Speakerboxxx/The Love Below

This double album is ice cold (...ICE COLD...!!!). Hey Ya is probably one of the best song ever written too.

I like half of this album more or less. The flow is sick but sometime is too crazy for me. But the jazzy vibe are awesome. Song I like are: The way you move, Church, I love the way you move, Take off your cool, Hey ya, Roses, Vibrate, Unhappy, Bowtie, A life in a the day of Benjamin Andree..

Cool

Jøss, et gjensyn med OutKast ALLEREDE? Dette har jeg riktig nok aldri sjekket ut før. To soloalbum som ble slått sammen til en OutKast-utgivelse, hvor Bog Boi står for Speakerboxxx, og André 3000 er ansvarlig for The Love Below. Førstnevnte album er bunnsolid, tilnærmet perfekt hiphop i tradisjonell OutKast-stil, mens Andrés prosjekt er noe mer eksperimentelt og soul-orientert, med et par sanger med legende-status. Jeg foretrekker nok Speakerboxxx for sitt gjennomgående høye nivået, der hvor jeg opplever The Love Below som litt mindre engasjerende i enkelte øyeblikk, men begge artistene leverer skyhøyt nivå her. Top 3 Speakerboxxx: Bowtie, Flip Flop Rock, Unhappy The Love Below: Hey Ya, Roses, Spread

Speakerboxxx / The Love Below is OutKast at their most polished, most technically accomplished and, paradoxically, least inspired. It’s an album that succeeds on craft while quietly revealing the unraveling of the partnership that made OutKast essential in the first place. Earlier OutKast records thrived on tension. André 3000’s curiosity, abstraction, and vulnerability were counterbalanced by Big Boi’s discipline, grounding, and rhythmic precision. Their voices didn’t just coexist, they edited, challenged, and sharpened each other. That dynamic is almost entirely absent here. Instead, the album feels less like a dialogue and more like two parallel monologues bound together by contract and branding. The double-album format makes this separation explicit. Speakerboxxx is confident, professional, and impeccably executed. Big Boi doing exactly what he does best. The Love Below is raw, exploratory, and emotionally exposed, capturing André in a state of searching and creative restlessness. Both halves are competent, occasionally compelling, but rarely transcendent. What’s missing is the shared sense of purpose that once made OutKast feel like they were building something larger than themselves. There’s an undeniable sadness to the record. Not because it’s bad, it isn’t, but because it sounds like closure rather than discovery. The album feels like a compromise: a way to fulfill expectations without forcing a collaboration that no longer existed. The singles are separated, the visions are divergent, and the connective tissue that once defined OutKast has quietly dissolved. In that sense, Speakerboxxx / The Love Below functions less as a grand finale and more as a sad bookend. It documents the moment when OutKast stopped being a unified creative force and became two gifted artists moving in different directions. Impressive, interesting, and historically significant, but as a whole, it lacks the urgency, cohesion, and magic that made their earlier work timeless. If Stankonia was the last true OutKast album, this is the paperwork that followed.

Bangers on bangers. A surprisingly long album, full of great music. It's eclectic because it shows a lot of push and pull between Andrew 3000 and Big Boi's musical aesthetics

after finishing the first half of the album, my rating would probably only be 2 stars - not because i can't understand why this is such a renowned album, but simply because rap isn't really for me, and 2 stars would line up with my rating system. there weren't many tracks which stood out that i would actively want to relisten to. i'll see how the rating changes after listening to the second half. coming to the end of the album, i definitely like the second half of album more. its felt like quite a slog listening to the full thing, but after having looked online at some comments from fans who stand by the album, i am interested to see if i selected specific tracks to listen back to individually whether any of them would grow on me. however, as of now, the album aligns most with my philosophy for 3 stars -may not be something i would actively revisit but has a few good tracks.

rap is fun! с интро сразу понимаешь, что будет круто. если бы пацаны делали такой рэп сейчас, может быть я бы на них вешалась… 5/5

Not my cup of tea

Album # 26 Outkast: Speakerboxxx/The Love Below Nobody forced me to listen to this entire album, I wasn’t held at gunpoint, my family weren’t threatened, there was no tangible pressuring encouraging to listen to every single track; and yet for some reason I felt compelled to. My feelings about this album may very well be exacerbated by the fact that I felt I had to sit and listen to it for over two hours, but if your album can’t be enjoyed in one sitting, make it shorter. I find it hard to believe that the highest-selling rap album of all time, one that has the audacity to last over two albums, has only one track that people remember. I understand that this is essentially two albums being packaged as one, but the fact is that it is listed as one album, so I will treat it as one. I’m already not a big rap fan, and this album summarises all of my preconceived grievances with the genre. The first of which is the length; it seems that every rap album goes on for at least an hour, despite being some of the most repetitive music possible. The reason for the length most of the time is that, somehow, a precedent started to add shitty skits in between the songs, which literally no one enjoys. Pretty much every skit on here actively annoyed me, especially Where Are My Panties. I mean, who is that even for? Are people just sitting around with their boys jerking off to an Outkast album? Both sides of the album have general themes, Big Boi’s half is mostly him trying to be taken seriously as an independent rapper and prove that he isn’t the Art Garfunkel to Andre 3000’s Paul Simon (very generous comparison), which is why he repeatedly mentions Outkast and their previous works; and calls upon big rapper features to add legitimacy to his side and give people a reason to want to listen to it. Andre’s side is essentially just him trying to prove that he is straight, being on the verge of busting on half of his tracks and skits. I very rarely like overly-sexualized music, and this is not an exception; it doesn’t help that a lot of Andre’s lyricism comes off as very juvenile to me, especially off-putting was his use of “poo-poo” in the track Roses (which somehow seems to be the second most successful song from the album. “Ya’ll don’t want to hear me, you just want to dance.”, Ok Andre, let’s hear you out: “Nature knows I want you, but not unless you want me too, so spread, spread, for me”, never has a lyric explicitly requesting consent sounded so rapey. Unlike Big Boi, who calls upon famous rappers to feature on his tracks, Andre only invites female artists. Which, judging by the contents of his lyrics, appears only to be in an attempt to have sex with them. Overall, Speakerboxx was mostly inoffensive and generic rap; I actually never actively hated it, though Church was a weak point as it came off as very loud and preachy compared to the rest. But, even though Andre’s side had the only notable tracks, it was the side on which I realized how much I was dreading the start of every track. I will never listen to this again; Hey Ya is the only song worthy of a playlist (except maybe the last track, but I probably enjoyed it extra due to the relief it was finally ending), and I know that I am probably wrong in having this opinion. Maybe if this thing were even just an hour, I wouldn’t feel this strongly, but once this discontentment creeps in, it’s hard to silence it when there is still an hour left of the album. Best Track: Hey Ya, My Favourite Things, A Life in the Day of Benjamin Andre Worst Track: Church/Spread Score out of 10: 2

too long... over 2h

tooo long, some bangers

listened to war by outkast and i just knew i'm in for a boring ride.

god this album was so good. i think its another favorite of mine.

Very fun! This albums makes me wanna skateboard into the sunset.

Perfect

Starting with the obvious, this album is way too long. Two hours and fifteen minutes is egregious. In the first half of the album, no songs stand out to me, and the choruses are lazy and repetitive. The second half of the album is a little better sonically, but the lyrics are definitely not. One star. (Favorite track: Hey Ya!.)

I generally enjoy Outkast's music, but this album will be the longest one I've listened to yet for this project and I am kind of dreading it. Here we go. So far, I think the intro is doing a good job of setting a tone/vibe for the album and I am enjoying it. I thought track 2 was a little uninteresting, and there was a weird transition in the beginning of it that felt really out of place. I think this is a good song but it isn't really that catchy to me, I wouldn't dedicate my time to learning the lyrics to this song. I enjoy the slower sections more than the faster parts. I like track 3 more than 2, it is catchier. I think this genre of music is also something I am not super familiar with, which means I don't really have a lot to say about it. Track 4 has no lyrics available. I have heard this song before, although I did not recognize it at first. It is a very good, catchy song, I cannot lie. The song is mostly interlude/background vocals so it makes sense now why the lyrics are not available. Track 5 is pretty good, there is nothing really remarkable about it to me. Track 6 feels about the same to me as track 5 did. Track 7 reminds me of "20 Questions," specifically the style of rap and the enunciation. Honestly, this album is really long and I am tempted to not finish it. I am on track 11 now and I do like it a lot. It is catchy. There is still 28 songs after this one. I truly might not finish this. Maybe I will just listen until Disc 2, which means only 8 more songs. The first half of this has been really good. I like the vibes, style of rap, lyrics, and most other elements of the songs. Occasionally, some songs sound very similar and I feel like overall it could do with less 20 to 30 second interludes. However, it was good.

Well at first I was a bit skeptical, this genre is normally not my thing, but I already knew OutKast so for that I was excited. Yes 2 hours is maybe a bit too long. But so far, I’m enjoying it! I really do like the layout of the album. It’s like a story that goes on!

When this album came out I had a friend who was very excited about it. He came down into the basement exclaiming "The new Outkast single is amazing. It reminds me of The Beatles!" I filed that away as an interesting thought since I only knew Outkast as a Hip-Hop group. Cut to a few days later when I catch the new Outkast single on MTV. And I am very confused, because it is a Hip-Hop song. I know The Beatles are a huge influence on pop music but this seems like a big stretch. What is my friend thinking. Cut to a few days after that and I catch a different Outkast single . This one is called "Hey Ya" where the other one I heard was "I Like the Way You Move" and now it clicks. Then I mentally apologize to my friend who I thought was crazy. Eventually the world caught up to my friend and "Hey Ya" became gigantic. Have I heard it too many times? Probably. But I can't deny that it was overplayed because it was so catchy and good. Besides it, the aforementioned "Way You Move" and the poo poo song I was not familiar with this album. It's too long , but I say that about most double albums. But the good stuff here is really good.

this is way too long

Not what I was expecting, I can see why this is a must listen, it is very creatively written and has many well known songs on it.

It was really great but I didn’t listen to the whole album because it was too long for my day

2 albums, obviously but loses something from being too long when trying to listen to both consecutively. Prefer speakerboxx which I wasn't expecting, the love below is trying to do a lot but sometimes feels disjointed.

iskreno mnogo pesama, nisam ih bas detaljno slusao pustio sam u pozadini, andre 3k goat, speakerboxxx je sve big boi, i to je ono pare kola picke, a andre je ceo drugi deo i to je mekanija prica vise mi se to svidelo

Would have been 4 stars but the double album was too long to enjoy. With half the tracks it’s a better album overall

It was good even if not my favorite type of music. Too long. Haha

Big Boi's Speakerboxxx - solid 3, if not low 4. Andre 3000's The Love Below - esh. Hey Ya! everyone recognizes and Roses is good. The rest is just to up to anywhere near OutKast standards. If it was its own album, it would be a low 2 or even really high 1. If this double album taught me nothing, it's that I'm more of a Big Boi fan than a Andre fan musically. Sorry, but it's a high 2 for me. Wish it was more.

