← Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
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- [00:00]
Chris Melanfi
You're listening ad free on Amazon Music.
- [00:04]
Benjamin Frisch
Hey there Hit Parade listeners. This episode was originally released in May 2020 exclusively for Slate plus listeners. As of August 2023, it's now available for non subscribers. What you're about to hear is Part.
- [00:21]
Chris Melanfi
One of this episode.
- [00:23]
Benjamin Frisch
Part two will arrive in your podcast.
- [00:25]
Chris Melanfi
Feed at the end of the month.
- [00:27]
Benjamin Frisch
Would you like to hear every episode all at once? The day it Dr. Sign up for Slate Plus. It supports not only this show, but all of Slate's acclaimed journalism and podcasts. Just go to slate.com hit parade plus you'll get to hear every Hit Parade episode in full the Day it Arrives plus Hit Parade the Bridge, our bonus episodes with guest interviews, deeper dives on our episode topics, and pop chart trivia. Once again to join, that's slate.com hitparade plus thanks and now please enjoy part one of this hit Parade episode.
- [01:15]
Chris Melanfi
Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate Magazine about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanfy, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slate's why Is this Song Number One? Series on today's show. Twenty years ago, in the spring of 2000, a pair of rappers from Atlanta, Georgia were in the studio putting the finishing touches on an album that would change the trajectory of their career and arguably their hometown. It would turn outkast from leading figures in Southern hip hop to one of the biggest pop acts in America. They would call the album, released in the fall of 2000, Stankonia, and it would change the game, selling more copies than almost any Atlanta rap album that came before it. But it was not their first album, as outkast would take pains to tell their new fans later. And it was not a tepid or middle of the road album. Antoine, Big Boy Patton and Andre Benjamin, aka Andre 3000 made the mainstream come to them, not the other way around. Outkast helped change not just the sound, but the breadth of hip hop, including geographically. Rap in the 90s was infamously undergoing a coastal war between the east and the west, The very idea that Atlanta by the 21st century would become, according to the New York Times, hip hop's center of gravity was one Andre and Big Boy began envisioning from the start of their career. Of course, outkast were not the first chart topping act to come from the Atlantic. Atlanta had been producing vital music for decades, and in fact, outkast broke on an Atlanta label better known in the early 90s for its urban pop. Indeed, the hip hop that came out of Atlanta Before, Outkast was closer to pure population than rap. But outkast had a more expansive vision. They saw that hip hop could be everything music, a melting pot of styles. The musical universe that Outkast spawned would generate later spin off acts in the world of pop and would firmly establish Atlanta as a rap scene, thriving to this day. But perhaps the most improbable thing about Outkast was that for a few years in the early 2000s, they were also hot 100 topping pop stars, America's tastemakers, the arbiters of what was cool and what's cooler than being cool?
- [05:21]
Guest or Listener
I can't hear you. I say what's cooling and being cool.
- [05:25]
Chris Melanfi
Outkast's chart and cultural success was so enormous, they even won a very rare Grammy Award. The last rappers to do so. And this win effectively brought about outkast's self imposed demise. Today on Hit Parade, we will not only talk about how outkast moved rap permanently south, but how they expanded its sonic boundaries, affirming that hip hop would be the lingua franca of 21st century population. Even when Andre 3000 wasn't actually rapping, and even when the two members of Outkast were trading places at the top of the charts. And that's where your Hit Parade marches today, the week ending February 14, 2004, when Outcast replaced themselves at 1 on the Hot 100, the Big Boy fronted the Way youy Move replaced the Andre powered Hey Ya atop Billboard's flagship chart. And it all happened the same week. They were the toast of the Grammys. It was the culmination of a ride outkast had begun a decade earlier. But for the partnership of Big Boy and Dream, it was the beginning of the end. In our Whitney Houston episode of Hit Parade, we played you a snippet of a 1989 awards show, the Soul Train Music Awards, where Houston, coming off of her pop chart peak, was actually booed by the audience just for being nominated. Where do broken hearts go? Whitney Houston. This moment disappointed but also galvanized Houston, leading to a career comeback, particularly with black audiences, and brought about some of her biggest chart successes. Well, maybe getting raspberries on an awards show celebrating black culture is good luck in disguise. Because in 1995, it also happened to Outkast. Only unlike Whitney Houston, Outkast's searing awards show experience happened near the start of their career. And unlike Houston, outkast were not only nominated, they actually won the prize.
