OutKast In The Promised Land
By: Miles Marshall Lewis
     Final exams at Morehouse College were a bitch.  Nearly four in the
morning on a starry autumn night years ago, I found myself making a trek
up Buford Highway to a 24-hour Quick Mart.  Amped on Vivarin, crammed
sociological theories floated through my mind.  A white van drove quickly
up the long avenue, and I caught eye with a passenger-side traveler
leaning out his window.  "Nigger!!" he exclaimed at 80 miles an hour, and
continued to hurtle through the night.
     Months later, a friend and I attempted in vain to find Spring Street,
tucked away nearly a mile from Atlanta’s town center, the Underground
mall complex.  The party of the weekend was thumping somewhere nearby, and
after searching unsuccessfully, we approached a car at an intersection for
directions.  Advancing, we heard the click of an automatic lock; the white
family of four stared ahead, in oblivious disregard to our pleas for
assistance.  As the traffic light changed, the car roared off, as if we had
been invisible men.
     This is the environment that birthed OutKast.  Not the media-friendly
"City Too Busy to The," "the Motown of the South," or "the New Black Mecca;"
this is another Atlanta, a city whose true essence was explored as saliently
by James Baldwin in The Evidence of Things Not Seen (an essay on the
Atlanta child murders of the late 1970s) as by OutKast on their 1994 debut,
Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik.
     The dichotomy of the South hosting the 1996 Olympic Games while 80 Black
churches have been burned to the ground in the past six years is ironic.  In
the least, Atlanta itself has always been concerned with promoting appearances
that belie its inherent contradictions; a city with a two-thirds Black
population and three Black mayors that continues to fly a Confederate flag,
for example.
     Andre Benjamin and Antoine "Big Boi" Patton first joined forces at
East Point’s suburban TriCities High School (alma mater to fellow alumni
Xscape).  Big Boi was native to nearby Savannah, while Andre originally
hailed from Decatur; and though Dre failed to finish high school (recently
earning a General Equivalency Diploma), OutKast were signed to LaFace
Records by label head L.A. Reid as teenagers.  Their Organized Noize-produced
blend of Southern Player Cadillac music and flow earned the duo a 1995
SOURCE Award for Best New Group of Duo.  The memorable event found Big Boi
venting at the ambivalent New York attendees.  "The South got something to
say," he spat in the face of the coastal rivalry brewing that summer night.
Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik subsequently sold on million copies
to hip-hop devotees across the nation, representing funkdafied Atlanta to
the masses as N.W.A once had for Compton on Straight Outta Compton.
     "Outcast adjective meaning homeless, or unaccepted in society, defined
Big Rube on "True Dat," from OutKast’s debut.  "A outcast is someone who
is not considered to be part of the normal world.  Now look at yourself.
Are you an outcast?  Wake up, niggas, and realized what’s going on around
you.  Take back your existence or die like a punk."  The coming of the
Olympic Games have produced dozens of homeless outcasts by the razing of
inner-city areas like Techwood to make room for the Olympic Village.
The clearance of low-income housing areas has taken place to erect
temporary sporting venues for the two-week long Olympic events.  Does
the end of presenting yet another polished image of Atlanta for the world
justify the means of dislocating its impoverished "outcasts?"
     James Baldwin said, of prosecuting Wayne Williams for the Atlanta
child murders, that "the presence of a Black administration proved that
‘the city too busy to hate’ could not be accused of administering
‘Southern’ justice. (It proved nothing of the sort, because Georgia still
belongs to the United States.)" American justice has often been blasted
for leaving Blacks to our own devides –read "just us."  OutKast embody
the product of such a system, with their pimp/player mentality, and
Southern lifestyle musings.  "Elevators," the first single from their new
LP, cements their presence on the hip-hop scene as "My Mind’s Playing
Tricks On Me" once did for the Geto Boys, with the catchiest hook of the
summer ("Me and your momma, and your cousin, too/ nRollin’ down the strip
on vogues/ Comin’ up slammin’ Cadillac doors"); the whole album, entitled
ATLiens, reprises their outsider status outlook.
