Bleep

Sony’s Certified imprint continues its 50 years of hip hop celebration with a steady reissue stream of classics in an effort to make a roadmap of hip hop influence. Remastered and reimagined for this new age, this campaign shines a light on the artful throughline between hip hop’s many phases while also bringing beloved titles back to wax, often for the first time in quite a while. The latest entry in the series is OutKast’s star-making 2000 double LP Stankonia.

An explosion of dense musicality from Atlanta’s most beloved duo, OutKast folded in influences as seemingly disparate (for the time at least) as rave and gospel and psychedelic rock in an effort to cut a path all their own in the increasingly crowded turn of the century southern rap movement. Everyone knows and loves the radio killers here, but it’s the deeper, more soulful album cuts that reveal paths taken by André “3000” Benjamin and Antwan “Big Boi” Patton both together and solo as they progressed onwards.

Further mention should always be made of their collaborators on this path as the album is liberally peppered with a host of features including fellow ATliens and future stars Killer Mike and CeeLo Green (at the time still of Goodie Mob fame), B-Real of West Coast institution Cypress Hill, Gangsta Boo (R.I.P.) of the Memphis infamous Three 6 Mafia, and of course the legendary Erykah Badu, not only appearing on but further entwined with the album as the subject of its biggest single, 'Ms. Jackson'.