Interviewed by Beck
Moderated by Cheeba
Andre "Dre" Benjamin and Antwan "Big Boi", Outkasts together since high school, are a rare breed: Pioneering musicians who achieve tremendous commercial success. Since Outkast's debut, Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, they've destroyed preconceptions of hip-hop with a unique blend of rap, funk, rock, soul, and southern blues. After three platinum albums and a Grammy nomination, the duo has returned, rocking the underground and mainstream alike with Stankonia.
Beck is another of modern music's greatest genre-defyers. But the parallel
between the cosmic southern hip-hoppers and the cosmopolitan L.A. hip-hop
folkie doesn't end there. Not only do Dre, Big Boi, and Beck all produce their
own music, they also write and direct their own videos, design their own
clothes, and know how to put together a tight live show. More importantly,
they are constantly expanding the rigid boundaries that exist in today's music
industry.
What follows is the first conversation ever shared between the
three, with Beck at home in Los Angeles, Andre and Big Boi in their hometown
of Atlanta, and myself in Boston.
Beck: How you doing?
Andre: Chillin', man. I just want to let you know before we get started with
this that I love your ****, man. I love what you're doing. On the serious tip.
You a wild boy, yeeeah.
Beck: Did you hear Midnite Vultures?
Andre: Hold up. Is that the one with the crazy spray paint looking stuff on
the cover?
Beck: Yeah, yeah.
Andre: That's the one. That's what I'm talking about.
Beck: When Stankonia came out, I felt like they were kind of like cousins in a
weird way.
Andre: Yeah, yeah.
Beck: I was gonna ask you about Prince because he was a big inspiration for
Midnite Vultures.
Andre: Prince, to me, is the greatest of our time, as far as songwriting and
producing and all that.
Beck: It's funny now because when I was making my last record, Prince wasn't
somebody that people were talking much about. He kind of ebbs and flows.
People don't cite him as an influence much these days, especially not in the
rock world. For me, he represents possibilities, you know. He does it all.
Andre: Most definitely.
Beck: He has that sense of humor that I think you guys have, which is a rare
commodity.
Andre: Yeah, man, you've got to keep it fun.
Cheeba: Have either of you ever worked with Prince?
Andre: No, we never really hooked up with him. The New Power Generation sent
Organized Noize a remix to do and he actually rhymed on the remix, but I don't
think it ever came out. He came to a show and I said "hey" from a long
distance but I never met him up close.
Cheeba: You did a track with George Clinton on Aquemi, right? What's it like
to collaborate with artists that inspired you when you were coming up?
Andre: I think it's cool on a certain level. It's cool to try to bring them up
to the times, but not try to re-create what they're doing. Nothing like that.
It's cool to let people know your influences. A lot of people don't
acknowledges tgeir influences because they think it all comes from their own
head, but everybody's inspired by somebody, whether you admit it or not.
Beck: I find a lot of times, people will write about your music and say you
were influenced by so-and-so, but you've never even heard that person's music,
you know.
Andre: Yeah, yeah.
Beck: What do you think of that? I get the idea from what you're doing that
you're going off the edge, you know. You're trying to create a whole new
thing. You're inspired by the past, but you're trying to get something totally
unique and new and fresh, and the minute you think you've finally done it,
there's somebody writing about it, saying that it sounds like a cross between
this and that. It's frustrating, you know.
Andre: Yeah, I know. I really hate that. But, you know, the writers have to
compare you with something. There has to be some connection to something
people already know. I don't mind people talking about our influences, but I
always want to make it clear that it's never about trying to re-create another
artist's work.
Beck: I understand it, but it kind of cheapens what you're doing, you know.
Andre: It does, but at the same time, like when Prince came out, you know,
there was the thing where it was like James Brown and Sly Stone. They had to
compare him to somebody and you did hear their influences, but -
Big Boi: Yo, what up? What's up Beck?
Beck: What's going on?
Andre: Where you at?
Big Boi: I'm on the way to The Dungeon. I had a little car trouble.
Beck: Yeah, I want to talk about some cars.
Andre: Cool.
Beck: I myself, I drive a towncar, like a mid-90s towncar, back when they were
square, you know, like a real towncar. The new ones aren't real towncars. They
turned them into Toyotas or something.
Big Boi:
Beck: People don't understand that the music - especially like the music
you're making, and my last record - is supposed to be listened to in a car
like that.
Big Boi: Yeah, something long. Like a boat. You can float it like a boat.
Beck: Something with some solidity and some mass, to vibrate with the music
properly. The weight of the metal makes the music sound a certain way. People
odn't understand that. What do you ride in?
