“Go on’ and marinate on that for a minute…”

We couldn’t resist. With Big Boi unleashing what is practically a new Outkast record and Cee-Lo dropping heaps of new material, we felt the time was right to shed some light on a certified Outkast classic, Aqeuemini from 1998 (Stankonia is not bad either). Containing records that sit comfortably in the realms of funk, neo-soul, boom-bap rap and even rock without losing any coherence, the album serves as a microcosm of Outkast’s career; time and again proving that Andre 3000 and Big Boi can do just about anything, and do it right.

Along with Black Star’s debut album, Aqeumini was given to me as ’the hottest shit out there’ by a family friend from New York around the time of its release. Could I have got a better schooling in hiphop music? One duo contained all the elements that made New York hiphop so great, while the other showed how far the genre could go from there. Outkast stood firm in their musical roots while exploring just about all other terrain, and every genre-crossing MC around today owes their career to Sir Lucious Left Foot and Andre 3 Stacks: Kid Cudi, Kanye West, Drake, B.O.B.; you name them.

So, end rant and onto the album itself. It’s always been the more experimental half of it that sat best with me. ’Slump’ is Californian g-funk steeped in that Atlanta twang, the 8-minute opus ’Liberation’ pits Erykah Badu and Cee-Lo against each other as if the album lacked vocal talent. ’Chonkyfire’ convinces us that an album of Dre and Big Boi out-rapping each other would have sufficed, but Aquemini’s brightest moment comes when they choose not to emcee. ’Spottieottiedopalicious’ is a half-spoken, half-sung account of endless nights in the South, sublimely capping off a century of incredible music to come out of the region. Give it 40 seconds to captivate you.

Words Sven Carlsson

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Buy Aquemini at Amazon