4. So Fresh, So Clean

What makes a musician an artist? What makes success sweet? How much of the building would crumble to rubble, if the knuckleheads wouldn't stabilize the walls? How overcrowded would a dance floor be, if the thugs, wouldn't be generous enough to nod standing around the periphery? Any chance there will be an album, not necessarily liked by everyone, but maybe respected or at least not dissed by anyone? When will OutKast fall off?

"All my heroes did dope / every nigga 'round me playin' married or payin' child support". It's almost unbearable, the heavy metal guitar in the back, the wanted annoyance, only reflecting the real life hassles and crookedness, that "Gasoline Dreams" feat. Khujo of the Goodie Mob, talks about. The Cadillac's are polished again and parade along "So Fresh, So Clean", one of three Organized Noise produced tracks. But when the windshield wiper, wipes the windscreen of your eyes clean, you see behind the front. "Let her know her grandchild is a baby and not a paycheck / Private school, daycare shit, medical bills, I pay that". Like clothes that are bleached by the sun through time, so love wears off, "forever never seems that long, until you're grown and notice that the day-by-day ruler can't be too wrong". A piano on "Ms. Jackson" is like the pillow, soaked in tears, that tries to get the separated back together.

During "Snappin' & Trappin'", thunder and lightning fight for being the scarier part of this storm, before combining their forces, "even loving lavish, ladies, leaving landmarks / of lemon-lime, lip gloss on your lavender lapels / leaping lizards, keep me slizzard, my mind's expanding". Where are the boarders, the hard shoulders, that prevent crashes during "D.F." (Interlude). Are we listening to the most experimental, the most courageous? And how do they so easily accomplish to tickle all them hard knocks outta their shell, making them putting up with unconformity, like on "Spaghetti Junction"? Usually such albums are left neglected. What's the magic of OutKast? Doing a Madonna "I Don't Live Here Anymore" on "I'll Call Before I Come" feat. Gangsta Boo & Eco, a playful, smiling "and naw, I don't want to see your thongs / I kinda like them old school cute regular draws". Things are different with Sesame Street eroticism "now I make it a point to please you". And the ladies are pulling the strings.

"B.O.B." will be remembered as one of the truest great hip hop tracks of all time. Visionary and exploring, what others shouldn't, mustn't try to copy. This is music that makes legends out of artists. This is lived detailism. Like the guitar during the chorus shows the appreciation for small ideas. Shocking at first, the blatantness of the pace, the organ, the stomping, the 'power music', the 'electric revival'. And they get away with it. And they assemble new forces, calling B-Real for "Xplosion". Rebels with ammunition. Soul hashish. Who else could combine such elementaryness with raunchiness, making these two different star systems meat? What's got "We Luv Deez Hoez" feat. BackBone & Big Gipp of Goodie Mob to do with the bossanova engine of "Humble Mumble" feat. Erykah Badu? This is at first like the cat bus in Totoro, that is carrying you through the night, seeing life from an aerial perspective, before things picking up pace after the first stop, "and a quote for collision the decision / is do you want to live or wanna exist / the game changes everyday, so obsolete is the first".

The marching band is stomping again on "?", a short an angry track, asking "what can make a nigga wanna take another nigga life / what can make a nigga wanna do another nigga wife". Of course the questions remain unanswered and is only completed with more questions on "Red Velvet", with a comicsidized André going "how can you measure a nigga by multiple figures / he may got, got, got / had he not purchased the newest Mercedes / that loses value soon as you drive that bitch off the lot, lot, lot". The wah wah guitar is another instrumental high point on this record, but the whole of "Gangsta Shit" (produced by Carl Mo) is not as unappealing as the title would have us expect. With Slimm Calhound, as well as C-Bone and T-Mo from the Goodie Mob on the track, it goes a little too often through the hook, but this is probably as right on to all the hustlers, as the stuff on "Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik" was, with the most lyrical moment belonging to André who says "them niggas are hard / harder than a nigga trying to impress God / we'll pull your whole deck, fuck pulling your card / and still take my guitar and take a walk in the park / and play the sweetest melody the street ever heard / now bitches sucking on my nouns and I'm eating their verbs".

Making "Toilet Tisha" a George Clinton P-Funk like exhibition, that surprisingly enough gives us Big Boi doing a spoken word and deep piece. The OutKast team up with Cee-Lo to do "Slum Beautiful" and end the album with "Stankonia (Stanklove)", where Big Rube and Sleepy Brown lend their voices to this crazy example. This track could be called 'LSD is boring', as it will be sucking you in and chewing you with custard like blankets, sticking to you like a bugger to your finger, truly inducing some serious reconsideration of the clarity of your view. And by now, we just know, we have witness the future. Futurism art. And we hope that people are not out to try to draw characters of this blueprint, they'd only be falling short in their trying. OutKast might just be the first hip hop group that enjoys the label's support, those rock music dudes already have for the longest, that allows 'em to develop their art the way they want, that allows them to really do whatever they want to do. And with their music, they might just be the only hip hop act, ever to accomplish to get street, purists, backpacker, club dancer, ghetto, charts, sales and turntable wreckers' support at the same time. Damn, we've just witnessed one of the most exciting releases of this year.