     "It’s not your average, everyday album," Big Boi says of ATLiens,
with typical b-boy frankness.  "Listening to it, its very phenomenal.
It’s gonna take the whole hip-hop thing to a whole ‘nother level.  Don’s
expect the same ol’.  Just put it like this: it’s something different."
Even Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik offered something distinct to the
hip-hop form, with several songs six, seven minutes in length.  "Funky Ride"
actually featured a tail-end guitar solo, funky like the Isley Brothers.
     "We did like 30-something odd songs," Andre says of the recording
process, "and we cut it down to a tight 13, 14 cuts.  Some of our tightest
rhymes and beats.  We got Goodie Mob on the album.  I mean, it’s just a
whole collaboration between Organized Noize, OutKast and the whole family,
man." Goodie Mob, who presented their hip-hop in a less heavy-handed
fashion than local brethren Arrested Development with their debut
Soul Food, were first introduced two years ago on OutKast’s  "Git up,
Git Out," and "Call of Da Wild."
     Andre’s mention of family puts one in the mind of traditional Black
family reunions that commonly take place in the South.  The flavor that
John Singleton captured in the Johnson family reunion scene from
Poetic Justice speaks to the significance of community to
African-Americans, as does the Red Clay collective that includes OutKast,
the Goodie Mob, Organized Noize, Society of Soul and Mista
("Blackberry Molasses").  Similar in spirit to the Native Tongues or Boot
Camp Clik, this Red Clay troupe seek to relate their mutual vision through
diversification.
     Southern hospitality speaks to the essence of family as well, but this
hospitality is not always universally extended.  Static between local
Atlantans on the lower socioeconomic end and bourgeois college students of
the Atlanta University Center was effectively documented by Morehouse alum
Spike Lee in School Daze (with street person Samuel L. Jackson facing
off against college student Laurence Fishburne).  Andre tends to disagree,
from what he’s seen, "’Cause they right in the ‘hood, all the colleges and
everything.  So it’s like the whole city is together down there; they sticking
together, I guess."
     In fact, OutKast continue to hold on to the concept of the New Black
Mecca, though their very music speaks of ghettocentric angst.  Big Boi
feels "al the college students, when they come down for the Freaknik or
whatever, they see what’s going on in Atlanta.  They like the scenery,
they like everything about the city.  So eventually, some of ‘em come back
to stay here.  They get out of college and get a job, or either transfer
down to Clark, Morehouse, or Spelman just to be in the whole A.T.L.
atmosphere."
     Whenever away from their native South, OutKast never cease to
represent their habitat.  Talk of the east/west bicoastalism rivalry in
hip-hop culture has been an exhausted topic for some time, but they know
yet another coast.  Responding to the ambivalence and audible derision
from the audience after copping the Best New Group or Duo award, Big Boi
took a stand.
     "They ain’t really give a fuck about what we was doing," Big Boi now
says.  "If you wasn’t from New York, they was like, ‘fuck it.’  But it’s
like, we put all our goddamn time and effort in doing our albums.  Ad it
really don’t make no sense for them acting like that there."  He feels
that despite regionality, rap lovers should accept the realness universally.
"It’s just from another part of the globe.  Everybody’s going through the
same thing just about.  Only thing that’ll really change is just where you
from.  Because [hip-hop] music is all the same; ours just reflects the
Southern lifestyle."
     Alienation is often key to the appeal of music for youth culture—the
idea that no one understands a given listener except a particular singer or
rap artist that has sold millions of records.  OutKast, reflecting the
little-heard-from perspective of the South, play right into this equation.
The name of the group itself represents alienation and outsider status, a
practically copyrighted viewpoint for youth.  Or, in Andre’s own words:
"Being an alien is just being yourself, when people don’t understand you.
We just trying to let everybody know there’s a place for everybody in this
world.  You just gotta find yourself, and be true to yourself.  That’s how
you get prosperous and happy."  And after all the grimy ruckus, East to West,
isn’t that what we all go to the not-so-dirty South for?  To retreat beneath
the nearest peachtree, allowing the sun’s rays to bathe the outskirts of
your mind in peace and just be happy.