Por qué

• GhettoMusick is a really cool first track • I love The Rooster, the piano chords in the back of the verses mixed with the trumpets sounds great • Big Boi's verses in both The Rooster and Bust have been incredible • The groove in Church is really catchy • I wasn't expecting much from the Interludes but Bamboo acting as a lead-in to Tomb of the Boom works really well • "That don't belong to urse–I mean us" to switch up the rhyming pattern in Reset is so good • Taking a break after finishing Speakerboxxx. I really enjoyed this half of the album. Big Boi's rapping is consistently great and there are a lot of really interesting instrumentals. I feel like Last Call is going to be stuck in my head until I listen to The Love Below. I also really like the repeated "Speakerboxxx" tag used throughout the album, it really made the whole thing feel cohesive. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I wound up listening to The Love Below while I was running errands, so I don't have in-depth thoughts for most of the songs. However, Hey Ya is obviously a fantastic song, and Roses, Vibrate and A Life in the Day of Benjamin Andre were all standout tracks from this half of the album too. Favourite songs: Speakerboxxx: The Rooster The Love Below: Hey Ya

Impossible not to get pulled in to this oversized helping of a good time.

Innovative but not for me mostly. Some good songs but hard to categorize

Speakerboxxx: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Love Below: ⭐️⭐️

A towering, fraught classic longer than some feature films. That happens when you make two solo albums share a “get along” shirt. It is really good and would perhaps be excellent if it was, say, 40 minutes shorter - maybe normal double album length. But you can hear what makes OutKast great as individuals. ‘Stankonia’ is better for hearing what made them great as a duo.

nice, rap is not my genre... but fineeeeeeee

A bold double album split into two distinct personalities. Speakerboxxx delivers solid Southern hip-hop with Big Boi’s confident flow, but it feels more “okay” than groundbreaking. The Love Below, on the other hand, aims for eccentric funk-pop but often comes across as a diluted Prince pastiche—ambitious yet uneven. The saving grace? “Hey Ya,” a timeless burst of energy that outshines the rest.

No

LOOOONG ASS ALBUM. Some bangers some eh. The second half is more my style. I can def hear the influence this had on Childish Gambino.

WAY too much of a not so good thing. At 2+ hours there was no way I was going to listen to all of this. Hip hop isn't my thing and sampling this did nothing to change my mind.

Tog bara 9 månader att lyssna på men honestly DET ÄR SÅ LÅNGT. Bra emellan men CHRIST det är verkligen två olika album och det är så jävla långt att lyssna på. The Love Below är bättre, men jag tappade fokus typ 5 gånger

I don’t live it but it has bangers

Over time my allegiance seems to have shifted from the indulgence of the Andre side to the more pure hip-hop side of Big Boi. A great album but exhausting, especially with the final couple of Love Below songs Vibrate and A Life in the Day.

Not really my vibe, appreciate the drip

peakerboxxx / The Love Below feels less like an album and more like being trapped in two different rooms where neither artist knows when to stop talking. It is bloated, indulgent, and relentlessly self-satisfied, stretching a handful of decent ideas across an absurd runtime until even mild enjoyment turns into fatigue. What should have been two focused solo statements instead becomes an endurance test, daring the listener to find patience where none is rewarded. The biggest issue is excess, not just in length but in attitude. Songs ramble, ideas repeat, and whole stretches feel like sketches that never earned their place. The humour wears thin quickly, the genre hopping feels unfocused rather than adventurous, and the emotional moments are undercut by sheer overexposure. Instead of intimacy or insight, you get clutter, novelty, and a sense that no one involved was willing to edit themselves for the sake of the listener. By the time it finally ends, the dominant feeling is relief rather than resolution. There are isolated moments that hint at creativity and ambition, but they are buried under hours of indulgence and noise. This is an album that mistakes freedom for depth and scale for substance, and for me it is actively unpleasant to sit through

While this might not be something I reach for again, I can acknowledge that it is a rare great double album.

There were some great tracks on here but the majority of them I would consider to be just good. I tried to treat the halves as different albums but still listened to the whole thing in one sitting, which may have been a mistake since the whole thing got to be pretty tiresome and felt bloated. I'll probably come back to give it another shot at some point but the sheer length makes it pretty daunting.

Sure it's a little bloated and some of it feels dated (particularly in Big Boi's half), but Outkast can do no wrong.

Probably their best album

As albums that presage a legendary group’s dissolution go, it’s a banger — but it’s also a lot to digest. I own this, yet I’m not sure I’ve ever played both CDs back to back. Speakerboxx is thumping, funky hip hop (I had forgotten about Killer Mike’s cameos) that carries OutKast into the new millennium, but it’s The Love Below that is most impressive in its kaleidoscopic and horny mix of psychedelic funk, soul, folk and jazz-tinged jungle (“My Favorite Things”). Given the sheer amount of material here, this double album would have benefited from some editing (some of the skits/interludes, for starters), and I don’t love the misogyny that concludes the track “Roses.” But man, these guys were talented, and I’d sure like to hear more from them than that weird new-age flute music Andre 3000 recorded a few years back. 4.5.

I love OutKast and there are definite jams on this album but... meh.

Way too long (couldn't these have stood alone as 2 separate lps, or did they think Hey Ya would be enough to get people to buy this), but mostly kept my interest.

This is so great! I loved this album when I bought the CD in high school and I still think it’s awesome. Definitely too long though I just skimmed through the lyrics of the interludes rather than listen to them and i skipped all the radio-popular songs I’ve heard a thousand times before (Hey Ya, Roses, ILTWYM etc). Speakerboxxx is my favourite of the two and both are so creative and fun and really interesting and easy to listen to.

Lots of fun listening to this, didn’t find any new tracks but I should really go back to it.

Not for me

who doesn’t love OutKast? i have listened to a lot of these songs, just never the entire album. andre and big boi sound great together, plus a lot of great features.

I actually owned this when it came out but if I did listen I didn’t think much of it. A few years on - it’s brilliant

Speakerboxxx: excellent bops all the way through 5/5 The Love Below: uneven quality, Hey Ya is the high point 3/5 Average between the two albums: 4/5

Very good, although a little bit long.

i liked it. the second half was way better, andre 3000 is a pretty cool guy. I liked when he prayed to god (who is a woman). favourite song is probably hey ya cause i’m basic but i’ll just have to listen again to get a better favorite.

Loved the different vibes on the first half vs the second! The horns, the layers, the production all blew me away & I felt like dancing. It was a littttttle long, but thoroughly enjoyed.

This is a very fun album to listen to. It is also VERY long. It plays like a tale of two halves with Speakerboxxx being a very hip-hop orientated record, and The Love Below blending hip-hop with influences from jazz, soul and R&B. TLB gets a little bit samey by the end but it never stops being enjoyable.

High 4, super solid straight up double album with some top tier tracks

Idk wat ik ermee moet

Wow, that was a lot of music. I found it hard to rate this album since it's basically two solo albums. I really enjoyed Speakerboxxx. All the songs were bangers. If the album was just Speakerboxxx I'd give it a 5. I didn't like The Love Below as much. It was ok, and I didn't mind the jazz-experimental aspect of it, but I thought it was a little self indulgent and drawn out. I'd give it a 3. Therefore I'll split the difference and give the whole double album a 4.

Best Song: Hey Ya Seriously, 2+ hour album?!?! I get it is two albums in one, but c'mon. There are some really good tracks on here. There are also some mediocre (at best) tracks on here. This is one of those cases where it is just too much. If they had tightened this up and only put out the best tracks instead of forcing this double album it would easily be a 4 but alas, that isn't the case. 3/5.

Solid high energy with great beats

Ate

Disc 1 - 0.6/5 Disc 2 - 0.8/5 Total - 0.7/5 As someone who doesn't like rap/hip hop this was an absolute chore to get through at over 2hrs. Hey ya & Roses on the Outkast album are such outliers on this record. The rest is slow, rap heavy, with silly interludes that add nothing. I think if this was 10-11 of the best songs I'd give it more of a chance and rate this higher instead of nearly 40 songs which are mostly filler.

I appreciate the variety across the track list, but the quality isn't very consistent and 40 tracks is a bit much even for a double album. The Speakerboxxx half isn't really my thing, but GhettoMusick is an amazing song and Last Call was fun too. The Love Below was more interesting and has a lot more diverse influences but other than Hey Ya and Roses there weren't any tracks that stood out.

Ehh I feel like it has potential and I don’t mind some of the songs but just not for me

Way too long, couldn't do it

Bloated (long). Innovative in places. Doesn’t sound 20+ years old. Like aspects of both discs. But surprised for me it’s more of a 3 than a 4 on re listening after some time. Cut some tracks and there’s a 4 there.

Realistically, at 2+ hours too sprawling to get a 5, although made a good shot at it! Arguably more a two album package rather than a traditional.double - the 2nd half at times gloriously takes the baton from Prince, and runs with it. Wasn't really a bit fan of Hey Ya and other singles back in the day - which somehow stalled my digging into them in my hip hop dive. Had them next at bat when this project hit, so was waiting for one of their albums to pop up. It didint disappoint..eclectic, irreverent, innovative and a great alternative to the coastal stuff.

Look, I’m never going to dedicate my time to an album(s) this long. I owned it back in the day. It’s vastly overrated and could do with some serious editing even to make it two separate and digestible release. There’s a 50 minute work of brilliance in there somewhere, but I can’t be arsed to find it.

So fresh and so clean. Speakerboxx hardly ever lets up. Love below is much more experimental. 2 hours+ but flew by.

This is a fun album! Definitely adding it to my rotation. I like the varying styles of music and the humor. The beats make me dance in my living room.

Enjoyable variety of flow, beats, and lyrical topics

If I could give this negative stars I would

40 songs! Interesting start but not gripping.

It's.....long. I mean, I get it it's a double album. But damn! 2 hours 14 minutes! However the good thing is that it's a fantastic double record. They could've released it as solo albums or pared it down to a single disc and frankly either way we would have gotten a full, cohesive project. But then you'd need to cut out something. You'd be missing a lot. Honestly you'd be missing too much. You need the whole thing. Did these guys know that they were making an all timer? Was this just another project? How easily do these songs pour out of these musicians? There's just a lot going on. I'm a few dozen into my 1K1 Albums project and outside of a couple punk discs and my one Dylan album, this is one of the first ones that truly belong in the list.

Speakerboxxx - 5 star The Love Below - 3 star 4 star overall

Not my thing….

One of my faves by them

Хороший такой рэп-альбом. Стилистически - конечно это гламурные 00-е, а не гангстерские 90-е. Есть немало интересных битов, есть и абсолютно проходные треки. Альбом тем не менее очень долгий и за раз его послушать тяжело. Но все же - крепкий НЕПЛОХ.