- [08:16]
Guest or Listener
And the winner is outkast.
- [08:21]
Chris Melanfi
Indeed, that was why they were getting booed. The win came at the 1995 Source Awards and Outkast were essentially collateral damage in a rap world beef they had nothing to do with. We'll talk about why in a few minutes, but first I I should explain how Outkast were nominated for that award in the first place. Andre and Big Boi were accepting the prize in New York, but they were from a city that until quite recently wasn't much known for rap at all. That's Hotlanta, an instrumental jam from The Allman Brothers Band's 1971 live album @ Fillmore East. The Allmans were not from Atlanta. The group formed in Jacksonville, Florida. But this track helped popularize and institutionalize the Hotlanta nickname and indeed the idea of Atlanta as a capital of music. For much of the 20th century, Atlanta was a major center for country music. By the 70s and 80s it played host to a variety of sounds, from R B groups like the SOS Band. To folk rockers like the Indigo Girls. But what began to transform Atlanta into a hit factory was a team we talked about in our Whitney Houston episode, the singing, songwriting and production duo of Antonio, Louisiana. Reed and Kenneth Babyface Edmonds. Though LA and Babyface were both born in different parts of the Midwest, once they settled in Atlanta and began writing and recording together in the late 80s, they became the premier purveyors of crossover R and B hits that worked equally well on pop and black radio, in addition to their own records, both as the group the Deal and in Babyface's solo career. LA and Babyface were responsible for most of the hits on Bobby Brown's breakthrough smash Don't Be Cruel. Much the way Motown in the 60s translated rhythm and blues for a wider, more mainstream audience, the LA Babyface hit factory made hip hop and new jack swing more viable for pop audiences. So it made sense that Reed and Edmonds would form their own Motown like label. They called it LaFace Records, and by the turn of the 90s, Reed and Babyface were generating smashes with a range of rising stars. These included the Oakland born Atlanta based Perry Reid, aka Pebbles, who was then married to LA Reid. In a true LaFace family affair, Reid even sang backup on some of Pebble's most propulsive hits. It was Pebbles who discovered the trio that would wind up being LaFace's biggest seller of the decade, the three woman hip hop meets pop group TLC. What made TLC not only a smash when they launched in 1992, but the quintessential act of LaFace Records was their blend of sultry R and B with just a dash of rapping delivered ably by the group's own mc Lisa Left Eye Lopez. Again, LaFace was not a rap label, it was a rap conversant label. No one at the time would expect Reed and Babyface, the two smoothest guys in Atlanta music, to focus on hardcore rap. Moreover, Atlanta itself at the turn of the 90s was not really known as a hotbed of hip hop. At the time, Southern rap was more tied to cities like Houston, Texas, home of the Ghetto.
- [13:48]
Andre 3000 / Big Boi (Outkast)
Boys. Damn, it feels good to be a gangster feeding the poor and helping out with their.
