“I made it through another year,” Andre raps. So they wrote, in essence, a song about not wanting to write a Christmas song. Outkast did not want to write a Christmas song. LaFace Records, in 1993, was putting out a Christmas album. Through Organized Noize, Outkast gets the attention of LaFace Records, by now the biggest label in town. In the morning Rico’s mom would kick everybody out, make sure everybody got off to school, whatever. So they called the larger crew soon assembling there, the Dungeon Family. You go down there, you make music all night, you never come out. The moisture in the air fucked with the drum machines.
Then Rico’s family got a new house in Lakewood Heights, in south Atlanta, and they set up the studio in the basement. At first Organized Noize worked out of a storage closet in a skating rink called Jellybeans. Sleepy Brown’s the R&B guy, Ray Murray’s the rap guy, and Rico Wade’s the big-picture guy. So Organized Noize, the production crew: Rico Wade, Ray Murray, and Sleepy Brown. The Ringer’s 50 Best Outkast Songs, Ranked How ‘Stankonia’ Changed Outkast-and Popular Music-Forever Ever Even other people’s bad ideas could generate spectacular results. Identifiable origins, supernatural destinations. Something extraordinary, something extraterrestrial. But then, miraculously, Andre and Big Boi built, out of that familiarity, another universe. They heard, and loved, music that a lot of other people heard and loved. They came from somewhere a lot of other people came from. But what’s truly miraculous to me about Outkast is that they so obviously came from somewhere. It’s fun to pretend that Outkast came out of nowhere-that they really were misfits, rejects, deviants, exiles, pariahs, whatever other names they considered. Those guys can also be a lot to deal with, in my experience-it’s hard for me now to totally separate them from the Chappelle’s Show references to them, it’s a lot of DIGGITY WIGGITY ZIGGITY HIGGITY PIGGITY-but yeah shout-out Das-EFX. Das EFX, their first album Dead Serious in 1992 was a big deal. But then again in terms of pure hardness, this line is worthy of the Geto Boys. The full big Arrested Development album, 3 Years, 5 Months, and 2 Days in the Life Of., is a lot to deal with, honestly. Had a huge hit in ’92 called “Tennessee,” won a couple Grammys, topped a critics’ poll or two. You know who took a legitimate shot at taking over first Atlanta, and then the world? Arrested Development. In Port Arthur, Texas, you got UGK starting up in Memphis, you got 8Ball & MJG starting up. But Atlanta in this moment does not yet have a definitive rap group on the order of, say, the Geto Boys in Houston.
All of which to say there’s a lot of action, a lot of hits, a lot of colorful characters, a lot of Motown of the South–type enthusiasm swirling around the place known, semi-officially, since the ’60s, as the City Too Busy to Hate. Reid and singer-songwriter slash regular-mogul Babyface. (One of the first big Atlanta rappers was Left Eye.) TLC are signed-to their great regret, eventually-to Atlanta’s own LaFace Records, co-owned by the super mogul L.A. Future super producer Dallas Austin starts working with Another Bad Creation, and Boyz II Men, and future superstars TLC. Future star and mogul Jermaine Dupri hits town and brings the world Kris Kross. Starting in the early ’90s you get these huge, brash, pop-crossover bursts of energy from Atlanta.
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