Outkast - Ms. Jackson

"It happened for a reason, one can't be mad.'"

Album: Stankonia [4th album]
Recorded: Atlanta, Georgia
Genre: Hip Hop
Album Release: October 31st 2000
Single Release: October 24th 2000 [2nd single]
Length: 4:30
Producer: Earthtone III
Vocalist: Andre [age 25], Big Boi [age 25]
Label: Arista Records, LaFace Records

Music Video


Live in 2000


Live at World AIDS Day 2000

Charts, Streams & Sales

Australia (singles): #2 [x5 platinum]
Canada (albums): #4 [x2 platinum]
France (singles): #5
Germany (albums): #6
Germany (singles): #1 [x3 gold]
Holland (singles): #1
Sweden (singles): #1
UK (albums): #10 [x1 gold]
UK (singles): #2 [x3 platinum]
USA (albums): #2 [x5 platinum]
USA (singles): #1 [x3 platinum]
Spotify: 1,196,000,000 +
YouTube Music: 740,000,000 +
Grammy Awards 2002 Winner: Best Rap Album
Grammy Awards 2002 Winner: Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group
BET Awards 2001 Winner: Best Music Video
MTV Video Music Awards 2001 Winner: Best Music Video
Pitchfork's Top 200 Albums of the 2000's: #13
Rolling Stone's 100 Best Albums of the 2000's: #16

Credits

Bass, conga, drums, guitar, piano

Details

• Outkast had become musically ambitious with their previous album 'Aquemini' from 1998 and Stankonia continued this development into a sound which was more than hip hop. Like their previous release, it incorporated elements of funk, gospel and soul but 'Stankonia' was more energetic, idiosyncratic and had more pop appeal. The album had even more influences than Aquemini did and, for me, this is the point when the balance tipped too far away from hip hop.
  
  The amount of raw hip hop was reduced to create radio-friendly, bubblegum efforts full of brightly coloured music videos and was played by people far removed from the typical rap audience. 'Stankonia' was the type of rap album teenage girls would listen to in their pink, sequin-decorated bedrooms, but when it worked it worked. It was still Outkast. Andre and Big Boi were still effortless rappers with unique flows and their own inimitable sense of style. 'Ms. Jackson' is one of the groups most popular songs and also one of their best.
  
  The song resonates with listeners because it comes from the heart. Andre first wrote his part on an acoustic guitar and Big Boi added his verses later. The Ms. Jackson in question is Erykah Badu's mum. Badu, the respected nineties soul singer, had a kid with Andre in 1997 and Andre felt like she was keeping him from seeing his daughter. Badu has said that her mum loved the song and even purchased a license plate with Ms. Jackson on it, just like the one they have in the music video. The funny thing is that Ms. Jackson's real name is actually Ms. Wright.
  
  Andre's verse is about how you don't what you're doing when you fall in love so young, "you say it's puppy love we say it's full grown." Most people have experienced somthing similar to this. Deeper in his verse Andre makes it clear he was naive by saying "I hope we feel like this forever, forever ever, forever ever" just like a child would. When things inevitably don't work out he apologises to Ms. Jackson for making her daughter cry. It's sweet, heartfelt, infectious and perfect for radio. Big Boi's verses are more aggressive and feature his anger at the way his baby momma and his baby momma's momma treat him.
  
  
• Ms. Jackson topped the US charts in the year 2000 and in order to do such a thing you have to get airplay in the big cities like New York and L.A.. But Outkasts success didn't happen overnight. In 1995, when the group won best newcomer at the Source Awards the audience booed loudly as hip hop from the south wasn't credible in the eyes of America as a whole. Just five short years later they would top the charts and be household names not only in at home but all over the world. 10 years after that trap music would dominate hip hop while rappers from either coast found themselves imitating the same styles that were mocked years before.
  
  Outkast, and their contemporaries such as Scarface, Ludacris, UGK and Three 6 Mafia, helped to bring the southern style to prominence and with it came a rise in 808 drums and sub bass as well as a change in lyrical content, styles, slang and song structure that saw hip hop change its standard, snares on 2 and 4 drum pattern into snares on 1 and 3, which might seem like a small difference but makes a big change in the feel of the music.
  
  
• Stankonia is represented by Andre as a kind of Shangri-La, a place where you are free to express yourself in any way you want. Outkast gradually came into their image and themselves during their time in the music industry. Their first album was released when they were only 18, so it's obvious that they still weren't fully developed as human beings yet alone artists.
  
  The image they portrayed in their earlier years is vastly different to the kaleidoscopic, idiosyncratic one they popularised later in their career, but really it was a case of them feeling more confident in their own work. The record labels trust in them grew with the success of each release and Outkast developed a feeling of being able to do whatever they wanted to because they had earned so much credibility amongst the hardcore hip hop fans. They had proven what they were capable of and with Stankonia came an opportunity to really let loose.
  
  They didn't listen to hip hop while making the record and during recording Andre became more interested in singing than rapping.
  
  
• Back when hip hop was dominated by east coast vs west coast beefs, Outkast were carving a distinctly southern niche that twenty years later would dominate hip hop in the form of trap music.  'SpottieOppieDopaliscious', features the lyric "so now you back in the trap, just that, trapped".
  
  Southern hip hop has a French and a Caribbean influence which isn't as prominent in other American forms of the genre. The music is loud, sexual and expressionistic in a way that marks it as distinct from its east coast and west coast counterparts with a few exceptions such as Mach Hommy. The flows of French emcees remind me of southern American styles and the influence is also felt in some of their vocal inflections, word choices and fashion sense. East coast styles are, in contrast, moodier, while the west coast has a strong latin influence.
  
  

  

  Andre's French influenced fashion
  

  
  As well as having unique ethno-cultural influences in the deep south slavery is also a firm cultural artefact that can't be extricated from the present. The rappers take the symbols of the confederacy, invert them and use them as their own, whether that be the confederate flag, or the prevalent use of the N-word.
  
  Southern hip hop, through its geography and history, has a deeper relationship with slavery than its east coast or west coast cousins. Slave plantations littered the south. The Klan was founded in Tennessee as a vehicle for white southern racism. While today, New York and California are bastions for the progressive Democratic party the southern states vote Republican and some people in such states even want to reinstate the confederacy. Even at present, racism is more prevalent in the south, so when evaluating southern hip hop it's essential to consider this key environmental factor.
  
  Dating back to the slave trade, the n-word was used as a slur, so black people today use it as a greeting. The confederate flag was a symbol of southern independence and continued advocacy for the slave trade so modern rappers drape themselves in it to take ownership of their history and infuriate the racists. They take a symbol of white pride and use it to adorn their person, simultaneously reminding people of the wrongs of slavery while also taking away the symbol from white racists. The rapper Ludacris went as far as wearing an entire outfit made of the confederate flag. See below for Andre's more muted approach.
  
  

  

  Andre wearing a confederate belt buckle
  

Artwork