There are so many songs in OutKast's catalog, including quirky/obscure album tracks, that I love. But I can't help but choose the single "So Fresh, So Clean" from Stankonia (2000) as one of my favorite tracks.
Basically, it's just André 3000 and Big Boi spitting freaky deaky come-ons over a tasty, tricked-out Organized Noize beat for 4 minutes. But the scenarios they sling are just so wrong that they're right: they call up everything from Noah's Ark to Anne Frank in their quests to get some luvin'.
My favorite pick-up line of all comes from Big Boi: Teddy Pendergrass / Cooler than Freddie Jackson sippin' a milkshake in a snowstorm.
Game doesn't get colder than that.
Not unlike hip hop contemporary CeeLo, OutKast produced some of its best music long before members Andre Benjamin (aka Andre 3000) and Antwan Patton (aka Big Boi) became household names and "Hey Ya" could be heard everywhere from the grocery store to your dentist's office.
Just before the superstardom, the dynamic duo dropped Stankonia (2000) along with the track "B.O.B." ("Bombs Over Baghdad")--prophetically named, considering that a couple of years later the US marched into Iraq (again). The song even was banned from commercial radio in a lot of markets because of the perceived glorification of war and violence. (Way to miss the point, idiots.)
Forgetting all that for a moment, it's just a SICK track. It's one piece in the larger puzzle of Stankonia, a project on which they set out to create something that didn't sound like anything else in hip hop, which at the time Benjamin and Patton felt had grown stale and predictable. They not only had a brand new recording studio of their own, which gave them the freedom to experiment and push their sound in new directions without feeling like someone was constantly watching over their shoulders, but they also set out to capture the chaos and feelings of uncertainty at the turn of the millennium.
So what better way to do that but spit lyrics at 155 beats per minute over a breakneck drum-n-bass beat with wailing Eddie Hazel-flavored electric guitar?
And then there's that chant: "Bombs over Baghdad...yeah. Bombs over Baghdad...yeah." It sounds like the cheering section at the Thunderdome. (It's frighteningly catchy, even though it makes you feel like someone won't be leaving the arena alive...)
It's one of the best songs of its decade. (Kind of hard to believe that clusterfuck of a decade is already years past.)