This album is ambitious to a fault. It’s less a double album than two solo statements released under a shared name, and the contrast between the halves is so stark it becomes the defining feature of the experience. Speakerboxxx is competent, groove-driven Southern hip hop that’s well made but rarely surprising. It does what it’s supposed to do, but much of it blends together for me and never quite hooks in. The Love Below is more interesting, messier, and riskier. André 3000’s willingness to experiment, be playful, and veer into left-field pop is genuinely fun at times, and tracks like “Roses” show how effective that approach can be. But the self-indulgence becomes hard to ignore. Too many ideas overstay their welcome, and the lack of editorial restraint eventually dulls the impact. I respect this album far more than I enjoy it. The ambition is real, the cultural importance is obvious, and individual moments absolutely work. But as a full listen, it’s uneven and not something I feel compelled to return to. A three-star record for me: interesting, occasionally fun, historically significant, but ultimately more admirable than satisfying.

First off, the elephant in the room: this is two albums. It's not even one long album, it's just two separate albums mashed together. As a whole, it has its ups and downs. Speakerboxx is overall a perfectly okay hip hop album. The Love Below isn't great, full of just plain weird lyrics. That said, Hey Ya! and 35 minutes of filler would be a three star album. I think much like how there's a beautiful statue trapped in a block of marble, there's a good album in here somewhere, if only 90 minutes of meh music were cut out. Overall, this was a poor listening experience and a very unrefined album. It could have been so much better, which in a way makes it so much worse.

Some exceptional stuff on here, Outkast really are unique, but it didn't need to be this long.

war leider gar nicht meins

I hear some hints of old time R&B/Soul and nice use of horns.

Just do 2 albums ffs

Hell yea! The world knew I needed a 2 hour 15 minute Outkast "album". As always, it was phenomenal. Still holds up.

Above anything, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below demonstrates that Outkast was greater that the sum of its parts. This is an overly long album that is sonically splattered. There is a lot to like about both parts, but my ears found “The Love Below” to be the more interesting part. There is some interesting experimental music throughout the second half, but like all experiments, sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. The result is higher highs and lower lows. The first album, Speakerboxx, is more straightforward hip-hop, with a fun and funky vibe. I enjoyed the tracks that leaned most heavily into the funky grooves. Some interesting horns and guitar work. The real trouble here, particularly with respect to this project, is the length. Normally I like to give each album several listens, but that simply is not practical in this case. Too bad.

Great double album!

As I fired up the album generator today I actually said out loud to the Universe maybe no Hip Hop today (I've had a lot this last two weeks). Then this popped up with over two hours run time. So as I begin I am saying out loud to the Universe that I hope Margot Robbie does not knock on my door today ! 🤔 As for the album. It's bloated, indulgent, over produced, has some bangers, some mingers and everything in between. It was actually a pretty fun two hours overall... oh, who's that at the door ?...

I hadn’t listened to the whole thing before; I was worried that it would be a lot of unremarkable rap music, outside of the singles I already knew. But this was a really weird interesting listen throughout. Very long, but I think it had enough ideas to actually warrant being this long.

This was so good??? A masterpiece??? I normally have no patience for long albums, but this one was so fun and interesting. Honestly kinda blown away. A new favorite, instantly added to my collection. Also - and this is a belief I've had for years - Hey Ya might be the best song ever recorded. Absolutely love that the whole album rips.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed a lot of the songs on here. It's a very long album and not all of them were for me, but so many great hits and deep cuts I didn't know. So many different interesting sounds and clashing styles. A fun listening experience, even if not my type of musics. Top Songs: Pink & Blue, Spread, Dracula's Wedding, Roses

5/10 Speakerboxx is that rare thing for me, engaging, listenable hip-hop! Who'd have thunk it. It has music and isn't all about the typical hip-hop tropes. Well done Big Boi. I can only guess Andre 3000 played Big Boi "Hey Ya" and had BB worried. But then once he'd had to play the rest of the crap on The Love Below, Big Boi would have been working out how he could detach himself from the Outlast moniker. Not a double album - they have no relation to each other apart that they two artists were once collaborators. Score averaged to 3 stars and less one for being too long. Man it was such a slog

way too long

Is it excessive? Yes. But what else can you say about a double album that produced a couple of the biggest hits of the 21st century? I can only ask, are you a Speakerboxxx guy, or a Love Below guy?

Speakerboxxx is a 4 let down by interludes The Love Below is a 2 with a small amount of excellent songs

For hip hop it's very creative. Every song has a different vibe. It's fun to listen to. Favorite song: Bowtie

Invented music.

Outkast album in theory, in practice it's half Big Boi solo half André solo. It's also a tale of 2 albums (makes sense) with the first half being your typical southern hip hop shit whereas the second half is more neo-soul/r&b with a bit of rap. It starts off pretty good - a lot of bangers on the first disk with some banging beats and great features - The Way You Move, Rooster, Church, Flip Flop Rock... but there is also a bit of filler, I feel like some songs sound like leftovers from their first album but not as effective. The 2nd half is really where it's at, André is a genius and you can tell it. He's obviously an incredible rapper, but also an amazing singer. Everyone knows Hey Ya and Roses and for a good reason, for pop songs they're pretty much as perfect as it gets, but there is so much more to it. Happy Valentine's Day is one of my fav Outkast songs, so much joy, so slick and catchy. Prototype and Love Hater are these jazzy soul ballads, kinda proto-Thundercat and sound soo smooth. His approach to all the genres he is making feels so genuine and down to earth that it's hard to believe he is primarily a rapper. The second disk also seems to have sort of a concept of finding love and I think he executes it in a really profound way. In many ways this album is also about self love and self acceptance, which I think is very important. It also ends with a bang, the outro track has one of the most menacing hip hop beats ever and showcases André's storytelling masterclass. One aspect of this album which I don't think is talked about enough is its influence, not only because it sold so well but many of the soul and pop crossover songs influenced more melodic, r&b infused hip hop. And that's years before artists like Kanye, Cudi or Drake did the same. I would give the first disk a 7/10 and the second one a strong 8/10, so all in all it averages out to 4 stars.

I assume one of the longest albums of all time. Fun listen though.

Speakerboxxx: This album is so ATL. The features are great on here and the beats are very nostalgic for me. Big Boi brought the heat with this one. [4] The Love Below: So different from Speakerboxxx, wow. They were smart to put this second on the double album. How horny was 3K when he made this? This comes across as a love album made made for any woman willing to listen. Hey Ya and Roses in the middle of this feels like he just slapped a couple pop hits in the middle of his experimental hip hop project. [2]

didn't mean much to me, felt like background music

Absolute garbage

It was baffling when it came out. I bought the cd on day 1 and have a fond memory of diving into Speakerboxxx on my long bus ride home. I was smitten. These albums are so jam packed with creative musical ideas it still comes across as incredibly refreshing. With this revisit, I think I might love them more than ever. Speakerboxx is a stone cold masterpiece. One of the best hip hop albums ever. Then there’s the bizarre The Love Below… My one quibble is that Andre’s lyrics are about as subtle as a cock in a popcorn tub. But the music he makes is just SO DAMN FUNKY. Damn.

It takes a lot of ambition to make a double-album, and even more talent to actually make it listenable. They’ve managed to pull this one off.

Hell yeah! Really does feel like two different albums. Standout track: My Favourite Things

The first half of Speakerboxxx is perfect but it gets pretty wobbly after the Bamboo interlude. The Love Below has moments of greatness throughout. There would be a killer five star album here if you culled some weaker tracks and put them together but the dual halves are interesting as well.

7.4

Is it self-indulgent to make a double album bursting with incredible tracks? This album has tons of ideas executed well. Hip-hop with pop sensibilities, informed by decades of black music. Outkast are standing on the shoulders of giants and they aren't shy about showing you the view.

OutKast took a big leap releasing this style of album after Stankonia. But it delivered and spent a long time at the top of the charts (best selling hip-hop album of all time). When it came out I liked Speakerboxxx more that The Love Below because I wanted more rap which is what Big Boi delivered. Now, I would say one of my favorite albums is The Love Below - but you can't mention one without the other. I like TLB more now because of how unexpected it is: lyrics about Dracula, prototypes, jazz piano/drum. I loved hearing the organs, horns, and other instruments throughout a hip-hop album.

143/1089 Opening tracks are so strong, perhaps this double album won’t feel drawn out?? the squelchy sound in Bust really doesn’t work for me but i really like the song otherwise Tomb of the Boom feels SO influential, i hear a lot of different modern rap elements in here, in addition to the Epic Rap Battles of History template This double album was a LOT but it was great, it didn’t really feel it’s length and had a lot of fun and interesting elements that kept it flowing smoothly faves: Ghettomusick, Spread, Hey Ya!, Prototype, Dracula’s Wedding, Happy Valentine’s Day, Take Off Your Cool, The Way You Move, She Lives in My Lap, Church, The Rooster, War, Busy, Unhappy, Reset, Love Hater the Love Below interpretation of My Favourite Things is also pretty cool 84/100

Muy buen disco, descubriendo de donde viene la mítica "Killing me softly with his song".

I love this album...it takes you here there and everywhere but somehow works so well together. I like that while they are a team they each took and album and made their own vocals and own talents shine. You can listen to this as one big experience or break it into two separate albums. Big Boi has good rhymes and is just simple, easy going and yet gets to the point in ways you can feel. Then Andre is just so over the top and sneaky funny. I am not sure which I like better because they both have their own high points, on a mellow day Speakerboxxx is where it is at, but on a high happy day I can't help but rock out to The Love Below.

I had my ears into other things when this came out so I never listend to OutKast before. I liked this better than their other album we had. The Way You Move is soooo groovy. Love that song. Overall I liked SpeakerBoxxx better than The Love Below but both have some great stuff on them. My Favorite Things is a great jazz piece.

I bought this album on vinyl in Las Vegas when it came out because it was trendy. I liked Speakerboxxx more than The Love Below at that time but I think I feel the opposite now. Andre is trying to be Prince and his freak flag is flying high, but it holds up, whereas Big Boi is just being himself with solid hip hop that is good but never mind blowing. It offers a pretty great glimpse into what energy and style each of them bring to OutKast. This is one of the rare double albums that can and absolutely should be listened to as separate albums, much like Guns ‘N’ Roses’ Use Your Illusion 1 and 2. Ultimately the entire package is just ok. Each part of this is too long to sit through just to move on to another hour plus of it, despite good songs popping up often enough. Vinyl really is the best way to consume this. There’s enough good stuff packed on one side of each record and just enough of a dose of OutKast at a time to stay interested before it becomes too much. 3.5 stars

This is such an interesting double album. OutKast is this unique duo, and I love that they split up to showcase who they each are musically and to give a sense of their individual contributions to the greater whole. That’s my interpretation of what they’re doing here anyway. I’ve always really enjoyed OutKast. I have specific memories of when this came out, and listening to it in my car a whole bunch. I definitely gravitated towards Speakerboxx over The Love Below back then, and listening again now, that still tracks. Big Boi just brings the beats that make me groove more. Andre’s lyrics crack me up, and I appreciate his unseriousness while still making great music, but his part of the album teeters on being a little too self indulgent and unedited at times. But c’mon, Hey Ya and Roses both came out of that, so I can’t complain too much. And I really enjoy his storytelling. And God is a lady, so yay for that. This is really too long and is missing enough truly awesome tracks to be a 5. But there's still a lot of great stuff here!

