Outkast poll #2: ATLiens

since voting for "atliens" woul dbe too obv i'm gonna vote for "two dope boyz"

voting for "Ova da Wudz" cause Big Boi sounds evil as fuck on that track

elevators gtfo w/ this

elevators. this may be the most front-heavy album i own.

oh u rong

so much great stuff in the back half

this is maybe my favorite album of the 90s btw

u are a weird dude, rev

a seATLien if u will

haven't heard this in a while but elevators is what I remember

might go for two dope boyz in the end tho

Voting for "Elevators" but I need to dig this out again properly.

NB I wd still vote for "Elevators"

might vote for the title track tbh

two dope boys

this is maybe my favorite album of the 90s btw
― im on the moon btw (The Reverend)
it's damn close.
Having a really really hard time choosing between elevators, wheelz of steel, atliens, millennium, 2 dope boyz, mainstream... boy, this IS a good album. I think I'm going with wheelz.

throw yo hands in the ayerrrrr = first Outkast hook I remember sticking in my head

amazing record

wheeeeeeeelz ov steel 4ever. prob my fave thing they ever done did.

could be any of these: Two Dope Boyz (In a Cadillac), ATLiens, Wheelz of Steel, Elevators

this is maybe my favorite album of the 90s btw

― im on the moon btw (The Reverend)

Completely reasonable imo. I've consistently loved this album since I was like 11 years old

I live by the beat like you live check to check/
If you don't move yo feet then I don't eat, so we like neck to neck

Man this was one of those CDs that was stolen from my apt way back in 1998 and I still haven't replaced it. I need to get on that.

whole album is dope but elevators is on a higher level.

what won the first album poll?

two dope boyz in a red hot minute

http://www.trafficsignstore.com/RA-040.gif

Secret real answer is E.T. (Extraterrestrial)

your mama and your cousin toooooo

hadn't listened to this in years. voting "ova da wudz", love that dusty desert vibe and the way big boi's rhymes tumble over each other in the last verse. "shakin that ass for daddy, puttin this gas off in my cadi / llac, back, don't ever snap / packin the gats and pimpin whores / hors d'oeuvres / swerve / hit the curb because i'm reckless / back in the days when i was broke i'd have snatched your fuckin necklace"

"jazzy belle" is gorgeous sonically but such bullshit lyrically :(

"Decatur Psalm" is getting really underrated here. Cool Breeze has one of my favorite verses ever.

Tell his folks that I'm sorry bout that Lexus
I'm bout to dip and see my sister up in--
Naw, can't even tell you where I keep my extra player card
Cause them red dog police know we homeboys

Just tell everyone who owe us a dime
It's that great "Ho, round up your money" time
I got to have mine, then I'm out of here
Take a loss, come back up like Coco Grier

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

13th Floor/Growing Old is exquisite.

elevators!
heard it for the first time on the wake up show, which luckily i was taping, spent the next couple hours
memorizing it front to back. that didn't happen for the rest of these iirc

I could probably rap 90% of this album back at you verbatim (and could have done the rest at one point)

Growing Old instro is so beautiful, that piano figure with the scratched in "96 gon' be that year".

the raps are beautiful also, overlapping and crossfading

I bet you never heard of a playa with no game...shot it with no shame...confessin one mo' lesson from the South we in the house tonight!...the nigga the B-I-G, be speakin the truth not talkin that shit boy...as the calendar keeps flippin, niggas dippin...on fire like the Georgia mass choir we keep on sangin...we hit the stage and then we fly back to our nest like some eagles, growing old

the sung hook is kind of overblown tho? just a little too much jam on the sentiment. and i could do without Big Rube's bullshit on 13th Floor tbh.

No album brings me back to high school like this one. Haven't heard it in years, but will vote for that Growing Old track.

i'm not much of a rap dude but i think this has my favorite production of any rap album, so much subtle detail in the beats

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Missed the poll, love this album.

