Outkast, Aquemini and Their Incredible Legacy
Looking at Outkast’s groundbreaking Aquemini album and the incredible mark they left on hip hop.
Outkast (Big Boi and André 3000), despite not releasing an album in almost 15 years continue to have an unmatched influence on hip hop culture.
Many fans regard their albums ATLiens, Aquemini and Stankonia not just pivotal hip hop albums, but among the greatest of all time. Their third album was Aquemini released back in 1998.
It was a turning point for the duo as it marked a departure from their traditional southern hip hop sound to something more experimental.
André (Gemini) and Big Boi (Aquarius) continue the soundscape created by ATLiens with the sci-fi theme strongly running throughout and features many uses of live instrumentation.
Producer Neal H. Pogue said the recording of the album had musicians from “prog rock to funk”. Around the time of Aquemini André began dating neo-soul singer Erykah Badu who had a profound influence on his style going forward adopting crazy wigs, dresses and an overall more androgynous, almost glam rock style.
This created a dichotomy in the duo as Big Boi was traditionally sporting more traditional hip hop clothing including sports jerseys and sneakers while André had a more abstract image.
André 3000 and Ms Badu have one son together, born in 1997. Their stylistic divide hit melting point in 2003 in which their album ‘Speakerboxxx / The Love Below’, a double LP where both artists had a solo album, this meant the duo only collaborated on a few songs together. This project spawned their biggest hit to date ‘Hey Ya’.
Aquemini marks the last Outkast album (predominantly) produced by Organized Noize. Organized Noize is a production group consisting of Sleepy Brown, Ray Murray and Rico Wade, the latter of which is the cousin of modern rap titan Future.
Future had his start in the Dungeon Family music collective under a group called Da Connect back in 2003 when he went by the stage name ‘Meathead’.
Stylistically Aquemini effortlessly incorporates elements of G-funk, southern hip hop, boom bap and R&B to create the record’s sound palette, to this day the record sounds timeless.
Aquemini was one of the hip hop albums selected by Marvel comics in 2015 for the Marvel hip hop covers project where Big Boi and André were transformed into the Uncanny Inhumans.
Image from Marvel Comics.
Listen to Outkast on Spotify and Apple Music here.