Way too long and not good enough to justify it. 2,5

When Hey Ya -one of the best song ever - isn't even top 5

quite long but theres a lot of great songs and will be listening to outkast a lot more from now on

I don't like rap or hip hop, but I can appreciate that this album is a bit special, so it gets a two star instead of a one. It would have got three, except for the lyric "roses smell like poo-poo-ooh".

Very surprisingly good

I remember when Hey Ya! dropped. It wasn't just a big single, it was a cultural phenomenon. It was completely unique and seemed to come out of nowhere. Everyone was shaking Polaroids, asking people to lend them some sugar, declaring themselves as neighbours. I was fully swept up in it. I absolutely loved it. I'd play it at parties, quote it constantly, and I even created a medley on guitar that started with Hotel Yorba and would segue into an acoustic version of Hey Ya! It was the ultimate crowd pleaser ("crowd" being the 2-5 people actually listening to me play). But underneath all the pure joy of the song, is something really dark. Hey Ya! is one of the most upbeat songs ever written about how love isn't permanent. André literally tells us what he's doing, and we somehow don't notice, maybe because we don't want to - I guess that was his point: "Y'all don't want to hear me, you just want to dance". It's a brutally honest confession about love falling apart, people staying together for the wrong reasons, and how we avoid confronting hard truths. Hiding the message in the lyrics of a song that was so catchy and energetic, and playing on the trope of romance and love in pop music, is genius, and living through that hype while slowly realising what the song was really saying felt like André pulled off the ultimate magic trick. That track set the tone for The Love Below, André 3000's half of the double album: a psychedelic, jazzy, funky, 70s-soaked, musical-theatre fever dream where he leans fully into eccentricity. It barely resembles hip hop at all. It's lush with Prince-like falsetto, spoken-word interludes, theatrical storytelling, jazz melodies, and basslines full of stank. And it's FILTHY! It was bold, strange, theatrical, and completely unexpected for an Outkast album. Back when the album came out, I used to skip Speakerboxxx and go straight to André's side. Big Boi's half felt like the "other one", and I was there for André. But, Speakerboxxx is a really strong album too. It's dense, funky, and full of intricate, complex and layered melodies. Big Boi pulls in Funkadelic-style textures, and interesting samples and blends them perfectly with hip-hop. It's more in line with the classic Outkast sound, sure, but it's still complex and great. It never stood a chance, when sitting next to André's horny cosmic jazz opera. It was always going to be overshadowed. It was a really strange move to release separate albums in a double, and it was another angle of something unique and interesting that they were doing creatively. For me, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below will always be tied to that moment when Hey Ya! was everywhere, blaring from radios, at parties, on TV, while quietly saying something heartbreaking that most of us didn’t notice. We just wanted to shake polaroid pictures and borrow sugar.

Really liked the album when it came out. It holds up well. I preferred the Love Below disc back then. Speakerboxxx has grown on me.

8.5 / 10

The Sgt. Peppers of Hip Hop in terms of the creativity and complexity of how it transformed the genre like The Beatles did with rock/psychedelic rock, Outkast created a timeless classic for generations to come.

Too looong... It's all okay, but if you're going to release a huge joint opus like this you need more standout tracks than there are here, it's more enjoyable background beats than bangers, particularly The Love Below (aside from the hits). I liked more on Speakerboxx, that's an easy 4 stars. Bowtie, the Way You Move, the Rooster, both Killer Mike's tracks and Last Call were the main standouts for me. The Love Below has Hey Ya and Roses but other than that, mostly meh. A lot of filler and kinda juvenile in its humour (I know that's a bit rich since my last review was Frank Zappa, but I don't mind when he does it 😂). So probably only 2-3 stars for that one... but since they come as a package deal I'll say 4 stars, but the 4th is for Killer Mike

I enjoyed this one. It’s a bop.

Is the the worst Outkast album? Maybe? Theoretically? But I'm not even entirely sure it matters. "Is this an Outkast album at all?" may be a better question. And the answer is actually "not really". This is famously a Big Boi album, and an André 3000 album running back to back. The albums were even going to be sold separately, until The Label (TM) decided against it. Speakerboxxx is Big Boi's contribution, and it's more or less what people wanted from him. It's about an hour of funk and R&B inflected Southern Hip-Hop. His personality shows all over these tracks. He talks about the things he finds important: like fatherhood, social injustice, religion, and philosophy. And the features on Speakerboxxx are all artists that Big Boi clearly finds important (including Ludacris and a young Killer Mike, both amazing here). In short, he's in his element. The creative control Big Boi had over Speakerboxxx manifested as an album with a laser focus, and an impressive level of consistency. André 3000's The Love Below stands in stark contrast. Firstly, it was very much *not* what people wanted from him, but it might have been what they needed: after-all, we got one of the best pop songs of the 2000's out of it. It isn't really a rap album at all: he breaks free from the genre's confines and experiments with writing rock, pop, R&B, psych, and jazz. Despite the eclectic pile of styles here, André 3000 does manage to pull it together in a pretty cohesive way. I think the lyrical focus helps out a little: he stays rigidly on the topic of relationships here. The start of relationships, the end of them, the highs, the lows: André covers this topic from just about any lens you could ask for. But he definitely does have a vision here and everything *does* slot in musically too. It just gets a little messy in the process. In The Love Below's 80 minutes, André 3000 finds room for generational hit Hey Ya!: which is also one of the most interesting realizations of the themes at play here. The core song here is one of the best in the history of pop music, and the lyrics are about two individuals who are deeply unhappy in their relationship who can't bring themselves to break things off because of their fear of loneliness and social judgement. And I've always read the incredibly upbeat sound of the track as a confrontation of peoples' tendencies to try to dance through it and ignore their own pain. It's honestly really sad at its core, and I think it's part of what gives Hey Ya! really compelling staying power. On songs like Hey Ya! and some other favorites, I think The Love Below hits higher highs than Speakerboxxx, but it's way messier. Andre's half runs for 80 minutes, and it's effectively genre soup, it's gonna be a little messy. And while, the lyrics usually work really well, sometimes his sense of humor just doesn't work for me. Like I don't really like the chorus of Roses because of the lyrics: although it is a good song overall. I think the single thing most emblematic of The Love Below as a whole may be the fucking insane cover of My Favorite Things. It comes out of no-where, and damn near disrupts the flow of the project. But against all odds, it manages to be a standout. And this is a song combining improv jazz with breakbeat, which happens to be a cover of My Favorite Things. It's The Love Below at the furthest reaches of its indulgent brilliance. The worst thing I can say about the whole package is that it's extremely clear that this exists due to a kind of creative meltdown, and that, consequently, the two halves do not end up creating something that feels like an OutKast album at all. Although, I have kind of learned to love it on its own terms. Considering just how much music is here: the amount of it that is really impressive from both artists is pretty astounding. And this is a pretty great addition to modern music, even if it's kind of got a weird asterisk in Outkast's discography.

I’d love to rate this higher but it’s really unnecessarily long

This was an ordeal and I did not enjoy

Genuinely so much more enjoyable than I was expecting.

Funky, but too eclectic and annoying for my taste, interesting listening experience that I dont want to repeat

Prototype supremacy

Listened before

Its ok

It’s like I’m back in jr high

Too long only listened to first half of it

Ah, memories of 2003! Haven't listened to this album all the way through in over 10 years, maybe over 15? Always preferred Andre's disc and today was no different, but both were refreshing today.

got some more outkast today, this time it's a double album, run time totaling at about 2 hours worth of music. speakerboxx is some fresh modern hip hop music, while the love below is a nice, blended fusion of jazz and soul. i have to review both of them briefly. both albums showcased the musical styles of both members of the group. big boi's half is groovy and socially conscious hip hop, and andré 3000's take on art pop is just as colorful and whimsical as his fashion style. there's something for anybody in this album, and despite being intimidated by the entire length... i enjoyed it a whole lot.

Ich habs mir jetzt gehört,schon geil aber nicht so mein geschmack. Ich höre gern Hip hop,aber ich habe ein weirdo geschmack weil ich kaum was aus amerika höre. Ich mag Gorillaz aber das glaube ich aus england. Naja Ich fühle es einfach leider nicht. Meine verbindung mit Rap/Hip Hop ist tief politisch über die verhältnisse in Deutschland,Frankreich oder Spanien oder es muss einfach sehr sehr dumm sein manchmal auch beides. Ich geb es jetzt persönlich 3 sterne, aber ich verstehe warum andere es 5 geben würden weil es gut sehr gut produziert ist und vermutlich flow feiern weil der sehr gut. Aber ich fühle es nicht

It's a classic, it's pretty varied, a little long

I like the jazzy tracks, interesting sounds, acoustic instruments on some songs, and the guys' sense of humor. But I wouldn't go out of my way to listen to it again. Good stuff, but not my taste. 6/10

This was the second album I ever bought. I had to really turn the volume down on Last Call to make sure my parents couldn't overhear the lyrics. Overall it falls into all the usual double album pitfalls, bloated and too long. But this is a weird one. Its a Big Boi album and an Andre 3000 album, and a perfect showcase of why the pair need each other. The Speakerboxx side has some bangers, some great rapping, but also a lot of generic 2000s rap and some completely pointless skits. The Love Below is beautiful at times, and has 2 of the best pop songs of the 21st century on it, but also has some definite misses. I actually really love the jazzy breakbeat instrumental cover of My Favorite Things. I think maybe Speakerboxx is a 3.5 and The Love Below a 4, but together they feel like less than the sum of the parts. This isn't one of those cases where you can combine the two and make a really great album out of it though, the sides and songs are just too different. Fave Tracks: GhettoMusick, Bowtie, The Way You Move, The Rooster, Knowing, Reset, Last Call, Happy Valentine's Day, Prototype, Hey Ya!, Roses, Love In War, She's Alive, My Favorite Things, A Life In The Day of Benjamin Andre (Incomplete) 3.6/5

Something I heard when it first came out. Some big hits on here and Hey Ya! is a song which is pretty ubiquitous. Outkast are a group who get a huge amount of respect and deservedly so.

Couple of bangers spread across a double album. Ballsy to release a double able with distinctly different styles on each. Feeling generous. 4/5.