Moving this question from the Aquemini thread here:

songs that are listed as being produced by "outkast" -- i've never really read much about how dre/big boi worked together in terms of production. anyone have any insight?

― J0rdan S., Thursday, March 25, 2010 12:42 AM Bookmark

From Third Coast:

Along with Andre and Big Boi's personal maturation came significant musical growth. Empowered by their success, they decided to pursue making their own music, apart from Organized Noize. Dre took some of the money he'd earned and bought state-of-the-art hip-hop machinery: the MPC3000 sampler, SP1200 drum machine, ASR-10 synthesizer, a Tascam mixing board, and turntables with piles of old records found at local shops. Big Boi also sprung for a set of gear, though he was distracted with his new baby and slower to take it up.

Having watched Ray, Dre didn't approach beat making as an absolute beginner. Still, it's a measure of the musical gifts of both Dre and Big Boi (who wrote the hook) that their first creation was a song as clever and inventive as "Elevators (Me & You)." As the first single from ATLiens, the song became OutKast's second number-one rap hit, and the group's biggest pop charting to that point.

As much a slice of Southern hip-hop progressivism "Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik" had been, "Elevators" builds thick atmosphere around humming organ, dubby bass, echoing rim shots, and lonely "wrong number" phone tones, gliding gently into a chorus cooly sung by Big and others: "Me and you, your momma and your cousin too/ Rollin' down the strip on Vogues, comin' up slammin' Cadillac doors." It was classic down-South signifiying: extended families, 'Lacs with high-end tires, car culture. The verses, meanwhile, reflect the group's turning point by taking account of where they'd been--retelling the meeting with Rico at Lamonte's--and where they were going: "We done come a long way like them Slim-ass cigarrettes from Virginia, this ain't gon' stop so we just gon' continue,"

"Elevators convinced OutKast they could take more control of their music. "I can remember when I wrote the hook," Big Boi relates. "I said to Dre, 'I might be trippin', but this shit sounds fonky!' And he was like, 'That shit jammin'.' So after that we had another avenue."

Organized Noize did not resist OutKast's inclination to pull away. "Ray and them, they never hated, they never shunned what I was doing," Dre says. "They'd say it was pretty cool or tell me it would be good if I'd just [improve] one thing."

haha then it talks about Goodie Mob renting a cabin up in the mountains to write Still Standing

PIMPIN WHORES
HORS D'OUEVRES
SWERVE
HIT THE CURB
BECAUSE I'M RECKLESS
BACK IN THE DAY WHEN I WAS BROKE I'D SNATCH YOUR FUCKIN NECKLACE

I'm fascinated by the way your nipples peak at me through your blouse
Freaky me
Freaky you
Can't help but be aroused

The beat hit like Beat Street
Krush Groove
and Breakin'

That ain't hiphop
You find that shit in the gift shop

Be kings and queens up in this thing
Get rid of all them jokers
FACE DOWN
FACE DOWN

FLOWIN LIKE SOME MOTHERFUCKIN SWORDFISH

I call the crib, they say "Breeze, you ain't know?"
I said "What?" "Big Time got popped in his Benzo"
I said "Damn, man, I'm ridin' in his Lexus"
I'm bout to dump this nigga's shit in New Dimentions
Get to the crib so I can Big Slate up
And tell him the money man done slipped and got his throat cut
And everything that we took from the wearhou'
I heard somebody talkin bout it at the white hou'
Man, thought you said that this job is for me and you
I ain't know that Bill Clampett want his song too
Tell his folks that I'm sorry bout that Lexus
I'm bout to dip and see my sister up in--
Naw, can't even tell you where I keep my extra player card
Cause them red dog police know we homeboys
Just tell everyone who owe us a dime
It's that great "Ho, round up your money" time
I got to have mine, then I'm out of here
Take a loss, come back up just like Coco Grier
You ain't gotta worry bout your partner gettin caught like a lame
It won't be over til that big girl from Decatur sang

