OutKast – Stankonia [Stereo] (VMP Essentials Series Edition)

(DDA) — Lacquers cut from a digital master by Ryan Smith at Sterling Sound.

The year was 2000, but what are numbers really? The album was Stankonia, then and now a singular word that means whatever you want it to mean, but only refers to the groundbreaking, flawless, and lawless fourth album from two gentlemen who went by OutKast. OutKast, then at the absolute peak of the powers following 1998’s masterpiece, Aquemini, were at a crossroads: André 3000 could no longer be confined to the hazy three-piece and a side southern rap production, and Big Boi was too good a rapper to be similarly confined. The group—whose musical ininfluences ran deeper than rap (peace to Kate Bush)—decided to blow up their entire creative process, pulling in snippets from the music in dance clubs in Atlanta, New Wave, funk, soul, psychedelic rock, and gospel, while filtering it through the production of Organized Noize and their own Earthtone III imprimatur. Released on Halloween 20 years ago, it resulted in their last dispatch as a functional unit—their subsequent albums were created mostly in their own silos—an album that music still has not caught up to; it ends up underrated in their catalog because it remains so singular. It picked up Grammys, and laid the groundwork for the world conquering to come with Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, but still, it remains an album to be experienced, a distant future to spend 73 minutes in. Three years before the U.S. government rained bombs over Baghdad, André and Big ran over neon grass and drove ragtops into the future, never looking back.

(Above description from VinylMePlease.com)