So, I really like OutKast, and I remember buying this album when it came out. It's a pretty ambitious concept - a double album with either side reflecting each of the duo's personality: the brash Big Boi opposite the amourous Andre 3000. I prefer, and preferred at the time, The Love Below side of the album. Obviously it has the most-well known track of the album and possibly of all OutKast's works, Hey Ya, but there are some other cracking tunes - Happy Valentine's Day, Spread, Prototype, Roses etc. Speakerboxx is OK, less memorable. If this were two separate albums, I'd give Speakerboxx 3/5 and The Love Below 5/5. As it is, I'll split the difference and give a 4

Long, but a classic

Bloody amazing album!

Nix Musik! Geweiltverherrlichender Mist! Poser!

Too fun to ignore, even though I don't really like the genre too much. The musicality really shines here, I just can't relate to the music very well...yet.

I read a lot from the American 1001’s who whine a lot about the over population of British punk/new wave/indie bands on this list. They may have a point but the same can be said about USA hip hop rap artists who want to invade my life with their violent and misogynistic lifestyle. One album popping up weekly is bad enough but fuck me two albums posing as one??? When I saw that I played my joker as I wasn’t even going to quickly skip through this filth. 0/5 25/11/25

A surprisingly entertaining album given the length. The super diverse blend of funk, rap hip hop and pop actually kept my interest throughout the whole album. I think it was a very bold choice for them to release a double album, split cleanly down the middle to feature each artists half of the material , but the concept somehow worked. All the music is still related and feels cohesive but you did get somewhat refreshed transitioning from one album to the next, trying to detect different influences and changes in style. Some tracks suffered from some of the painful and sometimes cringy cliches of this genre that left it feeling a bit dated at times.

Based on only having heard Hey Ya!, I always assumed OutKast was one of those gimmicky, shallow party bands and since I'm not really into hip hop and I'm definitely not into party music, I never had a reason to check them out before. I fear that a 2 hour and 15 minute double (triple? quadruple?) album might not be the best intro to any group, though. Speakerboxxx (disc 1): Honestly, I'm enjoying the first disc a lot more than I was expecting. There's so much going on in each track and the production is great! Lost me a bit on Tomb of the Boom, which devolves into awful gangsta rap tropes, but overall, I kind of dug this half of the album. The Love Below (disc 2): Wow, ok, so this is a totally different album, huh? I love the psychedelic, jazz-y feel of this side, but the interludes and themes are incredibly cringy. I get that he's trying to tell some love story, but God and Where Are My Panties are just not enjoyable to listen to at all. Neither is Roses. Honestly, I'm struggling to finish this half. Overall, I found that Speakerboxxx was more consistently enjoyable, while the Love Below had higher highs and lower lows and unfortunately those lows out numbered the highs quite significantly. I wish they had edited this down to even a standard length double album; 2 hours and 15 minutes is just too much to digest. It almost as if I wish these two guys made one cohesive album rather than slapping two individual albums together and calling it a day.

I've heard OutKast described as Hip Hop for people that don't like Hip Hop and on listening to this, I can sort of hear why. I thought there were some great songs on here and the production level was really high. But.... at over two hours they could afford to pick some winners and put out a more concise and higher quality album. Couldn't quite manage all of it but will probably return and finish it off at the weekend.

Albums al gehad, was toen ook niet goed.

5/10 Speakerboxxx 4/10 The Love Below The good songs are great but there is far too much filler. Should have been a single album

Now we’re getting to some hip-hop I’m into. I remember when this came out, it was a sensation. I bought it and listened to it about 1,000 times. Once I got it out of my system, I stopped listening, and Outkast split up, even though everyone in their camp was making it seem like it was business as usual at the time. But you could tell just by listening to the double album, things were probably over with Big Boi and Andre 3000, at least as the duo, Outkast. The album was broken up into two albums, one was essentially Big Boi’s full of great hip-hop that made you dance with fun raps. The second half was essentially Andre 3000’s album, which was full of great hip-hop that made you dance and great raps….but also it had great pop music and a jazzy version of My Favorite Things, and a duet with Kelis about Dracula getting married….What? This wasn’t just an album; it was an experience, and I agree it should be something everyone should hear before they die. Even today, this is better and forward-thinking hip-hop than 95% of the dreck that comes out. Both guys were testing the limits of their creativity, maybe Andre 3000 more than Big Boi, but that doesn’t mean Big Boi wasn’t a genius at what he was doing. My only nitpick is that at over two hours, some songs could have been trimmed, which would have only made this a more incredible album. But, maybe we need a few of those lesser songs to bring us back down after hearing bangers like GhettoMusick, The Way You Move, Hey Ya and Prototype. I’m not sure there has ever been a better produced hip-hop album. The music and beats are lush and at times disorienting, but in a good way. Andre 3000 spends quite a bit of his part of the album singing, and he is pretty good. The worst thing about this album is that it’s essentially the last Outkast album. So, for me, while I love revisiting this album, it just makes me think about what could have been. If you haven’t listened to this album, it’s a must.

A busy Monday with an extended after school meeting was not the day for a double album of over two hours…

I can see why some people might highly rate this album. It really is one of two parts though. One a more straight rap album, the other wearing its other influences on its sleeve more and not being afraid to try something different. If they were independent of one another I’d likely rate speakerboxxx a 2 and the love below a 4 so trying to combine the two in an overall score. As a double album its length is a bit too long to really absorb in one sitting.

Great flow

(80/100) --- (75/86)

This would've been improved with some ruthless editing.

As with most OutKast albums there are some spectacular highs and some unbelievable lows.

On Speakerboxxx. faves were "GhettoMusick" "Unhappy" "The Way You Move" "The Rooster" and "Church." The amount of times I heard "The Way You Move" at every school dance growing up, it's impressive I don't outright hate that song. On The Love Below, faves were "Hey Ya!" (obviously) "Roses" "Good Day, Good Sir (Interlude)" (Which I had heard on tiktok and always thought was a random skit audio, never realized it was an OutKast bit) "Behold A Lady" "Pink & Blue" and "Dracula's Wedding"

Nope - not for me…

It was evident that the band had a lot of fun making this eclectic sound. Highs and lows abound but it is worth a listen to from time to time.

No. 23 I love everything on this album for the instrumental to the cover album

i think this is two albums in one and i think the second ones better

Long

Cool but impenetrable. I just can't take in all of a 2.25hr double album and appreciate how it develops in just one day. Some fantastic individual tracks. Love big boi's rap style. Love some of the more R&B stuff on the love below (more than I thought I would certainly.) will listen more

later

Speakerboxxx: Decent lyrics for some of the songs. More melodic would be better. "Bowtie" has some decent rhythm and flow. The love below: "Hey Ya!" is really good of course! Lifts the score by a whole point by itself. "Roses" is almost as good and adds another half a point. 4,2/5

High school fun

This is a great split for these two talented artists. Both albums bring much storytelling and energy.

this was originally meant to be two solo albums, andre3000’s half is better

Feels less like a double album and more like two albums jammed together randomly. The Love Below is the better of the two - more ambitious and has the standout single in Hey Ya. TLB = 3, Speakerbox is a 2.

Not my usual style of music but I liked The Rooster and Knowing the most.

Just crap

This is what I wish most Hip Hop was like honestly. It's adventurous, engaging, sonically varied. Really a lot of fun to listen to. I have to take off a star because it is _so_ long. About two hours and ten minutes. Discipline is an important part of artistry guys. Some editing would have done the world of good.

This blew my mind when it came out. The departure of Big Boi and Andre 3000 as they (well, Andre 3000…) started going in different directions. This was certainly an album of my younger years.

Album 55/1001 My one criticism of this double album would be that I think Outkast are better when they're working collaboratively than apart like this. It's the juxtaposition of their 2 very different styles on the same record that makes them such a special and unique band. Still, 2 excellent albums that bring back some great memories. Back then I much preferred The Love Below, but listening to them back now, Speakerboxx is a lot better than I remembered. Favourite lyrics: HEY YA! If what they say is "Nothing is forever" Then what makes, then what makes Then what makes, then what makes (what makes, what makes) Love the exception? So why, oh, why, oh Why, oh, why, oh, why, oh Are we so in denial when we know we're not happy here? ROSES Caroline, (Caroline), see She's the reason for the word 'bitch' (bitch) I hope she's speedin' on the way to the club Tryna hurry up to get to a baller or singer or somebody like that And try to put on her make up in the mirror and crash, crash Crash into a ditch (Just playin') (Bitch) Crazy bitch (Stupid-ass bitch) Crazy bitch (Old punk-ass bitch) Crazy bitch (Old dumb-ass bitch) Crazy bitch (A bitch's bitch) Crazy bitch (Just a bitch) Crazy bitch (Stupid-ass bitch) Crazy bitch (Old punk-ass bitch) Crazy bitch (Old dumb-ass bitch) Crazy bitch (A bitch's bitch) Crazy bitch (Just a bitch) Speakerboxx 🔊📦 Favourite song: The Way You Move 💃 Honourable mention: Unhappy ☹️ Reset 🔄 Knowing 🧠 War 🪖 Bowtie 🎀 3½ / 5 The Love Below ❤️⬇️ Favourite song: Hey Ya! 👋 Honourable mention: Roses 🌹🌹 Prototype 💘 Pink & Blue 🌸💠 Take Off Your Cool 😎🤓 Vibrate 📳 3½ / 5

Much of the music is good here, but I am soured by the context in which this album was released. This should have been two solo albums, and it feels like the studio's greed decided to put them together for easier marketing. Nevertheless, each side is good in their own way, but as a whole it feels less than its parts due to the cynicism surrounding it. Speakerboxxx (Big Boi): Bold, consistently good, fully-realized, solid. 4 stars. The Love Below (Andre 3000): Playful, inconsistent, higher peaks but lower lows. 3 stars.

I'm not even going to go there...

this is another example of a double album that would have been better if it weren't.