- [13:53]
Chris Melanfi
Bills. Or the Underground Kings, better known as ugk, Or the City of Miami, which had developed its own Southern hip hop subgenre called Miami Bass Music. The bodacious style was first turned into platinum in the late 80s by the unabashedly lewd rap troupe the 2 Live Crew, a lightning rod for criticism and censorship of rap. By the early 90s, the Miami Bass sound was crossing over on the pop charts. In 1993, two competing singles with nearly identical titles went head to head on the Hot 100, both with Miami Bass style production, even though neither rap troupe was actually from Miami. From Jacksonville came 95 south with hoot there It Is and they were followed just weeks later by the duo Tag Team, who offered whom There It Is. As you90s chart nerds out there probably remember, Tag Team whoomped their competition. Whoomp There it is reached number two on the Hot 100 versus a number 11 peak for 95 South. Interestingly, tag team were also from Atlanta, which made them one of the best selling rap acts from the ATL at the time, even though their one big pop friendly hit sounded more like Miami. Indeed, this was the situation with Atlanta rap to that date. It was hard to pin down to a sound and less focused on street cred than on irresistible pop hooks. In maca discovered in an Atlanta mall by producer Jermaine Dupri, Kris Kross, a pair of 13 year old rappers who wore their clothing backwards, topped the charts with their infectious Jackson 5 sampling pop rap smash Jump. Their album Totally Crossed out went quadruple platinum not long after Kris Kross, a different flavor of pop friendly Atlanta rap also went multi platinum. Arrested Development, whom we discussed in detail in our early 90s rap episode of Hit Parade, reveled in their southern heritage on songs like Tennessee and People Every Day. Founded in Atlanta, AD scored a string of hits from their socially conscious and Critically acclaimed album 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life of which by 1993 was triple platinum. As stellar as these sales features were by these Atlanta based rap troops, by 1993 it was hard to say that Crisscross Tag Team and Arrested Development constituted a scene. Sonically, the acts had little in common and their Atlanta heritage was largely a coincidence. It is therefore either ironic or appropriate that the rap duo who would permanently change perceptions of the ATL made their debut on a remix of a pop record from LA and Babyface's LaFace Records. What about your friends was the third straight top 10 hit from TLC. Colorful debut Ooh on the TLC tip. Written by Atlanta based producer Dallas Austin and TLC's own rapper left Eye, what About yout Friends was essentially new jack swing that bordered on the edge of rap. So to boost its hip hop cred, LaFace ordered up a remix of the track. And that remix included the latest signees to the LaFace roster. The label's first ever rap act, Outkast first auditioned for La Reid in 1992. The two young men, Antoine Patton and Andre Benjamin, were only 17 at the time. They had met as 16 year olds hanging out at an Atlanta mall. They chose the name outkast after learning that their preferred moniker, Misfits, was already taken by a punk band. When they auditioned for Reid, the mogul later recalled, antoine and Andre were so nervous they couldn't look him in the eye. By his own admission, LA Reid, quote, didn't really know anything about rap, he said in his memoir years later. But he was charmed and impressed by Outkast's personality and flow. Andre in particular was an ebullient, dazzling rapper, able to deliver a triple time cadence. In later interviews, Andre admitted he had been picking up some of his technique listening to New York based MCs like a tribe Called Quest and the then hot tongue twisting rap troupe Das Effects. After their debut on the Table LC remix, LaFace sent Outkast into the studio in 1993, but not to record a full album. Yet Reed felt the duo needed time to develop their Persona and their quote, sex appeal. So just for starters, Reid had them record a single for, wait for it, a LaFace Christmas.
- [20:55]
Andre 3000 / Big Boi (Outkast)
Album. Beginning to look a lot like wood Follow my every step Take notes on how I crep I'm about to.