Andre: I've got a Toyota Land Cruiser that I'm sticking with. I've got a '56
For pick-up truck and a '55 Chevy.
Beck: Do you listen to your music in your cars when you're writing or
recording?
Big Boi: Yeah, yeah. That's the best time.
Andre: That's where most of our writing comes from, in the car.
Beck: I do the same thing. I make the track and put it in the car for a couple
months; it marinates, and I start getting ideas for melodies.
Andre: Exactly.
Cheeba: Let's talk about fashion for a second. I think the most apparent
similarity between all of you is your tendency towards sporting the dopest,
most unique attire, especially during your live shows.
Beck: Yeah, I straight come out with pink and with fringes all over the place.
As much pink as possible.
Andre: A lot of people are scared of pink. But really, if you're a true
player, then you can wear pink.
Beck: That's the beautiful thing about the stage: you can wear **** that you
can't get away with normally. When you're on stage, you're like an exotic bird
or something. People want to see it. It's not for shock value, it's an
expression thing. It enhances the music.
Andre: Exactly. It's a total experience. We actually have a clothing line
that's about to come out. We're making the designs ourselves. A lot of people
ask us when we get off the stage, "Man, where can I get that? I want to wear
that out in the street."
Beck: I love your clothes. You guys have football helmets.
Andre: Nah, we ain't ****ed with the helmets on yet, but shoulder pads most
definitely.
Beck: We rock the shoulder pads too. I think we're just sort of operating on a
similar plane 'cause we're doing **** independently. Are you guys down with
Kool Keith?
Andre: Oh yeah.
Beck: He's got some costumes that he gets into. I think of him as one of the
torch bearers.
Andre: He be wildin' out most definitely.
Beck: Back in '96, me and my band, our favorite album at the time was ATLiens.
We listened to it on the bus every night. It seems like ATLiens is really slow
and trippy and pulled back. It's almost like underwater. I noticed that each
album gets a little more lively, there's a little more ruckus happening.
Andre: Well, it was the time. When ATLiens came out, things were more chill,
thought-provoking, retrospective, get your thoughts together, try to get your
life together; real righteous type-****. Right about now, the world wants to
party. That's real. And you can't preach to people when they want to party.
They don't want to hear that ****.
Beck: I'm the same way. My first album is real slow and each album gets a
little faster. My last album was pretty hyper. We did songs up to 130 and 140
bpms.
Andre: Yeeeah.
Beck: It got to be where we would start the fast song. We knew what the tempo
was going to be before the song was even written. On stage, I used to feel the
energy of the audience and my **** was just too slow. I wanted to explode, you
know. I was wondering if you felt a need for that kind of thing because you
were feeling it from the audience.
Big Boi: Most definitely. You gonna need some crowd rockers. We was going out
and seeing what was going on in the clubs and the clubs was jumpin'. We were
from the dirty dirty anyway, home of the bass music and Luke Skywalker and all
that, you know what I'm saying, so it was only natural.
Andre: To tell the truth, when we do whows, the most fun I have on stage is
"Bombs Over Baghdad."
Beck: You guys made the song of the year, and I have to give you props for
that. For me, "Bombs Over Baghdad" is so of this moment. You hear it coming
from other people's vehicles - it's all-pervasive and it's the only thing out
that is totally exciting and original. It's got that certain indefinable
energy.
Cheeba: Were you nervous about releasing that as a single?
Big Boi: The label was.
Andre: They told us to take the guitars out. We was like "Hell, no."
Beck: Do you know what they told me?
Andre: What's that?
Beck: The song I was gonna put out was "Nicotine and Gravy". There were R&B
singers singing backup, and they were telling me to take the R&B singers out.
Big Boi: Ah, man. They can't do that.
Beck: They weren't gonna play it on white radio because there were R&B singers
on it. It's the same thing. It's ****ing ridiculous. I thought the whole point
was that the two worlds had been segregated musically for way too ****ing
long. The best period in music was when The Stones were listening to Muddy
Waters and Howlin' Wolf, and Jimi Hendrix was listening to Bob Dylan. There
was an exchange then, but in the last five to ten years, it's become
progressively more and more separate. It's not healthy.
Cheeba: I assume by now you all have enough power at your labels to have the
final say, right?
Andre: Yeah, you have to get to a point where you prove yourself. Once they
see that you know what you're talking about, they kind of let you do whatever.
Beck: Are you already working on some new ****?
Andre: Right now as we speak. Always working. Actually, we've got a lot of
songs that didn't make the album.