Imponerande

OutKast gave us an album who's concept is as sly as their word play. "It's not a double album, it's an album double." There's over 2 hours of material here worthy of a track-by-track summation and dissection, but I'm gonna keep it brief. For most of my OutKast fandom, I've been Camp Three Stacks. Absolutely nothing against Big Boi, Dre just had the playful lunacy, like a Bugs Bunny of hip hop. Yet within the last few years, I've shifted, my interests gravitating towards Big Boi's bars. Before this listen, I would have said I prefered The Love Below. Instead, I preferred Speakerboxxx. Maybe Big Boi really has been the secret sauce behind OutKast's success. This isn't really an either/or situation, since you're buying both albums; they're grouped together on your streaming service. And yet, comparison is impossible to resist, since the album is a demarcation of each performer's instincts and interests. Andre 3000's The Love Below gets the most airtime. It's the critical darling. It's weird, it's comical, it's sincere, and it's musically eclectic: lounge jazz numbers, pop rap, electronica, R&B, neosoul, spoken word pieces, all interspersed with inventive skits. It's very cool, it highlights 3000's creative individualism, and it's overlong and indulgent. It has more lows than Speakerboxxx, which are only emphasized by listening to both albums back-to-back. Andre pushes his vocals into ranges he just can't meet, especially on "She's Alive", a strange ode to his mother as a single parent. Andre's songs are thematically consistent, to the point that it's a little humdrum. I read a review that said "Andre 3000 made The Love Below to get laid". Perfect summation. And there's nothing wrong with that. Andre 3000 is clearly channeling Prince throughout the album, it's soaked in the music's DNA, but Prince wrote about so many other subjects while also writing about wanting/getting pussy. When one of the few songs on The Love Below that's NOT about falling in love (or wanting to fuck) is about the singer's mother, no matter how saccharine or sincere it is, it's hard not to make an intellectual Oedipal connection. But I'm not a Love Hater, this is still a great album. When comparing Singles, I have to give it to The Love Below's two hits, "Hey Ya!" and "Roses". The latter may have been the most popular song throughout my middle school and early high school life. "Hey Ya!" is still huge, especially when you're in the club and the DJ is trying to throw a bone to all the white girls. Despite "Hey Ya!"s oversaturation, listening to it in context of the album shows how much of an injection of energy it is, and sitting with it shows off it's less thought about qualities, like the squiggly warbly synth sound throughout the song. And the music video is still cool. HOWEVER, "The Way You Move" (feat. Sleepy Brown) is one of the definitive songs of the 00's, and at this point I'd rather hear that in any context before either "Hey Ya!" and "Roses". Speakerboxxx is incredible, but not without it's sins. The Bamboo interlude is cute, but does it need to be 2 minutes long? Does the album really need that many interludes at all? While The Love Below is musically eclectic, Speakerboxxx is lyrically and thematically eclectic. Not to say the Speakerboxxx's music is predictable. It zigzags all over the place. "GhettoMusick" launches with an electronica feel with heavy synths, then 45 seconds shifts into an electric organ. 1 min 15 seconds, you shift to a chill downtempo section with a longing soul singer crooning and various voices singing "Feeling Good, Feelin' Great". A strange tangent for 45 seconds? Nope, it's something like a 2nd chorus, or a repeated bridge. It's awesome and strange. Meanwhile, lyrically the song is something of an anthem, for partying, for celebrating music, for celebrating OutKast. This is followed by "Unhappy", my favorite song on the album, which talks about stoicism, creative productivity and a pursuit of happiness in dire situations, while also sharing seemingly autobiographical stories about Big Boi's parents disentegrating relationship due to stress and money troubles. The next song, "Bowtie" is full of imagery of decadence and wealth, set to a horn-led big band funk sound; the irony of juxtaposing this with "Unhappy" is not lost to me. The album bounces around these ideas--"The Way You Move" being a sexual dance song followed by "The Rooster" a song about being a single father, a song literally about "War" to a call to respond to existentialist (and literal) worries by going to "Church". If The Love Below is Andre 3000 chasing Prince's lineage, then Speakerboxxx is Big Boi chasing Parlaiment/Funkadelic's lineage. Anyway, neither album is perfect, and when combined the flaws are emphasized. And yet you get two of the best albums of the 2000's for one price, so who's bitching?

Braggadocious, gangsta, Southern hip hop contrasts with romantic, eclectic R&B. For a double album packaged in one, the contrast really works.

This album hits with a surprising consistency for something that runs well over two hours. It moves with a confidence that makes it hard to find a real low point, almost as if the duo couldn’t help but deliver quality no matter how wide they stretched the concept. The split structure gives the whole thing its character. Two different visions, two different moods, but somehow still a unified statement. One side sharp and grounded, the other drifting into its own world, yet both pushing the boundaries of what hip-hop could be at the time. The production can feel a bit overbuilt in places, almost like it’s overflowing with ideas, but that’s also part of the charm. It’s ambitious in a way very few mainstream records dared to be. And the big tracks land exactly the way they should. Those huge, era-defining moments pop up almost casually in the middle of the tracklist. It might not be the OutKast album I’d personally place at the very top, but it’s undeniably impressive. Long, bold, inventive, and almost stubbornly free of weak spots. A record that still earns its reputation.

How fucking long is this thing?

Too long

So good and creative. Just way too long. Needs editing.

I divided it into 2 listenings and i must say if you listen to only one take the second. Speakerboxxx was very forgetable and sounded like every other 90s hip hop album while the other was at least bit inovative and andres voice gives a more unique touch. Both albums are well mixed and produceced. but all hits are in the love below Subject matters are as you'd expect from hip hop so i just disregard that. Better than expected but the hits are still the only ones i remember.

For sure overly long. The Love Below is at least twice as interesting as speakerboxxx. But when that half starts, the music really kicks. Very cool and funky. Suffers from it's overload. A shorter version could have been perfect.

un capolavoro, da studiare. il filo che connette il doppio album è l'hip hop. su questo c'è una stratificazione, un blend di generi (a partire soprattutto dal jazz puro, e con lo stack di strumenti elettronici), che è veramente degno di nota. da sentire e risentire e risentire, dopo averlo studiato. qualche pezzo un pò troppo dissonante per i miei gusti. qualcuno geniale.

“Hey Ya” arrives on disc 2, as it were, about an hour and twenty into the whole affair, and it sounds nothing like rest of the album. It’s followed by a 6 1/2 minute track that’s just “you think your shit don’t stink, but oh honey it do”. Which is to say, there are many great tracks, the album is still way too long, and OutKast love to prank their audience.

Long winded - a few good songs but the double album is tiring to listen in full.

Normally I try to write what would make a better single album (combining the tracks) when thinking of double albums. And, yes, you COULD do that for this album. There's a lot of tracks that don't necessarily stick to the contemporary run of a hip hop record. I bought this album in my early twenties (I think my friend had it in high school). OutKast were one of the hip hop bands that I felt like I could enjoy (big words for a wannabe punk rocker...). And, my brother had an album and it had a naked lady on the cover, which was always a big deal when you're 13 and a half. I'd say I prefered The Love Below in my younger years. It certainly got more air time on popular radio (and I used to love the Roses video). But I started off with Speakerboxx. Apart from hearing the title eight or nine times played like a radio jingle between songs, this is a decent more hip hop focused album. Big Boi raps well. I was almost going to say that it was the better of the two. And then... The Love Below is an absolute masterpiece. Jazz, rock, drum and bass! And that's just a bit of what you will hear. Now, I'm not going to do track by track (it's not a Beatles album!), but highlights included: The drum and bass favourite things cover! Prototype! I remember this being the third single that everyone kinda went 'what?' to. But the more I hear it, the more I love it. Great bass lines and really cool melodies! Gotta love the modern day cupid! Killer album, in my top 50, 20 maybe! 5 stars!

This album gives the vibe of twin brothers who were sent to one of the larger public boarding schools in the city. One was the extrovert. Loud, confident and outspoken, this boy was the star player for the schools rugby team. Immensely popular, and desired by all the girls. He befriended a group of somewhat notorious miscreants, and was getting in to trouble in and out of school. Somehow he would get away with it though, as he was charismatic and had a twinkle in his eye. He would walk the coridoors at school with his cheerleader girlfriend on his arm, showing up late to class having not done the homework. But somehow it would work out for him. Everyone liked him, but everyone resented him. This guy made no effort towards creating a future for himself, but it was obvious that things were going to work out and he would end up as the head of some finance company. Meanwhile, his introverted brother kept to himself most of the time. Obviously his spirit had been somewhat beaten down by living in the shadow of his brother, this boy just kept quiet and went about his business. He played the violin, and wrote amazing poetry in his spare time. At lunch time, he could usually be found sitting in the shade of a tree in the corner of the playground reading insightful literature like Brave New World or To Kill A Mockingbird. Occasionally he would sneak into the music room and play piano to an audience of zero, simply as a way to try and express his feelings, even if only to himself. After school he would go and care for his grandmother, cooking her dinner and helping her with the washing. Some of the girls at school were attracted to this boy's sensitive heart, but he was too shy to capitalise on the situation. The brothers would bicker in class, with the extrovert always getting the better of his brother, loudly and confidently asserting himself, knowing full well that his brother wouldn't really fight back. They didn't dislike each other though, quite the opposite. They always loved each other, and would do anything to protect one another, even if it meant putting themselves in harm's way. Deep down, the two of them saw aspects in each other that they resented, jealous of their brother's characteristics that they wish they had for themselves.

I preferred the first half (speakerbox) to the 2nd half. Some great tunes but also some filler let it down.

Great album, if a little long. Sure 5

The start of the divergence but still an awesome album. Put the flute down Andre ffs.

Absolutely incredible album. This albums covers a wide range of styles and genres, along with a handful of massive hits. Really, really good.

This isn’t an album. It’s two galaxies colliding, one all bass and swagger (Speakerboxxx), the other satin and champagne bubbles (The Love Below). Big Boi and André 3000 basically took hip-hop, R&B, funk, jazz, and future sex dreams, threw them in a blender, and said, “Let’s make history weird.” Rating: 5/5 Short Review: Duality, dressed in diamonds and ATL sweat. Half party, half philosophy — all genius. Favorite Track: “Hey Ya!” — yes, it’s overplayed, but it’s also secretly a breakup song disguised as a sugar rush.

nobody does it like this anymore

This album’s a near 4 for me, but it’s just too darn long. I’m not sure if I’d want an album from any artist that’s over 2 hours long. That being said, it still wasn’t a complete lull. It’s packed with a lot and it’s entertaining throughout. Some of the interludes and even the songs are hilarious. Hey Ya! is such a classic and always a welcome listen. Not bad by any means, but just too long.

Weird but surprisingly good. I'm not a massive rap fan - but this was a bit more than just rap?

Golden

Some super cool songs, but I'm sorry I couldn't wait for this to be over. Nearly 3 hours?? Far too long for an album (yes I know this is a double album, even so it should be <2).

2.5/5. A proper slog of an effort. Speakerboxxx starts out so promising, some really cool and experimental sounds. Seems to get worse as it goes on, moulding into quite generic hip-hop. The less said about The Love Below, the better. Roses/Hey Ya aside, it's a load of self-indulgent nonsense.

There's four- or five-star album hiding in here. Waaay too much filler.

Its a great album, but its too damn long

Genre: Pop Rap / Neo-Soul Truly an instance where a double album is two completely separate musical ventures, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below is a shining musical statement. Half southern hip hop, half clean, crisp, neo-soul, OutKast truly lays out all their chops possible on this self-indulgent, full-fledged party from start to finish. Big Boi’s half is nowhere near as strong as Andre 3000’s, but both serve their part in the grander scheme. Really solid tracks up and down the tracklist, albeit a bit cluttered and overlong. 4/5

I liked "The Love Below" a lot more. This is maybe a 2 for me but "Hey Ya" is great, I actually thought a lot of the skits were funny, and I do love Andre 3000's voice so it's elevated to a 3.

