Editor’s word: The next article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the writer’s personal. Learn extra opinions on theGrio.
Over the weekend, it was introduced that Outkast, together with Chubby Checker, Dangerous Firm, The White Stripes, Soundgarden, and Cyndi Lauper could be inducted into the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame. The announcement was made dwell throughout a Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame-themed episode of American Idol. After I noticed the information, except for saying to myself “in fact,” I additionally had a second of reflection about how vital Outkast has been to hip-hop schooling and life. Whereas most hip-hop teams, particularly those that got here to prominence within the Nineteen Nineties have been much less involved about mainstream accolades (just like the Grammys), being inducted into the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame appears vital.
For starters, it’s an acknowledgment from the “institution” of the ability and power of hip-hop, which has seen numerous acts of the previous few years be inducted. Previous hip-hop inductees embrace Eminem, DJ Kool Herc, A Tribe Known as Quest, Missy Elliot, Jay-Z, LL Cool J, Tupac Shakur, The Infamous B.I.G, and N.W.A., Public Enemy, Beastie Boys, Run-D.M.C., and Grandmaster Flash and The Livid 5.
How the Wu-Tang Clan isn’t already within the Corridor is past me, however fortunately, Outkast will quickly add the Rock & Roll Corridor to their already cemented legacy. Outkast is a bunch that made quite a lot of us children within the South who grew up on hip-hop really feel seen in a manner that different teams didn’t. Positive, there have been loads of teams from the south that preceded the Atlanta duo earlier than they hit the nationwide stage in 1994—teams like Houston’s The Geto Boys and Memphis’ 8Ball & MJG, to call a number of—however there was one thing about Outkast that made them completely different.
For one, they represented Atlanta throughout a time when Atlanta was turning into a Black nationwide curiosity. For these of us with ties to the town—my step-mother is from Atlanta, so my grandmother’s residence on the west facet of the town felt like floor zero for the entire pleasure of Atlanta’s music scene, largely spawning from the west and southwest components of the town—they felt like “residence.” Their first video for “Participant’s Ball” had such a well-known really feel in 1993. I used to be 14 years previous when “Participant’s Ball” dropped and in love with hip-hop.
A lot of the music I liked, although, got here from the West Coast. Ice Dice, Dr. Dre, and Snoop Doggy Dogg took up the entire area in my tape deck, and the movies from these locations launched me to far-off locations I didn’t know if I’d ever see. The identical went for New York Metropolis. Hip-hop made me lengthy for a metropolis I wouldn’t see for the primary time till June 2001, after I was 22 years previous. However Outkast shot their movies in Atlanta, and I knew Atlanta. I noticed streets I knew and shops that weren’t removed from my grandmother’s home. I noticed residence.
That feeling carried me by their whole profession. Regardless of being probably the most profitable hip-hop teams ever, their sound modified nearly lock-step with the town, if not altering the sound of the town themselves. I’ve lengthy informed the story about how I can keep in mind the precise Okay-Mart parking area I used to be in after I first heard the life-changing file (for me, anyway), “Elevators (Me & U)” in the summertime of 1996. That tune meant THAT a lot to me.
It modified how I listened to music and the way I interacted with what I knew to be hip-hop. Whereas their first album was a Southern basic, they bucked conference and turned their sophomore album, “ATLiens” into an ode to area and ethereal sound. The entire album sounds muddy, a sound Kanye West and Drake would popularize over a decade later, turning it into the sound of music as a complete.
Their magnum opus, “Aquemini,” was the “one.” It was the album that made positive that your entire nation needed to rock with Outkast. They have been lyrically on the prime of their video games and sonically on a distinct planet, delving into funk, jazz, boom-bap…principally each type of Black music. And since we have been all like, “Sure!” they took their system up a notch with “Stankonia,” an album that gave us two of their most genre-bending information in “B.O.B.” and “Ms. Jackson.”
And since no dialogue about Outkast could be had with out their ultimate act (as a duo) in eschewing custom to make information that problem every thing we knew about hip-hop, “Speakerboxx/The Love Under” got here out in 2003 and since it was so left-field, ended up successful the Grammy Award for “Album of the Yr,” solely the second hip-hop act to ever accomplish that, following Lauryn Hill’s “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.”
For these of us who grew up with Outkast, their induction into the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame is simply one other feather of their cap. It’s a cool accolade that enables followers like myself to revisit their catalogs and respect them anew. However that appreciation would exist with or with out some other accolades.
After I was 14, Outkast made a everlasting fan out of me by giving me a sound that regarded just like the areas I knew and was aware of. Hip-hop has lengthy been a music concerning the surroundings and the individuals and Outkast was speaking about them each. It helped that it felt like I might run into them on the grocery retailer if the fitting errand referred to as. Their contributions to music are important at this level; they belong within the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame and I’m excited that they proceed to get their flowers whereas they’re nonetheless round to scent them.
Peace up, A-town down.
Panama Jackson is a columnist at theGrio and host of the award-winning podcast, “Pricey Tradition” on theGrio Black Podcast Community. He writes very Black issues, drinks very brown liquors, and is fairly fly for a light-weight man. His largest accomplishment thus far coincides together with his Blackest accomplishment thus far in that he obtained a cellphone name from Oprah Winfrey after she learn one in every of his items (largest) however he didn’t reply the cellphone as a result of the caller ID stated “Unknown” (Blackest).
