Stankonia (feat. C-Bone, C-Bone, Slimm Calhoun & Slimm Calhoun)

The most surprising thing about Outkast’s gradual ascendance to international pop superstardom is how little they’ve had to compromise their art along the way. With each release, from the heady playalistic funk of their 1994 debut to the unhinged futurist pop of their more recent work, Outkast and their Atlanta based production team Organized Noize have watched their audience swell and diversify along with their musical talents. Sonically expansive and thematically ambitious, deliriously eclectic and yet deliciously accessible, 2000’s Stankonia is an achievement of era-defining proportions. Over the course of twenty-four mind-expanding tracks Andre and Big Boi lay out a blueprint for the way music is supposed to sound in the 21st century. They draw on everything from assaultive Bomb Squad styled cut and paste chaos (“B.O.B”) to Prince’s sleek machine-tooled funk (“So Fresh So Clean”) to George Clinton’s post-modern word jumbles to create a wholly original and fiercely inimitable sound that, by the winter of 2000, could be heard blasting from trunk mounted speakerboxxes and day-glo video monitors the world over. With Stankonia Outkast executed a dizzying cultural blitzkrieg that allowed them to remake the post-millennial musical landscape in their own image. The importance of their accomplishment cannot be overstated.