- [21:01]
Chris Melanfi
Go in depth maybe we should call Players Ball the die hard of debuts. An action story that's secretly also a Christmas story recorded for the compilation A LaFace Family Christmas. Outkast's debut single, A seemingly on trend gangsta rap joint, is about the holiday season, something that's easy to miss if you don't listen closely to its lyrics. Nominally, the festive occasion that Andre and Big Boy are rapping about is an annual gathering of pimps made famous in cities like Chicago and Atlanta called a Player's Ball. But in the verses of the song, Big Boy refers to eggnog and drops a bar of the Hallelujah chorus, and Dre makes lyrical allusions to such holiday chestnuts as Deck the Halls, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas and Silent Night. The backing track even features sleigh bells. The chorus of Players Ball was sung by outkast's buddy Patrick Brown, AKA Sleepy Brown of the Atlanta production troupe Organized Noise, and in its original version, the chorus closes with the line the Player's ball is happening on Christmas Day. Released for the holidays in 1993, a LaFace family Christmas was basically a lark for the label and not a big hit. Despite including more overtly jolly material like TLC's Sleigh Ride and Toni Braxton's the Christmas Song, the compilation peaked at number 186 on the Billboard album chart, but L A Reid realized the Outkast track could outlive the family Christmas project, so Reid approved a subtle re recording of the chorus of Players Ball, in which Sleepy Brown swapped out the line the player's ball is happening on Christmas Day. For the new kicker, the player's ball is happening all day long, every day. Issued as a single in the winter of 1994, this version of players ball proved to be Outkast's breakthrough and a sleeper hit. It debuted on both the R and B chart and the Hot 100 in February of 1994 and steadily climbed the charts, peaking in May at 12 R&B number 37 pop, an actual top 40 hit, as well as hitting number one on Billboard's Hot Rap Singles chart. Assisting the song's climb was its music video, shot in and around Atlanta with Dre and Big Boy Dragon dressed in Atlanta Braves gear in a move that would prove prophetically ironic. The video was directed by Sean Combs, the young New York producer and budding mogul then known as Puff Daddy, a major player in the forthcoming East Coast west coast rap feud that would affect Outkast at the Source Awards. Puffy was at that time just launching his Bad Boy label and the career of his first major signing, Brooklyn rapper Biggie Smalls, aka the Notorious.
- [25:01]
Andre 3000 / Big Boi (Outkast)
B.I.G. to all the ladies in the place with styling grace Allow me to.
- [25:06]
Chris Melanfi
Lace these outkast would later open concerts For Biggie, this tenuous arm's length connection between gangsta rap and Outkast would persist as Andre and Big Boi recorded their debut album with the Organized Noise production team in a basement recording studio known as the Dungeon. The music Andre, Big Boy and Organized Noise recorded for the album did make timely nods to Low Rider and G funk culture, but its lyrical perspective and musical motifs, much of the music played on live instruments took a deliberately Southern point of view. In a clear signal of their regional pride, Outkast called the album all one word Southern Playlistic Cadillac music. Southern Playlistic, as it is now often called for short, is still regarded as a landmark, the first Atlanta rap album to go toe to toe with the titans of east and west coast rap. Pitchfork hip hop critic Jeff Weiss would later call it, quote, the template for every dirty south rap album with aspirations of being soulful. In May 1994, the album landed on the Billboard album chart at an auspicious number 20, debuting right between albums by Salt and Pepa and Snoop Doggy Dog. Southern Playlistic Cadillac music rode the album chart for half a year, and it spun off hits that made the R B and R rap singles charts. These included the album's title track, a number 9 rap hit that just missed the R B top 40, and get up get out, a number 13 rap 59 R B hit that was important mostly for who else was on it. Thomas De Carlo Calloway, better known as CeeLo Green, and Cameron Gip, aka Big Gip, were founding members of Goody Mob, an Atlanta hip hop group that had formed in 1991. Outkast's Get Up get out was the first single to feature these Goody Mob members, including a long showcase for the mellifluous rapping of Ceelo, who later proved an equally adept singer. By the way, if you are a Macy Gray fan and this song sounds vaguely familiar to you, that's because five years later Macy remade it as Do Something on her own debut album, On How Life Is. Together, Outkast and Goody Mob formed a loose Atlanta collective who called themselves the Dungeon Family, named after the basement studio of Organized Noise producer Rico Wade. These producers and rappers were, in essence, world