Lookin up in your face I see a coward and a dimwit
Lookin to run up in my private home just like you was the folks

preach, rev.

i was thinking about this album earlier and just how much of a paradigm shift it introduced for me in the way i listened to and thought about music. hiphop was my "classic rock" or pop music as a kid growing up, and this was like my dark side of the moon. but somehow even more important and poignant. nothing else at the time sounded like it. i still remember vividly where i was the first time i heard 'elevators' and then, a couple months later, the whole album. i sat and listened to it that first time and i was actively in denial of what i was hearing — where did this music come from? unbelievably good.

when i think of the best albums of the 90s, this is always in contention for my #1 spot.

Stankonia and Aquemini are all-time, Southernplayalistic is great, but I've given this like five or six listens and it's always left me cold apart from the title track. But it's been like fifteen years since the last time I heard it so maybe it's time to try again

this was always the one that clicked for me over aquemini (and the subsequent ones aren't even close)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7hU0z4bV8I

did some quick remixes of a couple of my old favorites.

I love how my top 7 songs from this amazing album matches what I'd pick for their an Outkast "Best-of" playlist.

This album was my singular signpost album as far as checking out music not-on-the-radio.

Cruisin’

couple more remixes we did.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mdEtaMXMmRY

this was always the one that clicked for me over aquemini (and the subsequent ones aren't even close)

Random reactions listening to this after about 20 years when I used to listen to it a ton is that musically I love it, onp were so good, and outkast were underrated as producers, their flows went askew after the first album where they sounded so in sync like clipse or alkaholiks, they sounded less like a unit now, where I once thought these lyrics were deep, it turns out it just sounds like young guys thinking they are deep, believing they know so much, but actually dont, and why, presumably just cos they were feeling a little sad and had a big debut success, so now felt they had to do the slightly introspective or darker, slightly more jaded follow up. Great hooks though. I downloaded an instrumental version of it to ease my disappointment.

Strange actually as if you asked me in the late 90a I'd say this was obv their best album,but now I'd prob say stankonia or the debut. Turns out deep sounding thoughts arent always that deep, even if the music is.

I'm also willing to admit some stuff might be lost in translation by way of me not being southern and being British :)

actually it should be said that without the vocals, these tracks suck, lolh

gonna be less confrontational here, but i'm curious about which parts of this come off as fake deep or insincere?

and it seems like most of this criticism is directed towards andre? big boi is mostly still on his fly shit on this album.

it turns out it just sounds like young guys thinking they are deep, believing they know so much, but actually dont, and why, presumably just cos they were feeling a little sad

like a candyman post on a hiphop thread.

i felt the pressure like sun shining, while raining at the same time.
i kept on rhyming.
not complaining.

actually it should be said that without the vocals, these tracks suck, lolh

last summer i think i fell asleep to either this record or me against the world every night

you know what it is, its listneing to this as an adult, vs the memory of listening to it a ton as a teenager. coming back to it, and it just seemed like not such a big deal anymore. its also the way that musically it is much more subdued than their first album, which lends to the feeling of it being kinda 'deeper', or the expectation that it will be more... idk, reflective? when really, a lot of the lyrics on this would prob be just at home on beats from the first one. when i say these tracks suck without vocals, i mean, the tracks are great, but without the raps, it just doesnt feel complete, not that 'oh these beats suck' because as i wrote earlier, they are actually one of the best things about this album. anyway, for my money, the best songs are ET and growing old, and at the risk of causing outrage, you may die is perhaps the most affecting moment on the album.

cool.

also how does it feel to be totally incorrect about everything?

Just stop being a cunt for once. You want to be a smug twat, faux outraged about your sacred cows being talked about in a way that isnt received wisdom, just stick to the actual points, rather than ad hominem attacks.

