BIG BOI & DRE PRESENT OUTKAST

Outkast: Big Boi, Dre. Additional personnel includes: Killer Mike. "The Whole World" (w/ Killer Mike) won the 2003 Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance By A Duo Or Group. While on the surface, Outkast's initial single, 1994's "Player's Ball," may have seemed like just another hip-hop-word-of-the-moment single, closer attention revealed the mushed-up, twister slang of the lyrics and the oddly droll angle on Yuletide packed into a pop-rap single of gangstas at play. Thereafter, Big Boi and Dre produced three solid, but under-appreciated albums in the '90s, remaining on the periphery of stardom with the occasional hit, and stirring a bit of controversy with "Rosa Parks." While enough of a buzz had built by 2000, no one could have predicted the intensely beautiful chaos and disorder permeating STANKONIA. From the smooth rasp of "So Fresh, So Clean" to the dark, rising anger encased in a hook too good not to be the #1 single it was "Ms. Jackson," to the fury of drums, tongue-twisters and revival refrains on the brilliantly incomprehensible "B.O.B." BIG BOI & DRE PRESENT includes all aforementioned hits and will likely add a few to the Outkast legend as the duo somehow manages to expand its horizons further. Of particular note, "The Whole World" starts off in a vaudeville world replete with tympani before a singsong chorus gives way to hip-hop style, an alluring and starkly original work, as is most of Outkast's catalogue of which this compilation with three new tracks gives a perfect sampling.