Speakerboxxx/The Love Below by Outkast: A double-sided tale of hip-hop and Love

After being signed by LaFace Records in 1992, they released their first single ‘Player’s Ball,’ with a Christmassy and unique hip-hop sound, which shot to the top of the ‘Billboard Hot Rap Tracks chart.

With success at the young age of seventeen, Outkast was already destined for greatness and began working on their debut album, Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, released on April 26th 1994. 

Some of the most notable singles include Player’s Ball and Crumblin’ Erb.

Their fifth studio album, 'Speakerboxxx/The Love Below' is a cleverly crafted Hip-Hop masterpiece which allows both Andre and Big Boi to showcase their immense talent, accompanied by beautiful and comical music videos. 

The album is split into two parts with Big Boi mostly taking the lead on 'Speakerboxxx 'and Andre taking the lead on 'The Love Below.'

Speakerboxxx is a mix of the Southern Atlanta rap sound that was prominent during the come-up of Outkast and other fellow pioneers of the Atlanta sound such as T.I. 

The two singles released from the album were The Way You Move and Hey Ya! Both have accompanying music videos.

The music video for The Way You Move is set in an Autoparts garage with women dressed in tank tops and shorts working on the vehicles, both Big Boi and Sleepy Brown enter with a short dialogue, followed by the camera panning to a mustard, yellow Cadillac. 

The first verse opens with the infamous “Boooom boooom booooooom,” by Big Boi which sets the tone and allows him to dive deeply into his snappy flow at the beginning of the song. 

The backing vocals are by Sleepy Brown, who lays down some notes over the ensemble of the horns during the enthusiastic chorus. 

The song is fun, groovy and extremely catchy; the video perfectly captures the essence of the ‘pimp’ lifestyle: surrounded by drop-dead gorgeous women, wearing suits with a flat or high hat and to top it all off, tinted sunglasses.

Hey Ya! was the complete opposite compared to the flashy nature of The Way You Move, the song itself is from Andre 3000’s half of the album which had a heavy romantic sentiment. Andre says Hey Ya! focuses on: “The state of relationships in the 2000s. It’s about some people who stay together in a relationship because of tradition.” 

Whilst the song has an upbeat tempo with the video having an elaborate display of dancing inspired by the 60s, the undertones of the song itself are particularly sombre.

In the opening verse of the song, Andre contradicts himself with the idea that his partner loves him but is not sure whether she is staying with him to fight the feeling of being lonely and essentially staying with him out of pity.

Therefore he is feeling some sort of insecurity within this relationship and wishes to gain clarity in order to put his mind at ease.

The second verse further illustrates Andre’s feelings of uncertainty: “So why, why oh, why oh, why oh, why oh… Are we so in denial when we know we’re not happy here? Y’all don’t wanna hear me, you just wanna dance.” 

Andre is wondering if this relationship is simply being held up by guilt and ignoring obvious feelings, which could end up in flames and just tolerating each other potentially leading an unhappy life.

Being extremely fond of OutKast myself, I thoroughly enjoyed this album. I feel like both Andre and BigBoi work together so well but this album allowed me to experience them each individually showing off their strongest assets. Andre being the heartless romantic, with an angelic music video for ‘Prototype,’ where he is in a blooming bliss with Andre singing his romantic interlude to the female protagonist.

The song has been covered numerous times by some familiar names such as Tame Impala and DRAM.

BigBoi gave us unique, stylised rapping accompanied by his witty lines and up-tempo beats with ‘War’ coming to mind. They are one of my favourite duos and I am convinced that Atlanta breeds some of the greatest musicians.

I would recommend checking out ‘Hip Hop Evolution’ on Netflix for more on OutKast and the introduction to Hip Hop itself - Definitely worth the watch!