release date: Sep. 23, 2003
format: 2 cd
[album rate: 4 / 5] [3,86]
producer: André 3000, Big Boi [Outkast]
label: Arista - nationality: USA
Track highlights: Disc 1: 2. "Ghetto Musick" - 5. "The Way You Move" (feat. Sleepy Brown) - 9. "Church" - 13. "Knowing" - 16. "Reset" (feat. Khujo & Cee Lo Green) - - Disc 2: 4. "Happy Valentine's Day" - 5. "Spread" - 7. "Prototype" - 9. "Hey Ya!" (5 / 5) - 10. "Roses"
5th studio album by Outkast originally released by LaFace Records is like the predecessor Stankonia a release where André 3000 [André Benjamin] and Big Boi [Antwan Patton] has taken increasingly more control. The album is the band's most ambitious to date - released as a double disc cd with two hours and 14 mins. playing time. Unable to agree on which musical shape or direction to settle for led the duo to the decision to release two albums as one, where André and Big Boi would have the final say for their own disc on the double release. Big Boi is credited as songwriter on the majority of the songs on disc 1, labelled "Speakerboxxx", and André 3000 as songwriter on the songs on disc 2, "The Love Below".
The "Speakerboxxx" disc is the genre-wise most hip hop-styled collection and perhaps the disc where Outkast sounds the most like themselves keeping to known ingredients and continuing from where the left on Stankonia, although, with Outkast you know they explore and incorporate a great deal. They also use a lot of sampling, which is done very nicely. On "The Love Below" they thread on new territories, experiment and expand the genre further than before by implementing jazz and funk. André 3000 takes the band into the discotheque, and with songs like "Hey Ya!" and "Roses" they enter the charts everywhere, but it's also the most diverse and most experimental disc on the album.
The album is the band's best-selling album to date topping the US Billboard 200 list but also selling Diamond (which is 10 x Platinum; the album actually sold 11 x Platinum in the US alone: more than 11 million copies), and it received wide-spread acclaim and won three Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year; and it's enlisted on numerous best of lists, including "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die" as the second by the band.
The album was my first with the band, and for some time, I thought of it as their best, but after becoming familiar with their earlier albums and style, I think of it as a fine but rather peculiar and difficult great achievement.
Highly recommended.
[ allmusic.com 4,5 / 5, Blender, The Guardian 5 / 5, NME, Rolling Stone 4 / 5 stars ]
