Electronic Musician Presents the Recording Secrets Behind 50 Great Albums by Gordon Kylee Swenson

Author:Gordon, Kylee Swenson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hal Leonard
Published: 2012-04-30T23:00:00+00:00

17

Outkast

The friendly competition and mixing experimentation behind Speakerboxxx/The Love Below

By Joe Silva

Portions of this chapter appeared in the August 2003 and August 2004 issues of Remix and Electronic Musician magazines.

We are rolling in a ridiculously immaculate Land Rover beneath a calm Atlanta skyline just after sunset. All day long, the first real hints of the coming Georgia summer, amped by heavy traffic, have seized the city. But the serene evening cool outside is in direct contrast to the massive sounds pumping through the car’s stereo. The music is loud. The music, in fact, is so painfully loud that all of the enamel in my teeth has literally started to throb as we go from track to track. Our pilot for the evening, Andre Benjamin, is 50 percent of hip-hop’s most daring duo and co-author of the new Outkast album Speakerboxxx/The Love Below: a double CD that, by all indications, sounds like another massive triumph. But below Benjamin’s chilled exterior is an undercurrent of mild anxiety.

“Right now, I’m terrified,” he says. “Right before Stankonia came out, I was terrified. I didn’t know what people would think, because it’s always so different from what’s going on at the time that it could go either way. Like with ATLiens … that was like stepping out. Ever since then, every time the album is coming out, you have doubts.”

No MC Is an Island

Benjamin’s massive afro heads skyward, and with the sedate clothing he sports, he seems very much apart from the platinum-blond-wigged persona tagged Andre 3000 that helped Outkast score two Grammy Awards and multiple-platinum sales. As we pull into his favorite local vegetarian restaurant, he is the picture of understatement and reserve. The new album has been pushed back twice now, and several things are still not quite ready. Several verses (not mixes, verses) aren’t done, but they are still moving toward a fall release. Working separately, he and Antwan “Big Boi” Patton were set to release solo albums, but timing eventually worked against that idea.

“I started to see a theme coming, so I thought, ‘Hey, I want to put out a solo album.’ And my manager and Big Boi said, ‘Nah, you can’t do that.’ And I was like, ‘Why?’ And they said that after the Grammys, people will be expecting the next Outkast album and that you can’t just come with a solo album. I was pissed off and said, ‘Well, I’m just going to give all this music away,’” he says, laughing. “I was for real!”

But once he saw his partner steadily at work, Patton also got busy. “Big Boi got on his horse because he saw I was already finished with my album, and he hurried up and did his,” Benjamin says. “So Big Boi said, ‘I’m gonna come out with my solo album.’ And nobody said anything; they were just going to let him do it. He was scheduled to come out in February, and mine was scheduled to come out this summer. But I said that it’s

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.