23 September 2013

23rd September - Outkast's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below


Artist – Album: Outkast – Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
Released:  23rd September 2003
Sounds Like: Blog #266 – If you’re having blog problems I feel bad for you son; I’ve got 99 blogs to go and then I’m done.”

I’ve gone a little bit creative on today’s post. Below I’ve prepared a Venn Diagram to show the common factors that lead to a band releasing the dreaded double album:


Sitting right slap bang in that darker blue middle bit is Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, their follow up to the near-perfect Stankonia. At times on the record, André 3000 and Big Boi appear to be prospectors who have struck upon a powerful rich seam of creativity, from which they have ecstatically drilled and tapped; the lucky buggers blissfully oblivious to the drenching their clothes and hair are receiving from the excess quality-spray. Elsewhere though their heads appear to have swollen to planetary proportions, and they just had to release a similarly bloated record to show that to all their hip hop contemporaries they are considerably better than yow.

Of the 40 (40!) tracks on display here, 10 say could be cut-and-pasted into a contender for one of the all time greatest albums (for my money: ‘Ghetto Musick’, ‘Unhappy’, ‘Bowtie’, ‘The Way You Move’, ‘The Rooster’, ‘Flip Flop Rock’, ‘Spread’ ‘Prototype’, ‘Hey Ya!’ and ‘Roses’). Unfortunately, any album that lasts two and half hours long reeks of self-indulgence, and there are times in The Love Below set (let’s settle any arguments once and for all, this is by far the worst of the two) when it seems like André 3000 is just making it up as he goes along, safe in the knowledge that the listener will not have made it beyond the exceptional hits.

Albumaday... rating: 7/10

Speakerboxxx

1.       Intro – 1:29
2.       Ghetto Musick – 3:56
3.       Unhappy – 3:19
4.       Bowtie – 3:56
5.       The Way You Move – 3:54
6.       The Rooster – 3:57
7.       Bust – 3:08
8.       War – 2:43
9.       Church – 3:27
10.   Bamboo – 2:09
11.   Tomb of the Boom – 4:46
12.   E-Mac – 0:24
13.   Knowing – 3:32
14.   Flip Flop Rock – 4:35
15.   Interlude – 1:15
16.   Reset – 4:35
17.   D-Boi – 0:40
18.   Last Call – 3:57
19.   Bowtie – 0:34

The Love Below

1.       The Love Below – 1:27
2.       Love Hater – 2:49
3.       God – 2:20
4.       Happy Valentine’s Day – 2:53
5.       Spread – 3:51
6.       Where Are My Panties? – 1:54
7.       Prototype – 5:26
8.       She Lives in My Lap – 4:27
9.       Hey Ya! – 3:55
10.   Roses – 6:09
11.   Good Day, Good Sir – 1:24
12.   Behold a Lady – 4:37
13.   Pink & Blue – 5:04
14.   Love in War – 3:25
15.   She’s Alive – 4:06
16.   Dracula’s Wedding – 2:32
17.   My Favorite Things – 5:14
18.   Take Off Your Cool – 2:38
19.   Vibrate – 6:38
20.   A Life in the Day of Benjamin André (Incomplete) – 5:11

Listen to ‘Bowtie’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvF03ISh3W8
Also released on 23rd September:
1991: Pixies – Trompe le Monde
Also released on 23rd September:
2003: Rufus Wainwright – Want One


Also released on 23rd September:
2008: Jenny Lewis – Acid Tongue

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