Big Boi: About thirty.
Andre: .that we saved, and we're probably gonna do a double album next time.
Beck: I did the same thing with my last album. We made two records but I
didn't want to put out a double record because I don't want to overwhelm
people. Songs start to cancel each other out after a while if there's too
many.
Andre: It's too long of an experience. We could have made a double album on
this album, but we decided not to.
Cheeba: What albums out now are you all feeling? The new Sade?
Big Boi: Yup, got that.
Beck: I'm sure I'll hear it when I go to a restaurant tonight.
Andre: I'm really on that old Son House stuff.
Beck: Yeah, that's what I started out with: old country and Delta Blues music.
Andre: You play guitar, right?
Beck: Yeah, I play slide guitar. I had a song about seven years ago called
"Loser" and the main hook is a slide guitar, sort of like an old Son House,
Fred McDowall type thing.
Andre: How long have you been playing guitar?
Beck: Since I was about fourteen. Back in the early '80s New Wave was kind of
dying out and the hair metal was taking over, so I got into the Delta Blues
because the **** was raw and hypnotic. The thing that I always thought about
Son House and Fred McDowell and some of these older Delta country blues
musicians was that there was an implied hip-hop beat in their music.
Andre: I've never heard of Fred McDowell.
Beck: The feel of it is hip-hop, but there is no beat there. I think it is
very modern music. How did you get into Son House?
Andre: Because I just started playing guitar about a year ago. Being a very
big Jimi Hendrix fan, I wanted to go back and see where he got it from. Son
House was one of his influences.
Beck: What did you think of that when you heard it?
Andre: I thought it was real dope. I love his voice, it sounds like my
granddaddy. And the simply playing with the guitar. That **** is just raw.
Beck: I liked that music because it was so much older than anything I knew in
my world. In a city of strip malls and that sort of thing it was a link to -
Andre: Somebody's phone is messing up. Yo, Big!
Big Boi: Yo.
Andre: Whatcha doing boy? You smoking crack?
Big Boi: Nah, listening to you all talk about a dude with a guitar.
Cheeba: Where do you all picture yourselves in ten years from now?
Beck: Getting sexy.
Big Boi: Damn, gee!
Beck: I read that in a James Brown interview. They asked him the same question
and he said "getting sexy", but the interview was like from 1979 so ten years
later he was in jail. Hopefully he wasn't getting too sexy there.
Andre: Just trying to get built. Nah, ain't no telling, man. I know how the
hip-hop thing go, and you won't be able to rap forever. Nobody wants to see an
old-ass man out there rapping. That just true. You'll always be able to make
music and songwriting, so we're always going to make some kind of expression
even if we're not at the forefront.
Big Boi: Even if it be with the clothing line and go out like Ralph Lauren.
Cheeba: So you don't think any of today's rappers are gonna be out there when
they're 80, still putting it down?
Big Boi: He'd be a damn fool. Yeah, you can be an 80-year-old rapper at heart
but I want to see you get your old ass up there and rock a show.
Andre: A lot of people who we grew up on, who we loved, who were the dopest, I
don't want to hear them now. It's true, but they did the best **** ever.
Cheeba: Why do you think they lost that edge?
Andre: They really don't lose it. It's a time thing. I think the hip-hop thing
has got a lot to do with youth and the time, like what's going on.
Beck: Yeah, hip-hop is about the current.
Big Boi: Straight up.
Beck: I don't know. Maybe that's why I'll just go back to the blues.
Andre: You can always sit on the porch, like an old man.
Beck: You can play the blues gracefully as an old man.
Andre: Yeah, and your voice actually gets better as you get older. I can't
wait for my voice to sound like Son House.
Beck: I used to try to play the blues when I was seventeen but I wasn't
rickety enough. I'm approaching it slowly. It's interesting because hip-hop
isn't that old. It's gonna be interesting to see it age.
Andre: Yeah, but there is always going to be the new cats coming up. I can
tell you that.
Beck: The turnover in hip-hop is unbelievable. There's not a lot of hip-hop
that I like anymore, you know.
Andre: Yeah. It's not that I don't like it, but it's just that it doesn't make
me want to go in the studio and do nothing.
Cheeba: Is there any hip-hop nowadays that you do draw inspiration from?
Andre: Rage Against the Machine. Old Public Enemy. Old N.W.A.
Cheeba: You're just talking old stuff, though.
Andre: Yeah, I know it. I mean, ain't too much new stuff that really done move
me.
Cheeba: What's your favorite N.W.A. album?
Andre: *****z4Life!
Big Boi: *****z4Life!
