Artist – Album: Outkast
– Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
Released:
23rd September 2003
Sounds Like: Blog #266
– “If you’re having blog
problems I feel bad for you son; I’ve got 99 blogs to go and then I’m done.”
I’ve gone a little bit creative on today’s post. Below I’ve prepared a Venn Diagram to show the common factors that lead to a band releasing the dreaded double album:
Sitting right slap bang in that darker blue middle bit is Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, their follow up to the near-perfect Stankonia. At times on the record, André 3000 and Big Boi appear to be prospectors who have struck upon a powerful rich seam of creativity, from which they have ecstatically drilled and tapped; the lucky buggers blissfully oblivious to the drenching their clothes and hair are receiving from the excess quality-spray. Elsewhere though their heads appear to have swollen to planetary proportions, and they just had to release a similarly bloated record to show that to all their hip hop contemporaries they are considerably better than yow.
Of the 40 (40!) tracks on display here, 10 say could be cut-and-pasted into a contender for one of the all time greatest albums (for my money: ‘Ghetto Musick’, ‘Unhappy’, ‘Bowtie’, ‘The Way You Move’, ‘The Rooster’, ‘Flip Flop Rock’, ‘Spread’ ‘Prototype’, ‘Hey Ya!’ and ‘Roses’). Unfortunately, any album that lasts two and half hours long reeks of self-indulgence, and there are times in The Love Below set (let’s settle any arguments once and for all, this is by far the worst of the two) when it seems like André 3000 is just making it up as he goes along, safe in the knowledge that the listener will not have made it beyond the exceptional hits.
Albumaday... rating: 7/10
Speakerboxxx
1. Intro
– 1:29
2. Ghetto
Musick – 3:56
3. Unhappy
– 3:19
4. Bowtie
– 3:56
5. The
Way You Move – 3:54
6. The
Rooster – 3:57
7. Bust
– 3:08
8. War
– 2:43
9. Church
– 3:27
10. Bamboo
– 2:09
11. Tomb
of the Boom – 4:46
12. E-Mac
– 0:24
13. Knowing
– 3:32
14. Flip
Flop Rock – 4:35
15. Interlude
– 1:15
16. Reset
– 4:35
17. D-Boi
– 0:40
18. Last
Call – 3:57
19. Bowtie
– 0:34
The Love Below
1. The
Love Below – 1:27
2. Love
Hater – 2:49
3. God
– 2:20
4. Happy
Valentine’s Day – 2:53
5. Spread
– 3:51
6. Where
Are My Panties? – 1:54
7. Prototype
– 5:26
8. She
Lives in My Lap – 4:27
9. Hey
Ya! – 3:55
10. Roses
– 6:09
11. Good
Day, Good Sir – 1:24
12. Behold
a Lady – 4:37
13. Pink
& Blue – 5:04
14. Love
in War – 3:25
15. She’s
Alive – 4:06
16. Dracula’s
Wedding – 2:32
17. My
Favorite Things – 5:14
18. Take
Off Your Cool – 2:38
19. Vibrate
– 6:38
20. A
Life in the Day of Benjamin André (Incomplete) – 5:11
Listen to ‘Bowtie’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvF03ISh3W8
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Also released on 23rd September:
1991: Pixies – Trompe le Monde
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Also released on 23rd September:
2003: Rufus Wainwright – Want One
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Also released on 23rd September:
2008: Jenny Lewis – Acid Tongue
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