Outkast: Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik [LAFACE/LEGACY]

Why you'll love it

This edition marks the album's 20th anniversary. It reached No. 20 on the Billboard 200, went platinum, and helped Southern hip hop stand next to the East and West Coasts as a scene to be reckoned with.

This edition

• 20th anniversary edition
• Complete original 1994 album

About the album

André 3000 and Big Boi met at Atlanta's Lenox Square mall when they were 16, and before long they were rapping in a basement. That basement was the Dungeon, Rico Wade's studio and home of the production team Organized Noize, and a $15,000 advance from LaFace, which signed them as its first hip-hop act, got the album under way.

Organized Noize (Wade, Ray Murray and Sleepy Brown) produced the whole thing, favouring live bass, keys, guitar and organ over sampling, and the result is warm and unmistakably Southern. "Player's Ball" was the lead single, "Git Up, Git Out" brings in Goodie Mob with a call for teenagers to chase their passions, "Funky Ride" hands the mic to Society of Soul, and "Call of da Wild" weighs the pull of dropping out of school.

The duo were still teenagers when they made it, and it's now seen as a cornerstone of Atlanta's music scene. One critic described the sound as peach cobbler soul funk, and we've yet to hear a better description, or a better excuse to stop for dessert.

Also at Kops: more Outkast on vinyl · browse Hip Hop / R&B

Tracklist

Listen

On LaFace / Legacy (cat# 88843042641), a reissue of the 1994 album.