ATLiens

What does ATLiens mean to you? A demented alien perhaps. Or maybe some desperate concoction of the mind's creativity? It should be said that ATLiens is both. I should say, are both. I use are because they are a collective.
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Cadillac doors, fly ass chains, baby mamas, a rep not to fuck with, a tongue capable of serious harm, a fluidity in thought matered by just a few, dime blunts, paying bills, block hustling...
000

ATLiens was released in 1996. The collective that released it are still the most influential duo, and individual artists from the US south. ATL, Georgia. Born in a city known for its rough streets and civil unrest, two guys dropped a cd that knocked the industry on its head. It came out of nowhere. Never had someone from ATL broken the big stage. But suddenly everyone was talking about ATLiens and that ATLiens behind it.
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Pimps, icons, hustlers, fathers, artists, brothers, comrades, thinkers, spitters, coversationalists, rappers, poets, philosophes, workers- Outkast.
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Hip hop duo Big Boi and Andre 3000 are Outkast. ATLiens was their second cd, (the first, Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, got noticed much more after ATLiens) followed by Aquemini, a spectacular whirwind classic in its own right. Stankonia followed, upping the ante on what could be put onto a hip hop album. Interludes intermixed with soulful lyrics by one and hard hitting rhymes by the other. Following the next interlude they flipped the roles and hit the track with the same schmoove as the previous. Street corners, studio sessions, and life at home is their setting, their theatre. And Outkast performs on this theatre marvellously, carrying ideas, emotions and rhythms from one song to the next- never dulling the high, octane driven, feverously intense assault on words, with words. Combine that with a sense of style, an uncommon pacnache, a drive to succeed, the skill to do it and the pazazz to handle it all- and you have Outkast.
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This post is a tribute to them as artists, and to their second album, which catapulted them to an iconic status in hip hop history. This despite that 1996 is known as the exact year the jiggy era began. Jay-Z, Jermaine Dupri and Ludacris are some of the other artists that made it big around that time. But Outkast has outlasted, out-maneuvered, outspoken all of them. Most of all, compared to all of them, Outkast hasn't compromised.