Outkast - Liberation

"Got more juice than Zeus'"

Album: Aquemini [3rd album]
Recorded: Atlanta, Georgia
Genre: Hip Hop, Southern Hip Hop
Album Release: September 29th 1998
Length: 8:46
Producer: Outkast
Vocalist: Andre [age 23], Big Boi [age 23], CeeLo Green, Erykah Badu & Big Rube
Label: Arista Records, LaFace Records

Official Audio

Charts, Streams & Sales

Spotify: Over 15 million
YouTube Music: Over 9 million

Credits

Bass, drums, piano, percussion

Details

• Sometimes you have to marvel at people on top of their game. By the end of Aquemini, Outkast have mastered their craft and gone beyond hip hop to make music that was also an amalgamation of funk, soul, and jazz.
  
  For the most part, hip hop is created using a sampler or a DAW, and a stack of old funk, jazz or soul records. Aquemini featured live recordings from bass guitars, drums, electric guitar, horns, piano, strings, synthesizer, woodwind instruments and a violin, as well as the traditional use of sampling and DJing. This itself wasn't revolutionary, but the way jazz, hip hop, funk, and soul were used as building blocks to create something new, was.
  
  At its best, such as on tracks like on 'Spottie' and 'Liberation', Aquemini isn't only some of the best hip hop ever made, but some of the best music, because it increased the scope of the genre in a way that didn't seem possible before and hasn't been replicated since.
  
  People see Stankonia (2000) as doing the same thing as Aquemini, but the latter began with hip hop as a foundation and went beyond it, while the former started as something more. Which is to say that as Outkast, and in particular Andre, grew as musicians the hip hop in their work became less prominent. Andre's nu-jazz album New Blue Sun (2023), for example, is 100% hip hop free, but his directions of travel was clear decades ago.
  
  
• Aquemini is an aquarius and a gemini combined. Big Boi is an aquarius and Andre a gemini.
  
• Much of the music on Aquemini came from jam sessions. Andre would arrange the music and Big Boi came up with the hooks. If you surround yourself with talented people then a lot of the hard things have a tendency to happen by themselves. Listening to the finished product, it can sound like genius at work, because how do you make songs for 'Spottie' from the ground ground up? The simple reality is that the album wasn't made that way.
  
  When a musicians came up with a nice part, the others would jam over the top. Every musician knows their own instrument like the back of their hand so the trick is to make it come together organically. Sometimes you just have to get yourself out of the way.
  
  

Artwork