But it tends to come across as forced and awkward. It's a radically different notion of "old-school," Christina Aguilera's recent time warp notwithstanding. "Hey, let's make a musical!" Benjamin sings. On the album, Big Boi stars as an inspired, scene-stealing rapper who remains keenly interested in his craft, while Andre co-stars as a distracted, somewhat indifferent rapper who would rather sing and dabble in retro styles, from ragtime to swing. In "Idlewild" the movie, which opens Friday, Andre and Big Boi star as Prohibition-era musicians fighting off gangsters who want to take control of their speakeasy. There's also no single track as electrifying as 2003's "Hey Ya!" - a brilliant single that became so pervasive that its exhortation to "shake it like a Polaroid picture" wound up being quoted by CEOs on Wall Street. There will be no such plaudits for "Idlewild."įor all of its flashes of greatness - the brassy marching-band rap of "Morris Brown," the psychedelic hip-hop flashback "Train," the Stevie Wonder-inspired acoustic blues number "Idlewild Blue (Don'tchu Worry 'Bout Me)" - the staggeringly eclectic "Idlewild" includes too much filler and too many outright stink bombs to deserve a place alongside the best pop offerings of 2006, let alone "Aquemini," et al. ("Stankonia," too, topped Pazz and Jop, but it merely won the Grammy for rap album of the year.) The catalogue culminated with a terrific trio of innovative albums, 1998's "Aquemini," 2000's "Stankonia" and 2003's "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below" - the last of which was a commercial and critical smash that pulled off the rarest of doubles: Not only did it win the Grammy for album of the year, but it also finished atop the Village Voice's annual Pazz and Jop critics' poll. Andre 3000) and Antwan "Big Boi" Patton have set for themselves over the past dozen years, a period during which they've assembled one of hip-hop's greatest and deepest discographies. Such is the standard Andre Benjamin (a.k.a. It's supposed to do great, and anything that falls short is a failure. But OutKast isn't supposed to do pretty good. ![]() Tied to a film of the same name, the album is actually pretty good. I mean the group's incredible streak of classic CDs, which now comes to an abrupt halt with the release of "Idlewild." You OutKast fans didn't really think it would last forever, did you?īy this, I don't mean OutKast itself - even if the Atlanta hip-hop duo has been dogged by breakup rumors for most of this millennium, and deservedly so.
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