building, creating a true Atlanta hip hop scene essentially from scratch. One year after their cameo on Southern Playlistic, Goody Mob would release an album of their own, produced of course by Organized Noise, called Soul Food. By late 94 and 95, the Dungeon family Collective was in enough demand that they began producing for acts outside of their immediate orbit. LaFace Records invited Organized Noise to write and produce one track on TLC's second album, Crazy Sexy Cool, including backing vocals from from CeeLo Green. I'll bet you're familiar with that track, TLC's blockbuster 1995 song of the Summer, Waterfalls. It was during that same summer, while while waterfalls was spending seven weeks at 1 on the Hot 100, that Andre and Big Boy from Outkast traveled to New York for the aforementioned 1995 Source Awards. Outkast had put Atlanta hip hop on the map. Indeed, Southern Playlistic had eventually gone platinum about a year after the album's release. As impressive as this was, Atlanta hip hop was still a sideshow, an undercard to the main event at the Source Awards, the brewing brawl between east coast and west coast rap. I cannot possibly do justice within the span of this podcast episode to the drama and the lore of this coastal cultural war that shaped hip hop for a generation. In fact, we at Slate devoted an entire podcast season to this, the third season of Slow Burn, hosted by my esteemed colleague Joel Anderson about the events that led to the murders of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. i highly recommend that Slow Burn cycle if you haven't listened to it as yet. To make a very long story short for our purposes vis a vis this outcast story, it was at the 95 source awards that the east west feud came to a head. Perhaps the most important figure in west coast rap was not even there. Tupac, who at that moment was locked in a jail cell. Even under lockdown, Pac was all over the charts that summer with tracks from his latest multi platinum album, Me against the World. However, as dominant as well, west coast rap was at that moment. The awards were being held in New York City, the birthplace of rap, at a moment when east coast hip hop was making a serious comeback in the form of such titanic figures as Nas and the Notorious B.I.G. At the 95 Source Awards, the most fiery, most important performances didn't come in the form of rap bars. They were the acceptance speeches. Biggie's producer Sean Puff Daddy Combs, was the target of the most infamous speech at the show, delivered by west coast rap mogul Suge Knight. In the space of one 30 second speech, Suge managed to both invite Tupac to to join his Death Row Records label and directed a thinly veiled diss at Puffy for stealing the spotlight from the artists on his Bad Boy.
- [33:17]
Suge Knight
Label. Like to tell Tupac to keep his guards up, we ride with him. Any artist out there want to be an artist and want to stay a Star don't want to have to worry about the executive producer trying to be all in videos, all on the record. Dancing come to Death.
- [33:37]
Chris Melanfi
Row. Tensions were running so high throughout the night with the New York audience repeatedly booing the West Coasters that even the normally mild mannered Snoop Dogg felt aggrieved enough to complain live on the.
- [33:54]
Guest or Listener
Mic. The east coast ain't got no love for Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg and Death Row. Y' all don't love us. Y' all don't love us. Well, let it be known, then.
- [34:07]
Chris Melanfi
Again, none of this had anything to do with Andre Benjamin and Antoine Patton. Dre and Big Boy were in the audience patiently waiting for outkast's category, Best New Rap Group to be called. But when Southern rap's leading duo actually won the prize, that's when the New York crowd unleashed more of the same Bronx cheers they had been throwing at the California.
- [34:35]
Guest or Listener
Contestant. And the winner is.
- [34:37]
Chris Melanfi
Outkast. It was at that moment that outkast's Andre Benjamin gave perhaps the most enlightened speech of the evening. Taking raspberries and making raspberry lemonade. Like Snoop Dogg, Dre was more than a little aggrieved amid all the New York booing. But as he wrapped up his short speech, Andre unwittingly but somehow knowingly summed up the entire future of rap in just six.
- [35:12]
Andre 3000 / Big Boi (Outkast)
Words. Closed minded, folks. You know what I'm saying? It's like, we got a demo tape, don't nobody want to hear it. But it's like, this is soft. Got something to say. That's all I got to.
- [35:19]
Chris Melanfi
Say. For Southern rappers, it was the shot heard round the world. Andre's line, the south got something to say remains one of the most prophetic sentences in any award show acceptance speech. Future Atlanta rap titans would attest to how vital Andre's speech was, including Killer Mike Ludacris, and in this clip from a VH1 documentary and Atlanta's own Ti.
