Speakerboxxx/The Love Below [PA] by OutKast (CD, Sep-2003, 2 Discs, LaFace Records)

First, Big Boi's "Speakerboxxx": Fire from the get go. You first put it in and you notice Ghettomusick, Bowtie, The Way You Move, The Rooster, Bust, War, Church, Tomb of the Boom, Knowing, Flip Flop Rock, Last Call... pretty much the entire CD. Play it in your car, play it loud... it's awesome.

Second, Dre's "The Love Below": Takes some time to get used to, but then its just as hot if not hotter than Big Boi's. My favorite tracks on Dre's CD are: Roses, Happy Valentine's Day, Dracula's Wedding, A Day in the Life of Benjimann Andre, Hey Ya, and pretty much the whole CD, especially after I got used to the sound. Some get at Dre for ditching the rap, but he said it himself that Hip Hop doesn't inspire him anymore. Just because he has an interesting and different voice does NOT mean he can't sing.

Give this album a try... especially Dre's side. Most fans will appreciate Big Boi's side at first but once you listen to Andre's more than once or twice you will realize its true greatness.

5/5

Is an album good if you have to think about whether you like it or not? In the very least it makes it an interesting and provoking album. Some people dig this, some people don't -- all you need to know is that you're not getting one two-disc album, you are getting two one-disc albums. Because of that, there are two wildly disparate sound qualities.

I think the greatest failing of this effort -- and it's a minor "greatest" -- is that it sits exactly at the cross-streets of hip hop and rap. One on kitty-corner, you've got Andre Benjamin's THE LOVE BELOW, and on the other it's Antwan Patterson's SPEAKERBOXXX. I'm not going to get into the semantics of hip hop's definition except to say 'BOXXX is a more logical extension of the path of Outkast whereas 'BELOW is entirely something else -- oddly, I feel 'BELOW is deeper entrenched in hip hop while 'BOXXX is less so.

This, I know, seems counter-intuitive because there's simply more rapping on 'BOXXX and, what the heck? Singing on 'BELOW?

'BOXXX is a marvelous Dirty South record. It's lyrically heads & shoulders above almost anything coming out of that region, for my money. Some of it is made for the radio, and all of it is well-produced. It's got mass appeal, and I'm fairly certain it would have been pretty popular if Outkast wasn't already popular to begin with. Everyone tells me their first cd is the best, and honestly I haven't listened to it. From what I gather, I think people have come to a firm conclusion of what Outkast was all about, and 'BOXXX is certainly in-tune with that musical vision. Big Boi is a playa and a bit of a hustla. I imagine him in gators and toothpicks whenever I think of him, not to mention the platinum fronts. He's phenomenally gifted as a verbal stylist and has really come into his own.

Whenever there is a two-man hip hip group, I tend to immediately rank one as the head and the other as the disciple. For instance, it's clear that amongst Tribe Called Quest, Q-Tip has the chops while Phife was still learning with their first cd (that little guy barely even features). Black Eyed Peas is mostly Will I am, with everyone else thrown in for color. Sometimes this ranking is unfair and ill-placed. Latyrx, for example, is composed of equally talented emcees.

I've always considered Andre3000 to be the more talented of the group, but I thnk it's fairer to say he is the more daring. Once Outkast really started riding that rocket to worldwide acceptance and acclaim, the divergence of styles was clear. Andre would wear odd clothes, wigs, etc. Gone was the Southern playa pimp role, replaced by something a bit futuristic and not a little feminine. Fans would still appreciate Dre because he was still on-topic and brutally fearsome lyrically. There's a divine confidence that imbues Dre, which has resulted in an album some fans have considered an actual slap in the face. 'BELOW. Singing? About love? COME ON! The thing is, one of the limitations of rap is that no matter how good rap is, it's always this speech. A rapper tells you what's on his mind. Sometimes there is a story involved, but usually it's very abstract. In 'BELOW, Dre becomes the story. Eminem is good at this sort of thing. Lyrics Born is great at this. I'm sure there are plenty of captains in this industry, but I'm running out of space. 'BELOW is an honest story about falling in love and losing it. It weaves in and out of narrative, illustrating it with punchy tracks as well as points of introspection.

I saw a great buy on eBay and I decided to get it. My two favorite songs are Roses and Hey Ya!. This Cd comes with two discs and it is like Andre 3000's and Big Boi's solo albums. If you like Hip-Hop you will like Andre 3000's half and if you like Rap/Hip-Hop you will like Big Boi's half. Big Boi has Speakerboxxx and Andre 3000's is called The Love Below. If you're a big fan I hope you will buy this cd and I hope you enjoy it.

Vulgar, crude, and occasionally scandalous in its racial humor, this hilarious bad-taste spoof of Westerns, co-written by Richard Pryor, features Cleavon Little as the first black sheriff of a stunned town scheduled for demolition by an encroaching railroad. Little and co-star Gene Wilder have great chemistry, and the delightful supporting cast includes Harvey Korman, Slim Pickens, and Madeline Kahn as a chanteuse modelled on Marlene Dietrich. As in Young Frankenstein (1974), Silent Movie (1976), and High Anxiety (1977), director/writer Mel Brooks gives a burlesque spin to a classic Hollywood movie genre; in his own manic, Borscht Belt way, Brooks was a central player in revising classic genres in light of Seventies values and attitudes, an effort most often associated with such directors as Robert Altman and Peter Bogdanovich . Some of this film's sequences, notably a gaseous bean dinner around a campfire, have become comedy classics.

Mel Brooks at his ribald, tasteless best, Blazing Saddles stands out as one of the all-time great film spoofs. Sparing no one from his outrageous brand of humor, Brooks proved he was an egalitarian when it came to making fun of people, regardless of skin color or religious persuasion: where blacks may come off as stereotypical, whites are seen as just plain stupid and ignorant. Beyond its over-the-top humor and genre revision of the Western, Blazing Saddles boasts some great performances, with Madeline Kahn, Gene Wilder, and Slim Pickens doing some of the best work of their careers. It also features a number of scenes that have elevated the film into the realm of the comedy classic, perhaps most infamously the one involving beans, a campfire, and the most gratuitous display of flatulence ever to cloud a movie screen.

For those of you Outcast fans this is by far the best album! The best part about it is the great deals you can find on ebay! Brand new, fresh, hot, Andre 3000! It includes all the great hits like, Roses, Hey Ya, Spread, and I Love the Way You Move! 5 STARS!