Outkast, Speakerboxx

I decided to review this album separately from its partner-in-crime, The Love Below, since Outkast split their duties accordingly, and they're such different albums besides.

I bought this album originally because I am a fan of Andre 3000, and I figured I'd like a few songs on Big Boi's side as well.

Listening to Speakerboxx makes me think of my return to graduate school. Some of the coursework involved math: statistics, microeconomics, etc. I hadn't taken a math class since high school, mostly because I'm just not a fan of the subject, but I figured that, given the time away, I'd be able to develop a newfound appreciation for it. Not so, as it turns out. Math continued to be an absolute bear for me, both in terms of the amount of energy required to understand it and in terms of my lack of enthusiasm for it.

Speakerboxx is the same way - I thought I might like it better after several years of having buried it inside one of my Caselogics, but I just don't like the sound. First, I like rappers to be more emotive - even Jay-Z has some range to his voice - but Big Boi is often nearly monotone, and his rhymes, clever as they sometimes are, don't manage to outweigh the narrowness of the aural experience that is him.

The Venn diagram of his instrumental choices and my musical tastes wouldn't overlap much, either - I don't like his beats very much, nor even the sound of his percussion, and that goes for the synthesizers, hoochie-lady backing vocals, etc. Maybe it's this: I always get the sense that Andre 3000 is joking, and that Big Boi is completely serious, and I gravitate towards Costello instead of Abbott.