какой же он длинный, господи... зачем.... два альбома альбома из них нормальных бы вполне получилось. а так это ж даже не заслушаешь сразу все. а вообще-то музыка вроде бы вполне себе хорошая

Let’s be honest here, I like OutKast but they have 4 better albums than this. It’s not bad, in fact I enjoy the majority of it. Big Boi’s speakerboxxx is the better of the two solo albums but it’s Andre 3000 who has the bigger song cause if you don’t know OutKast from Ms. Jackson you sure as hell know them from Hey Ya. I’d probably give this 7 out of 10 so I’ll round up to a 4 out of 5 but I do think this is OutKast’s weakest LP…. Idlewild doesn’t count. Also truly a double LP with this essentially two solo albums but it’s tooooooooooo long.

The inevitable arrival point of hip-hops many influences are found here. The lyrics tell a story, but also flex skill in performance and rhyme. The beats are regionally distinct without sounding dated, and has evident roots in Black genres - funk, jazz, rock and of course modern digital production elements (the sampled sound effects). Masterclass of an album.

There are some hits on here but it's too long. I'm not the biggest OutKast fan but I thought it was alright but I'm can't listen to this straight through.

It's hard to listen to this and not divide it up in to two albums, and even both of them agree that it is a double album consisting of two bodies of work. I've always liked Speakerboxxx a lot more than Then Love Below, just to get that out of the way. Speakerboxxx is a product of its era in terms of lyrical content, nothing really groundbreaking but Big Boi is a good rapper so it doesnt' really matter anyway. His flow is unique to him, with aggressive stops mid sentence and coming in on off beats. The beats are mostly great, with the notable exception of the Bamboo beat used in a couple tracks/interludes that's too primitive for the content. The features are all complementary, with my favorite ones being on "Reset"; I've been listening to that song for ages and it's still good. There isn't a ton of innovation on here beyond the fact that the Outkast style is already innovative. I would say that the big singles, "GhettoMusick", "The Way You Move", have the most interesting beats, breakdowns and raps even. My favorites are the aforementioned "Reset" and "Bust". The Love Below marks the beginning of Andre 3000 going from traditional if different rapper to the weird phenomenon he is today. The piano and acoustic guitars in a bunch of the tracks gives out that crossover appeal that made him really stand out by himself as an artist. I can't say I'm a huge fan; it's definitely a unique style but I'm not enough of an R&B or love song guy to want to listen to it often. I get they're not strictly love songs but the whole sub-album is about that. "Roses" is the most Outkast song on the whole album though I know Andre is on a few of the tracks on Speakerboxxx. If I never hear "Hey Ya" again it'll be too soon, though it was a banger for a long time. I had forgotten about the drum and bass style version of My Favorite Things - what a weird but cool track. Anyway! This is a good double; there is plenty of material and it's cool that we see a duo split themselves up and take over half an album. I like that they address the fact that they're still Outkast in various places on both discs and that they're still doing it the way they always have. They knew the critics and press would be all over the fact that it's two separate albums. Overall I'd like this more if it was cut down to about an hour and a half instead of more than two hours (most of which would be cut from the second disc), but I dont' regret listening to the whole thing. It's fun, and it was a nice nostalgia hit.

I'm mostly not a fan of hip-hop and rap aside from the odd album or song, so being presented with a two-hour double album like this is already a big pill to swallow. Blending genres and influences normally helps the medicine go down here but here I struggled to stomach all the sugar piled on the spoon. If you like pop and hip-hop there's probably a wealth of content here to indulge in but it feels too much for me. As I was listening there were moments of excellence that popped up but again, it was generally lost in a landslide of ideas. After 40 minutes I started skipping the 'interludes'. Probably good for a party? I wouldn't know, I don't get invited to parties. It's a 2.5 from me.

Honestly, less impressed than I thought I'd be. Per usual for Outkast, the production was amazing but in this case, I didn't vibe with the lyrics. Still a great album. 7/10.

First hip-hop album I ever listened to in its entirety. I enjoyed it. I found the first one far more interesting than the second, but I liked both.

it’s a double album that stretches to 2 hours 14 minutes. you definitely feel it once you reach the last quarter. i think that’s partly due to the first album being tighter and honestly better overall. they do some cool things in the second one but they get more experimental and sometimes it doesn’t last as much as the first album that had great song after great song. still a very, very good listen though. it was funny to have Hey Ya! thrown in there just because it’s so well known and i didn’t recognize most of the other stuff. my favorite things was a crazy shout. overall will definitely listen to Speakerboxxx again but maybe not The Love Below

This is an example of music that’s aged well on me. If I’d recorded this double album back when it came out I’d have surely given it 1 star, but with time I’ve somehow come to respect OutKast a bit more, to the point where I even enjoyed the majority of tracks on this (albeit far too long) offering. I’d also totally missed that The Way You Move - a true banger - was by OutKast.

Imma grade this as two separate albums because why not SPEAKERBOXXX - 10/10 an absolute heater of an album i was reading some reviews of this album on here and I kind of feel like some of y'all just don't like music that is different from the genres you normally listen to (which is confusing because you would think with something like this people would be more accepting of things that are different) or just don't like rap because in your head all you hear is guns, drugs, and "bitches" (even though majority of the rap albums on here have been about overcoming racial adversity and fighting against oppressors and we can't act like other genres don't obsess on materialistic things, it just seems like its all good till its a black person doing it and then there is a problem.) Anyway this is an amazing record it has one of my favorite Out Kast songs in "The Way You Move" on it so i guess I'm biased. The Love Below - 9/10 Not much to say the middle of this album is just jammed with bangers (Prototype->She's in my lap->Hey Ya!->Roses)

Less a double album and more two very separate LPs. Speakerboxx is a top quality hip hop lp, only limoted by its somewhat reduced sonic palette. The Love Below, on the other hand, is a beautiful, textured combination of jazzy sounds, but outside of three tracks (Hey Ya, Prototype and Roses) it's all a bit meandering and doesnt really grab me. Neither album is short, either. A perfect example of "would have made an incredible single album". Very low 4, because the highs are fantastic, but far between.

Some of the beats and rapping are nice, and some songs are fun and catchy. There are some redeeming qualities here and there. But minus one point because no album in the history doesn't have the need to be 2 h 15 min, unless it's Joe's Garage and, as far as I'm concerned, this one isn't Joe's Garage.

One of the few cases where the world is a worse place if this album didn’t exist. Not their best, it’s way too long, but they just wrote five mega hits surrounded by two hours of 4/5 filler. Speakerboxxx has the better filler and the love below has the better hits. Some of these Andre tracks are so sleepy on the second half. The album also never ends. Very very high four, probably going to go 5 because it is deserving.

So much! Need to relisten

Pre: outkasts worst album? Post: 2 solo albums , completely disjointed. Some highlights

Álbum bem variado musicalmente. Me surpreendeu positivamente. QoA Adonis New.

4. first time not disliking this genre

Brilliant album with two equally enjoyable sides emphasising different styles and themes. Outkast's brand of progressive/southern Hip-Hop has always stood out to me as someone who tends to get bored with most Hip-Hop and its preoccupation with violence, beefs between rappers and repetitive looped samples. This album instead has beautiful instrumentation and immense variety from song to song. The music itself is streets ahead of what is typical of the genre and it interspersed with interludes that flesh out the story being told. Immensely relistenable and much deeper than the hits that got all the airplay. Top Track = Last Call, Ghettomusick & Hey Ya.

The first disc was a slog, disc 2 though was pretty damn good, this should have been released as two separate albums cause collectively it was TOO LONG!!

i’m gonna be so fr i listened to all of disc one and like half of disc two bc i ran out of time but this is actually goated and i genuinely liked the songs without forcing myself to 😈

These guys are so creative, damn!

Speakerboxxx is the PEAK southern hip hop album, an absolute masterpiece. Personally for me, it is the best of what Big Boi created. The Love Below was also great, it is obvious that Andrè wanted to experiment, but it felt like a bit of an overdo for me. While the themes and thoughts felt consistent, the music itself varied a lot. I think I will appreciate this half more on a relisten, yet right now it doesn’t strike me that hard. Nevertheless, a masterpiece

Crap

Hey Ya + other 20 unoriginal songs

Just so long so deducting marks. the continuation of the 'speakerboxxx' theme throughout that part of the album was great.

Not their best.

Not their best but there is so much here. One has to wonder if they could have just reconciled their differences and collaborate this could have been a truly classic album.

Speakerboxxx - funky, having fun, fairly simplistic dumbed down lyrics with some clever alliterations or word plays, nothing special. The Love Below - jazz like jazz jazz, 30s vocals, soul, feelings on the platter, dumb lyrics. I guess the novelty of this album is it simply being a double album of seeming opposites.

Really great and I'm really one for hip-hop/rap most of the time. A lot of diverse sounds with all the features in here.

That was a lot of music. It's very creative, but I am not sure it gave me the best picture of the group, since the two halves are almost entirely separate. I thought this one was pretty good, but it doesn't earn credit for being two albums.

Decent 3,5

One of the finest hip hop albums ever. Changes the game

Not my favourite OutKast (that's probably Stankonia), but still, a great stuff.

2.5 - ok

So this is my first time listening to this... I didn't realise it was a double solo record at first, which is an interesting approach. I was digging the first half and expected the second to be somewhat similar. It definitely surprised me. Very long but it's definitely a no skip album

Why is this so long? Good 2 for Roses and Hey Ya

Damn! Always thought this was a good double album. I was wrong. It is a phenomenal double album. Always thought I preferred The Love Below. Now I am not sure... Speakerboxxx is so much fun! Just a great listen with fire grooves and great tunes.

This is an amazing album. Although I consider Andre 3000 as one of the greatest rappers of all time - he doesn't really rap on this album, choosing, instead, to lean into singing. I'm not going to say he's a great singer, but somehow he makes the songs work on his half of this double album. The Big Boi side is exactly what you'd expect from Big Boi, but done as well as you'd hope. While I think both sides are excellent in their own way, they're completely different vibes, and I'd probably want to listen to them separately, depending on my mood. And therein lies the problem. I'm not sure I'll ever really be in the mood to listen to Big Boi without Andre 3000, and although I like The Love Below, and I'm impressed by it's creativity, it's deployability for me is fairly low - much lower than other albums in their catalog. All that said, I'm giving this album a 5. Is it as good as Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik? No. it as good as Atliens? Absolutely not. Is it a banger, a classic of the genre? You're goddamned right. So it should probably be a 4.5, but even when genius slips, the output is still incredible.