It's pretty obv to anyone whos listened to their albums that atliens is the outlier, the one that sounds most unlike the rest, its actually a weirdly quiet album too, not in the way a roc marciano is, but they really committed to a much more introverted *sounding* aesthetic, and sustained it. I wonder if as they were such big native tongues fans if they purposely wanted to make something like their own de la soul is dead or low end theory. Or even j beez with the remedy, although it has much less musical range than those albums IMO as it's so much more minimal.

you’re allowed to criticize any album you like and austin is allowed to think your criticisms are inane

you’re not a bold truth teller for disliking an album that other people like

Does Austin need you as his wingman?

Never said I was some bold truth teller but an opinion that isnt consensus is surely ok.

wasn’t gonna do anything but flag your unnecessary insults but i decided to bump the thread in the off chance someone else wanted to flag it too

Unnecessary? Ha. Flag what you like.

Honestly am kinda tired of the ilxor.com inner cabal with their dogmatic agenda in what is and isnt ok to be uttered w/r/t rap and black music, never mind their personal attacks and delicate sensitivities. But you guys enjoy yourselves.

start a sub stack about it or something

anyway, elevators is the best song on here, but it wouldn’t have needed my help.

“mainstream” is my current fav, andre’s verse is packed with puns that teeter juuuust on the right side of corniness. also dig how he plays up his country side when paired with the goodie mob.

“my partners call me big boi but my first name is not steven”

when i say these tracks suck without vocals, i mean, the tracks are great, but without the raps, it just doesnt feel complete, not that 'oh these beats suck' because as i wrote earlier, they are actually one of the best things about this album.

Who would think that a rap album track would sound incomplete without the raps?

Rap! The Musical - all the fun of rap, without all that rap!

Piano concertos sound so incomplete without the piano.

I don't know what's so difficult about parsing "these instrumentals, which are great and one of the best things about the album, suck without the vocals, which I find to be pseudo-profound", as opposed to the music which truly is deep and therefore elevates the lyrics, tricking you into thinking they're legitimately deep.

Oops misplaced the end quote

gotta go. need to hit the pink floyd dark side of the moon thread with this copy:

you know what it is, its listneing to this as an adult, vs the memory of listening to it a ton as a teenager. coming back to it, and it just seemed like not such a big deal anymore. its also the way that musically it is much more subdued than their first album, which lends to the feeling of it being kinda 'deeper', or the expectation that it will be more... idk, reflective? when really, a lot of the lyrics on this would prob be just at home over music from the first one. when i say these tracks suck without vocals, i mean, the tracks are great, but without the vocals, it just doesnt feel complete, not that 'oh these musicians suck' because as i wrote earlier, they are actually one of the best things about this album. anyway, for my money, the best songs are on the run and any colour you like, and at the risk of causing outrage, breathe is perhaps the most affecting moment on the album.

also i'm always on the lookout for another wingman. please send applications to austin_needs_a_wing✧✧✧@doram✧✧✧.c✧✧ all applications automatically accepted and approved. welcome aboard.

LOL IT'S NOT A REAL EMAIL ADDRESS YOU STUPID ROBOT

WHAT AN ABSOLUTE FOOLE

"seeking wingman (no r*bots)"

a love supreme also very shitty w/o vocals, btw

It’s been a while but I’m getting huge “raccoon tanuki” vibes from the candyman in this thread

This is elevators easy for me but Millennium has a special place in my heart

The top 3 in this poll are my top three. I don't remember much about the other tracks.

new anniversary reissue coming with 14 instrumental tracks, sure to please the ilxor.com inner cabal with their dogmatic agenda

https://pitchfork.com/news/outkast-announce-25th-anniversary-reissue-of-atliens/

released twenty five years ago today. perfect album.

Their best

rt

my favorite rap record

it's up there

I should feel like shit for skipping "Decatur Psalm" eh

no. you're a good person and you don't deserve to feel bad.

(but that beat _is_ one of the album's best and i personally love to relish in it. you do you tho.)