melodies produced by the dynamic duo that is Big Boi and Andre 3000.

Speakerboxxx/The Love Below featured thirty nine amazing tracks, and a total of two hours and twenty minutes of playing time.  I let the full album play on my computer today while sitting outside and doing some yard work, and let me tell you, each and every second of the album is something special.  As the album came to an end, I realized how unique and special the sound that OutKast produced was.  I mean, if you were to hear some obscure song by them in some random club, I think you would be able to figure out who was singing it based off their lyrical flow and musical beats alone.  It is just something so incomparable and something so individualist, and because of that, it really separates them from the pack, and makes them a gem in the hip-hop industry and in hip-hop history!  In today's music industry, so many musicians sound similar.  You have comparisons of Asher Roth sounding like Eminem (even though the two don't really sound THAT similar... I mean come on!!! Just because he is a white rapper doesn't make him sound like Eminem, that is just your brain telling you that... but anyway, back on topic), other comparisons are Big Sean to Kanye West.  While these comparisons are made and people do enjoy listening to new musicians that sound a lot like the old ones, I can promise you that eventually that will get boring (not that Asher Roth/Big Sean will ever be boring... I am HUGE fans of theirs [respectively], and can't wait for their albums to drop), but OutKast is something so hard to copy that it makes listening to them so pleasurable!

Anyway, if you have been living under a rock and have never heard of OutKast, I highly suggest you go out and purchase this album, seeing as it is one of their best (next to Stankonia), and it will go down as one of the first albums that has truly changed my ideology about music.  Before I gave this album a listen, I would only listen to what my father brought me up on, you know... Those good ole' oldies, the stuff you listen to with your parents in the car.  I was brought up on musicians like The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, Eric Clapton, Tom Petty, B.B. King, and so many other musicians.  Who knows, maybe when I have kids and we are in the car, I will be playing musicians like OutKast, Kanye West, and other new musicians.

Speakerboxxx/The Love Below Track Listing:
"The Love Below" (Intro)
"Love Hater"
"God" (Interlude) 
"Happy Valentine's Day" 
"Spread"
"Where Are My Panties?"
"Prototype"
"She Lives in My Lap" (Featuring Rosario Dawson)
"Hey Ya!"

"Roses" (Featuring Big Boi)
"Good Day Good Sir" (Interlude) (Featuring Fonzworth Bentley)
"Behold a Lady"
"Pink & Blue"
"Love in War"
"She's Alive"
"Dracula's Wedding" (Featuring Kelis)
"The Letter" (Interlude, Only Featured On Later Pressings)
"My Favorite Things" (Not Listed Anywhere In The Artwork of the Album)
"Take Off Your Cool" (Featuring Norah Jones)
"Vibrate"
"A Life in the Day of Benjamin André (Incomplete)"

Print this post