Of course I knew Hey Ya! from this album, but not the rest. I know other projects that Andre did or contributed to, so I was expecting to prefer his part than Big Boi's one... And that was actually the contrary. The first part is really good, solid beats, solid flow, not boring one second. The Andre 3000 part is way more chill. Too chill, there are not so many songs that keep you awake in the midst of all this mellow, down tempo songs. Could have been way better, imho.
What do you do if you are a critically acclaimed hip hop duo suffering from musical differences? You go off and record an album each, and then put both of them out as a double album under your joint name and hope that nobody notices. This is a real curate’s egg of an album. Parts of it are excellent - I was particularly taken with André 3000’s (I wonder if his mum calls him that) up tempo jazz version of Favourite Things, and of course the sublime ‘Hey Ya!’. However, for every inspired line about shaking it like a Polaroid picture, there is one about how roses smell like poo poo. If you cut out the utterly cringeworthy skits and picked the best tracks from both discs, you would have an absolute classic. As it stands, it’s at least an hour and a half too long.