OutKast – Stankonia

Stankonia is the fourth studio album by American hip hop duo OutKast. It was released on October 31, 2000, by LaFace Records. The album was recorded in the duo’s recently purchased Atlanta recording facility Stankonia Studios, which allowed for fewer time and recording constraints, and featured production work from Earthtone III (a production team consisting of Outkast and Mr. DJ) and Organized Noize.

For the follow-up to their 1998 album Aquemini, the duo worked to create an expansive and experimental musical aesthetic, incorporating a diverse array of styles including funk, rave music, psychedelia, gospel, and rock within a Dirty South-oriented hip hop context. During the recording sessions, André 3000 began moving beyond traditional rapping in favor of a more melodic vocal style, an approach to which Big Boi and several other producers were initially unaccustomed. Lyrically, the duo touched upon a wide range of subject matter, including sexuality, politics, misogyny, African-American culture, parenthood, and introspection. Stankonia featured appearances from a variety of local musicians discovered by the group while they were visiting clubs in their native city of Atlanta, Georgia.

Stankonia received universal acclaim from music critics upon its release, and has since been regarded by many to be one of the greatest hip hop albums of all time. The album debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 chart, selling over 530,000 copies the first week. It produced three singles: “B.O.B”, “Ms. Jackson”, and “So Fresh, So Clean”; “Ms. Jackson” became the group’s first single to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100. At the 2001 Grammy Awards, OutKast won Best Rap Album for Stankonia and Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group for “Ms. Jackson”. In 2003, the album was ranked number 359 on Rolling Stone‘s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, 361 in a 2012 revision, and 64 in a 2020 reboot of the list.