8/10

Was fucking waiting for this one to be over oh my god. Like it’s not bad but did it need to be over 2 fucking hours long? No. The answer is fucking No

7/10 Favourite: Hey Ya Least Favourite: Last Call

Another long album. I wrote this one back in August 2024. Here you go: Of all the double albums I’ve listened to, this one easily has the most disparity between the two sides of them all. Of course, the explanation for this is quite simple. Speakerboxxx and The Love Below are two separate albums. Outkast’s two members, Big Boi and André 3000, originally wanted to make solo albums, but their label advised them to make a new Outkast album. So, because these are effectively two albums, I will review them separately. First up is Big Boi’s Speakerboxxx, a more traditional hip-hop album in the vein of Outkast’s works before this. Honestly, I really like it. It’s a very consistent record. The writing is fun and the sound is even more fun. Big Boi’s rapping is thoroughly entertaining. Despite the fun, there’s still important things to be said here. For example, the back-to-back songs “War” and “Church” tackle politics and religion respectively. And yet somehow the balance between these and songs like “The Way You Move” just works! This one’s great. High 4/5. Now André 3000’s The Love Below is a bit more mixed in my opinion. This one shows André's desire to move beyond hip-hop and utilize influences from genres like jazz, pop, and soul. It’s also a bit of a concept album about love. I really like the ideas of this album, but I think the execution could’ve been a bit better. It’s still good though, don’t get me wrong. There are some amazing songs on here. Obviously, the highlight is Outkast’s most popular song, “Hey Ya!” That song is amazing. I do find it weird that it’s their most popular song, but it deserves the praise. Songs like “Prototype” and “Roses” are quite good as well. However, it goes on for a bit too long and kind of gets weak near the end. I just didn’t feel as passionate about it. I highly respect it and I sincerely hope that André is able to explore more musical styles throughout his career. However, I do like Speakerboxxx a bit more. I’d probably give The Love Below a high 3 or a low 4. Overall, as a combined package, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below is pretty bloated and all over the place, but it’s a fun album that actually makes the disparity in sides work somehow. 4/5.

Hey ya hey ya

It has some good tracks, but definitely too long

Stankonia, their supposed best release, did not get me excited. So I wasn't too happy to see a double album by outkast. Did not make it through. +1 star for the hits

Not my style

Speakerboxxx is a 4/10, The Love Below is a 2/10 except for one song. No wonder I never hear anyone saying OutKast is their favorite artist. "Head doesn't count, right? Ah, thanks God, I knew you'd understand."

Interesting album, and a cool concept. The two visions blend super well, I might like the first part a little better, more cohesive, but also, Hey Ya is a smash if I ever heard one and with this double album it has a lot of diversity of sounds and that is picking my interest. It is however not a five, it is too long, and it is really weighed down by all of the interludes that reaaaally feel like filler tracks to keep the structures. Some are fun, but not all of them, and there are definetly one too many. That being said, it is powerful, smart, and a good listen.

The first record - awesome, liked every track. The second record felt like Andre had only Hey Ya and then was like “shit I gotta add like twenty songs” and threw them together in an afternoon.

So versatile, this album is going all kinds of places

Lot of great songs and inspiration for artists to come. The album is a bit long, but doesn’t quite overstay its welcome. OutKast, despite being wildly popular, somehow feels underrated for their influence

This album would be fine if it was about an hour and a half shorter. A lot of the overly sexual songs and skits can go. There are a few decent songs, and if the album of as just those few songs, it’d be 4-5 stars, but there’s sooooo much crap

An amazing Hip-Hop album, OutKast one of my favorite bands Fav songs - GhettoMusick, Love Hater, Hey Ya!, Love In War, Take Off Your Cool 5/5

Outcast was super popular at this time and this was a great album. They were getting tons of radio play everywhere, kind of a crossover hit. It's good stuff and I really enjoyed it back then and still like it. Not the kind of thing I would listen to all the time but still exceptional vocally and musically.

Speakerboxx/The Love Below “Musicality, blah blah blah” - My father, listening with me this morning I recently listened to a podcast where the journalist-presenter made an impassioned argument for Big Boi as one of the greatest rappers of all time. The host may be correct - as this project has gone on, it has become clear that I have no idea what really differentiates good rapping from great rapping. What did become clear to me, through the host’s argumentation, was that the attributes valued in rapping are speed, dexterity, and diction. And that ranking these skills and ranking rapping was an important part of the culture. I realised that rappers are not vocalists or singers, but guitar heroes. They are shredders. And the competition that fuels much guitar talk is replicated in rap culture. This is not really how we talk about singers, who are rarely put in direct competition with each other - outside the rank of the divas but it how we speak about virtuosos. I don’t really care for virtuosity. Especially when virtuosity - speed, dexterity, diction - is skill at the expense of musicality. The bragaduccio that is an integral part of hip hop lyricism is an expression of that competitive virtuosity. It is all in aggressive conversation with everything else and at such speed that you have to be really invested to follow it. I’m not that invested. Even the two halves of this double album are put in argument with each other. There is no sense of a whole and one has to pick a side as to which is better: Big Boi’s true hip hop or Andre’s light Prince. It should be clear then that the musicality that my father noted, with surprise, was on The Love Below and I have to agree. More songs, more playfulness, even when that means painful skits and trite jazz parody. But some of that aggression peeks through anyway. For all the imitation here, Prince was never so mean-spirited about the women in his life and that sours the taste somewhat. I don’t know if Big Boi is mean to his ladies, as he’s shredding through it all and I can’t keep up. In recent years, Andre has said that, at 50, he is too old to rap - it is a young man’s game, fuelled by young man’s passions and concerns and a young man’s competitiveness. His most recent album was an instrumental flute record, a turn to pure musicality ( for better or worse). The first track is I Swear I Really Wanted To Make A “Rap” Album But This Is Literally The Way The Wind Blew Me This Time. 2 Speakerboxxx/The Love Below As everyone has long agreed, there is a decent single album hiding inside Outkast’s double album and it’s ‘The Love Below’ half. Imagine my surprise to discover, after not listening to it for many years, that this is untrue! The Love Below half is shit and all. There are many moments of brilliance throughout this slog of a record. The problem is that almost every one of them is then copied back in without variation. The Way You Move has that chorus - cut and pasted to absurdity - and nothing else. Amid the airless buzz of pointlessly repeated choruses there are only the attempts at comedy to keep us going. The multitracked ‘funny vocal’ style in the songs grates very quickly. The actual sketches are excruciating. I still like Hey Ya and Dracula’s Wedding. Take Off Your Cool is very nice, and even if it is only a miniature it ought to have been the template; say the very little you have to say musically and leave. Nothing here should have been longer than 2 1/2 minutes. 1.5/5

Great dancy pop album but I don’t remember a single song, nothing worth listening on repeat

Speakerboxxx is a 4/5. It's a clear, relatively concise (by 2003 standards) thesis statement for the next 10+ years of Big Boi's career sans OutKast. There are bops, bangers, and jams. Everything you need is here, but it's not superlative. The Love Below is also a 4/5. It has the most ubiquitous pop song of the last quarter century or more - one that somehow, none of us have tired of - as well as some really brilliant compositions that rank among the best things Andre3000 has released. It is smart, introspective, clever, and a little goofy. It is everything you could need from an Andre3000 album and maybe a little more. Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, somehow, is a 3/5. It is less than the sum of its parts by virtue of both its length and the disparate nature of those parts. I would happily listen to either as a discrete solo album. I will probably never again listen to them both, back to back, as released/intended.

Above all else, I am a Big Boi defender. I think if there's one benefit to this split LP style, it's that Big Boi really gets to stretch his legs and flex his creative muscles even if his impulses are less eccentric. Big Boi might have my favorite deep cuts on the whole album; I hear "GhettoMusick" and I am immediately energized every time, and I love the way the horns on "The Rooster" tickle my brain. Speakerboxxx is just so much fun and really hints at what he'll do later with stone cold classics like "Shutterbugg". Meanwhile, of course Andre goes for Prince and lands in his own idiosyncratic universe that's always way jazzier than I remember it being (see: the cover of "My Favorite Things" I kind of love?). I always think I'll be put off by the longer excursions like "Prototype" and "Vibrate" but the former remains another of my favorite OutKast songs and the latter has a fantastic hook. It's hard not to be shadowed by the fact that humankind's global anthem "Hey Ya!", the most played song possibly ever, is on it, but you know what? I still think "Hey Ya!" is great. Both sides suffer from bloat, the fact that the two sides are so different from one another remains melancholy in a way few works match (the closest parallel I can think of is watching the White Stripes' Under Great White Northern Lights documentary), but all told I remain above all else impressed that this works at all.

Didn't know most of these songs going in. Had no idea this album was a double of solo albums. I've never listened to Big Boi's side, and it's catchy as hell. 5* Andre 3000's side was less good, but had a couple of bangers. Self-indulgent like many have said. Opposite of what I expected to like more going into this album. 3* I will never understand rap/hiphop interludes, -0.5* A rare case where I didn't mind this being 2hr+ long. 4* (rounded up from 3.5) Highlights: hey ya, roses, church, ghettomusick

Allright allright allright allright allright they could've done with less than an hour too.

Nop

Speakerboxxx 5/5, The Love Below 3/5. Exquisite production on the whole thing. I was surprised I didn't like The Love Below more, but the hits still hit.

really good

Classic. Although not my favorite OutKast still a generational album

Very diverse set of music, mostly hip-hop, almost without anything tying it together. Well produced and an excellent showcase of talented.

This is a double album of two guys who were about to break up but released as a double album because they just won a Grammy? Already at cognitive overload. Anyway on Big Bois side I hated his hit singles (sound like 10 guys went into a music shop and pressed all the keys) but liked Bowtie and Rooster and generally about every other track. There are some killer tracks I‘d listen to again if I was into hip hop. Second disc is about alters ego of Andre 3000. Cognitive overload 2.0. How is Hey Ya the standout track? Cannot connect at all. Still the tracks are ok I guess. But then after Roses all tracks turn meh and it’s pure chore until my today’s duty is done. 2.3h! Sure I know they recorded separately but was there really no way to pack this into one album? Or at least a 2x40m double album?

A good album that kinda buckles under the weight of such a long track list

Enjoyable, many bangers, way too long.

Disc 1 (Speakboxxx) is a dirty south hip hop classic. Disc 2 (The Love Below) is Andre 3000 doing whatever the hell he wants. Two really strong albums packaged as one. It's a lot to take in at once but worth it.

Might just be a few too many tracks. Disk 2 is levels above Disk 1. Otherwise it's an absolute classic and some brilliance on there, just before Andre fell off the deep end and started doing mad shit.

Some good. 2/5

Bloated but some good tracks, if you cut it down it would be on par with other OutKast albums

Great album, but pretty long

Some great tracks for sure, and overall a pretty wild ride. I'm glad to finally have the push to sit down and listen to this whole thing. I can't see putting it all on again though.

Nah

There is absolutely no reason why this album needs to be 2hrs and 15minutes long. That is too long. I liked it and it was good for the most part but wanted to turn it off after hey ya. Should be 4 stars but losing a point for the unnecessary length.

Really didn't think much of this album. It's Hippop and not very good. Boring, basic and his voice is grating.

Way Wayne way too long and it suffers for the self-indulgence.

Speakerboxx is a bunch of bangers. Love Below kinda hit or miss but Hey Ya/Roses back to back is classic and I appreciate that the halves are so different stylistically

Super, idealne zeby na imprezie lecialo w tle