Beck: Efil4Zaggin.
Cheeba: That ****'s the tightest. I'm surprised, because rarely do I hear
people prop that record over the others.
Big Boi: That's the one.
Beck: For me, the people I hang out with, that's the one.
Andre: You're right, that's the one.
Beck: There are some great pop songs on Straight Outta Compton; some great
hip-hop moments.
Cheeba: But with *****z4Life, you can just put that **** on and the whole
album's consistent.
Andre: Exactly.
Beck: You know what I like, Eazy-E's first solo record.
Andre: Oh, hell yeah. Eazy-Duz-It.
Beck: That record really changed a lot for me when it came out.
Big Boi: That was one of my first records that I had and played real loud when
my mom wasn't home in my broke-ass tape player. That was my first tape.
Beck: What did he say, "I used to play the drums at Compton High. I used to
**** it up."
Andre: I'll tell you what you've got to get off into: Too $hort.
Beck: Oh yeah, I like Too $hort too.
Cheeba: Which of his twenty albums would you recommend?
Andre: All of them!
Big Boi: You got to get the first five! Shorty the Pimp, Get in Where You Fit
In; you got to get all them.
Beck: Which one is "Flat Booty *****es" on?
Big Boi: That's on The Player Years, it's like a double CD and there's a huge
rubber on the cover of the album.
Andre: You got to get the early stuff. Him, the 808, one bass line, and him
just going off. "*****, *****, *****, *****, make me rich." "Mother****in'
***** god damn ass hoe. Cusswords." You got to get that "Cusswords," really.
Cheeba: What's the deal with all these rappers that retire and then have a
huge comeback like a year later?
Big Boi: They're positioning themselves to get more money from the label. The
label will give them more if they retire, come back, and redo their deal. It's
a financial thing. They really don't retire because six months later they
dropping a new album. But they smiling, though, 'cause they done got paid.
Cheeba: I want to see some of today's rappers' kids come up as rappers in
their own right.
Big Boi: Like Muhammad Ali's daughter, Laila.
Cheeba: You both have kids, right?
Andre: Yup.
Cheeba: Are you trying to point them in any direction?
Big Boi: Whatever they want to do. But be the best at it. If he wants to sell
crack, be the best crack seller in the hood. You got to be doper than Nino
Brown. Whatever you want to do, be the best at it.
Cheeba: I read one review of Stankonia where the writer said that listening to
it was like getting high for the first time all over again. What's the
relationship between drugs and your music?
Andre: I think drugs and music really go together because when you're high,
you're open, and you might hear anything. You might be paying attention to a
whole other sound than when you're straight. You might be on a whole other
groove. Our music is layered, so you might hear another sound five years down
the line.
Cheeba: Beck?
Beck: For me different songs are like different drugs. They put me in a
different place. I don't necessarily need the drugs to put me into that state,
I think the music does it to me all itself.
Cheeba: If Beck was to come to Atlanta, where would you take him to give him a
good time?
Andre: Beck? Really, I'm a homeboy. I ain't gonna lie. I really don't get out
too much. The only time I get out is when Big Boi done go out and they'll take
'em to the Shake Club, and they'll all just have a good time.
Cheeba: I heard you have a booty club at your own crib, Big Boi?
Big Boi: It's a minibar where we go and chill out after the club and do a
little after hours thing. Get a little nightcap; a little back rub; go to the
steam room and sweat or something. **** like that.
Cheeba: What makes the south so dirty?
Andre: Really, it's the same thing that's going on everywhere. I mean, you got
your hood, you got your crackheads. The neighborhood will make it dirty. How
people act will make it dirty. The thievery, the robbery. That's what make it
dirty.
Beck: Well, I take my hat off to you.
Andre: Appreciate it brother.
Beck: There is no one, well, I would say in hip-hop or R&B, but I say in
almost all music at this point, taking any chances or pushing things wherever
I can. It's beautiful to see someone else taking some chances.
Andre: Yeah, when I saw you perform, I don't know what it was.
Big Boi: I think it was at an award show. You blew that **** up.
Andre: .I was like, "Yeah! I love him, man. I love that dude." I was like
"he's wild."
Beck: I'm gonna send you a B-side that I did a couple years ago that was very
influenced by ATLiens. It's called "Arabian Nights".
Andre: A'ight. I'm looking forward.
Beck: It's my tribute to you.
Cheeba: Thanks a lot everyone.
Andre: Ain't no thang.
Beck: Keep doing your ****, all right. Don't change any ****.
Andre: A'ight.
Big Boi: A'ight.
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