- [35:48]
Andre 3000 / Big Boi (Outkast)
Outkast.
- [35:49]
Chris Melanfi
Period.
- [35:51]
Andre 3000 / Big Boi (Outkast)
Period. That's when it changed. That was the first time that people began to take Southern rap.
- [35:58]
Chris Melanfi
Seriously. Even if the 95 Source Awards had never happened, Outkast now had the wind at their backs. They went into their second album emboldened, given greater freedom and a bigger budget by LaFace Records. And during the recording, Andre and Big Boy changed their game, abandoning 90s gangsta rap aesthetics almost entirely. They grew out their hair, particularly Dre, who gave up his cornrows and would on occasion wear a turban. Dre went vegan and sober and even briefly tried celibacy. For his part, Big Boy became a father, which he later said made him more grounded as an artist. When Outkast came back in 1996, their stylistic certitude produced a record that would redefine Atlanta rap as spaceier, weirder.
- [36:55]
Andre 3000 / Big Boi (Outkast)
Cooler. One for the money, yes sir, two for the show. A couple of years ago on.
- [37:00]
Chris Melanfi
Headlander Low what's the starter on Elevators? Me and Outkast made the cutting edge mainstream. With its languid beat built by outkast themselves. Completely free of samples and its spacey rapping, Elevators firmly distinguished Dre and Big Boy from either east coast or west coast rap. Among those who were confounded by elevators was LaFace Records president La Reid, who didn't think it made sense as a single. Outcast had to push for it. They took it to a radio station themselves against the label's wishes, and they were vindicated when, despite its quirkiness, Elevators proved to be a sizable hit. It peaked at number one on the rap singles chart, number five at R&B and even number 12 on the Hot 100 in the summer of 1996. L A Reid never doubted Outkast's instincts again. According to Big Boy, he let them choose their singles from then on. Elevators led off Outkast's sophomore album, whose title was even stranger than Southern playlistic Cadillac music. They spelled it at L, I, E, N S, a portmanteau of aliens and the three letter code for Atlanta pronounced at Aliens. The album's title, Andre told the LA Times, was inspired by our status in the hip hop game. They were raps. Aliens. At Aliens was a smash on Impact, debuting at number two on the Billboard 200 album chart in September 1996 and going platinum out of the box. It would later be certified double platinum. The album was a savvy mix of spacey sonics, fierce rapping and even elements of what was coming to be known as neo soul, particularly on the album's third single, Jazzy Bell, which was remixed in early 97 to add soulful backing vocals by LaFace Co founder Kenneth Babyface Edmonds. Outkast went even deeper into this R B sound on a stopgap single from the soundtrack to the 1997 movie Soul Food. The song, In Due Time featured some of the earliest singing by Goody Mob rapper Cee Lo Green, who provided the song's melodic hook alongside Dre's and Big Boy's rapping. The success of Outkast was only burnishing LaFace Records and Atlanta in general as the Red hot center of black music in the 90s. At the same moment that Dre and Big Boy were defining Atlanta Atlanta hip hop, a new generation of R B singers, many on laface, were taking over the pop charts in the late 90s, including then teenagers Usher. And Monica. Meanwhile meanwhile, Outkast were getting freakier. They returned in 1998 with the album Aqueminae, another portmanteau title, this time of the two performers Zodiac signs Aquarius for Big Boy and Gemini for Andre. And on Aqueminae's first single, Rosa Parks, named cryptically after the civil rights legend, Outkast went country, blending hip hop with a hoedown. Rosa Parks was prophetic for outkast in a number of ways. For starters, it foreshadowed their increasingly fearless absorption of other musical genres into hip hop. Witness the harmonica break down in the middle of the song, which by the way, was played by Andre's stepfather, Pastor Robert Hodo. For another thing, and more negatively, the song cast a legal shadow over outkast. For years, the actual still living Rosa Parks sued the duo and their label for