Don’t believe the hype about Idlewild, the much-delayed soundtrack to OutKast’s feature film debut, of the same name. Yes, the movie and album acknowledge the tenuous relationship between Big Boi and André 3000. Yes, the two continue to record separately. However, OutKast is not breaking up, and Idlewild is by no means a substandard album. As with most 25 track albums, its quality is inconsistent. Yet OutKast continue to explore their unique musical universe with thrilling results.
Big Boi picks up where he left off on Speakerboxxx, with soulful, horn-laden odes to his loves, his lusts and his personal ambition. Sleepy Brown and Scar accompany Big Boi on three of the best songs on the album: “Peaches,” a funky concoction of bass, guitar and keyboards with lyrics about resilience in the face of marital strife; the single, “Morris Brown,” an exuberant song featuring the Morris Brown College Band and produced by André 3000; finally, “The Train,” which is a personal, affecting lyrical moment for Big Boi. It details his joy at the birth of his child, his tears at the death of his aunt and his life-affirming optimism in the face of any professional or personal struggle.
As for André 3000, he wants everyone to stop worrying about him and let him do his thing, whether that is following his musical muse in the privacy of the recording studio or aspiring to be an actor while the world watches. He says as much on the other single, “Idlewild Blue (Don’t Chu Worry ’Bout Me),” an acoustic-guitar blues by way of Prince. “Chronomentrophobia” is an anxious song which morphs from a piano ballad verse into an electronic funk chorus before it closes abruptly with a rap throw down from a testy André 3000, once again predicting the end of OutKast.
Elsewhere, André reflects on his and Big Boi’s burgeoning careers in Hollywood. On the sprightly keyboard number “Life is Like a Musical” André puts it plainly: “The ’Kast go Hollywood / Don’t let ’em change us.”
One of Andre’s most compelling productions here is “Hollywood Divorce.” In between Andre’s mournful chorus about a metaphorical small-town marriage ending in Hollywood divorce, various all-star rappers offer a different spin on the same misfortune. Lil Wayne contributes a staggering, effortless-sounding verse full of internal rhymes and clever wordplay that critique the intrusion of Hollywood into the Hurricane Katrina tragedy, the commoditization of the urban black lifestyle for Hollywood movies and then critiques that same lifestyle, even indicting himself as another grill-wearing rapper. André 3000 follows, opening with defiant bluster and misogyny before stating his point: It’s all about money, whether you like it or not, so invest wisely.
Big Boi takes critics and haters to task, while Snoop Dogg bemoans a marriage gone sour. These four rappers explore the metaphor extensively, but for André. it comes down to the white powers-that-be exploiting black ingenuity and talent. It’s heady stuff in rap but par for the course for OutKast.
There is much to explore on Idlewild, and it is worth skipping past a few half-baked show tunes and questionable experiments to hear music made by two talented men unfettered by genre boundaries and filled with personal, social and artistic conviction.