defamation. Confused by the song's invoking of her name and distraught by its language, the case was finally settled in the mid-2000s, just six months before parks death. But perhaps most importantly, this acclaimed single also revealed Outkast to be the melding of two distinct personalities. Big Boy's street white dropping of bars melded with Andre's Afro futurist freakiness. The video for Rosa Parks makes this plain. In the opening seconds, Dre and Big Boy trade ideas for the clip, Big Boy saying it should be full of cars and pimps, Andre saying it should be spacey with futuristic type things to which Big Boy replies, all right, then, let's do both of them. None of the singles from Aqueminae was a big chart hit. Rosa Parks missed the pop top 40 and barely scraped the R B top 20. In general, the album was almost too cutting edge, even for hip hop at the time. But Equeminar remains one of Outkast's most acclaimed LPs. Both the album and its lead single made the year end top 10 of the Village Voice's Paz and Jop critics poll, a first for them. And despite its lack of big hits, Equominae was a bestseller anyway. It debuted at number two on the album chart, matching its predecessor at Aliens, and it was plain platinum within a month, double platinum by the following summer. It rode the album chart for 10 months longer than any outcast album to date just three albums into their career, Andre and Big Boi were fulfilling their role as the avatars of Southern hip hop and already self mythologizing. Aqueminae's final track, Chonky Fire, included a sample of Andre's now already immortal 1995 Source Awards.
- [44:32]
Andre 3000 / Big Boi (Outkast)
Speech. Like this though I'm tired of folks, you know what I'm saying? Closed minded folks, you know what I'm saying? It's like we got a demo tape and don't nobody want to hear. But it's like the south got something to say. That's all I got to.
- [44:44]
Chris Melanfi
Say. The south did indeed have something to say. By now the takeover of Southern rap world was in full effect and it had spread to other cities. New Orleans rapper Master P built a chart topping empire on his no Limit label, And on the other side of nola, the Cash Money label run by entrepreneur brothers Brian and Ronald Williams, AKA Birdman and Slim, was minting platinum with rappers like Juvenile. When albums by Master P and Juvenile went Quadruple Platinum in 1998 and 99, it affirmed the potency of Southern hip hop. These were sales levels not even Outkast had.
- [45:45]
Benjamin Frisch
Seen. By the end of the 90s, Andre and Big Boy had done more than their share to boost Southern rap, but the start of a new millennium would find them thinking even bigger, even beyond the confines of rap.
- [46:03]
Guest or Listener
Itself. 1, 2, 3 my baby don't mess around me, she loves me.
- [46:09]
Benjamin Frisch
So. When we come back, outkast get even weirder, spaceier and freer, redefining what hip hop could be. And they were rewarded with the greatest success of their careers. From the home of Ms. Jackson to a podium on stage at the.
- [46:34]
Chris Melanfi
Grammy.
- [46:34]
Benjamin Frisch
Awards, Non Slate plus listeners will hear the rest of this episode in two weeks. For now, I hope you've been enjoying this episode of Hit Parade. Our show was written, edited and narrated by Chris Melanfi. That's me. The producer for this show was Benjamin Frisch, with additional 2023 production from Kevin Bendis. Derek John is Executive Producer of Narrative Podcasts and Alicia Montgomery is VP of Audio for Slate Podcasts. Check out their roster of shows@slate.com podcasts. You can subscribe to Hit Parade wherever you get your podcasts, in addition to finding it in the Slate Culture feed. If you're subscribing on Apple Podcasts, please rate and review us while you're there. It helps other listeners find the show. Thanks for listening and I look forward to leading the Hit Parade back your way. We'll see you for part two in a couple of weeks. Until then, keep on marching on the One. I'm Chris.
- [47:47]
Guest or Listener
Melany. I don't want to meet your.
- [47:53]
Andre 3000 / Big Boi (Outkast)
Daddy. Just want you and my.
- [47:56]
Guest or Listener
Caddy don't want to meet your.