**OK Antixx, sure you’ve listened to listened to him for the past 17 years. Sure he’s one of the G.O.A.T’s (Greatest Of All Time) and yes a childhood hero is now going to speak to you personally before he rocks stages in your home town…. But just don’t fan-boy. Be cool, you got this** my inner monologue persuades me…
“Ey yo you got Big Boi, what’s happenin’?” the familiar southern accent journeys down the phone line.
“Yo, Big Boi, can I just start by saying I think you’re one of the greatest rappers of all time so thank you so much for taking the time to speak to me...”
Shit! If ice cold is cooler than being cool I just started a fan-boy wildfire (or Chonkyfire if you’re down with ATLians). You see, Antwan Andre Patton (AKA Big Boi) is far more than half of Outkast. This is an MC that crafted and defined southern-underground hip hop. A rapper fashionably ground breaking, audibly breath taking and a multiple record-making rapper (sure he’s broken a few, but he’s more recognised for making them) that to this day, is unparalleled. Big Boi spoke to yours truly about bringing his latest album Boomiverse to Australia next weekend.
“Boomiverse is the start of something new” he explains. “We like to cater it to the big-bang theory but we call it the ‘big boom theory.’ It’s unchartered territory man. New sounds, new expressions, new emotions, everything is new.”
I’m imagining you all must have some kind of history with Outkast, whether you got down with the Wheelz Of Steel or you later would “shake it like a Polaroid picture…” Big Boi is a rapper that crafted so much of hip hop music that you know and love today and a lot of it has actually been in projects, collaborations, or indeed entirely solo. His face slapping style, charismatic colour schemes and wild imagery is something that so effortlessly marries street identity with high-class luxury. His visuals are taste making in a unique and sexy portrayal of rap music. It’s provocatively enthralling and while the vocabulary and imagery may not fit our usual moralistic fibres, it’s a world we can all so (un)comfortably escape to.
“I always like the imagery to match the music you know what I mean? I wanted to make it as cosmic as possible, keep everything cohesively flowing through the Boomiverse you know? From the music to the clips everything is organically created, never genetically modified...”
Such a smooth talker, the way he responds to my questions it’s like he already has them in front of him.
“…So we just added everybody’s ingredients. For example when I wrote the track, Get Wit It, I had Snoop Dogg in mind. It just so happened that one night Snoop was having a listening party at my studio in Stankonia… he wanted to get on the record so I had my engineer play him the beat and straight up we knew that was the song we wanted.”
It’s unimaginable what one would do when your artistic career takes you to such heights.
In his track, Order Of Operations, he narrates “…First hundred thousand, I bought a Lexus. First million I was 20, I learnt my lesson and bought some land... Operation grind and stack...”
So when you’ve sipped champagne with the biggest names, been analysed and critiqued by the industry gate keepers and you’ve sold more records than you can line your walls with… does the ever-growing demand for new music weigh heavy on the pit bull breeders shoulders? (check his Instagram. You’re welcome).
“Nope, nuttin. Absolutely no pressure what so ever! Cos’ after you’ve sold all the records and won all the awards… it’s like, what’s it all for you know? It’s about making music that is timeless, that people are going to dance to forever. That’s what I try to do... My main thing is to always stay evolving, to create new sounds and new grooves for the people. I never wanna recreate something I’ve already done so once you chart that new territory, you can just start to dig in.”
Big Boi often utilises sampling in some of the genius instrumentals that weave his illustrious solo career and while the production quality never fails to impress (Big Rube, Organized Noize, Dr Luke and many more), I thought I’d throw him a curve ball and ask if he ever thought of doing a cover track.
“A cover track? Man, we try to keep it innovative and new...”
Kids. lesson one: Never ask one of the highest-selling rappers of all time (for their unique, self-written music) if they’ve thought about writing a cover track. You look like a gronk.
“…There’s a lot of songs out there I’m influenced by, but it would be too easy to just take someone else’s song. We could do it, but it would really have to make sense…”
Thankfully we both laugh this off and while some might call it arrogance, the ATLian makes a point in not fixing something that sure as hell ain’t broken.
I had so many more questions of the hip hop luminaire. One thing that’s always puzzled me is how rappers seem to play with their identity in their title. I could mention ODB or P Diddy for example but at times Big Boi has gone by Daddy Fat Sacks, Sir Luscious Left Foot (son of Chico Dusty) and Rooster in Outkast movie Idlewild. One starts to wonder whether this exploration into alternative personality is merely entertainment, or if we’re actually being gifted an invitation to the mind of a creative.
“Everything that I touch has some essence of me in it man. There’s different facets and emotions and different character traits, yeah… but while there’s definitely different levels of me, it’s all me! I’ve played being a bad guy in a movie or playing Rooster in Idlewild for example, I’m showing you different parts of Big Boi in errythang, ya know?”
One of my favourite albums to this day is a record called Even In Darkness by a group called Dungeon Family. It was composed of Outkast, Organized Noize, Goodie Mob (where Cee Lo originated), Parental Advisory, Society of Soul, Earthtone III, Joi, Witchdoctor and Cool Breeze. If that wasn’t enough for one group they soon added Bubba Sparxxx, Slimm Calhoun, Purple Ribbon All Stars, Konkrete, Future and a man we know today as Killer Mike. That my friends, is what you call a fucking super group! Something like 20 friends from a small town in Georgia making the fattest tracks you can imagine, all in a dark, dank dungeon (there’s a dope flick on Netflix called Organized Noize if you don’t believe me, I’ll wait). What I want to know is if and how, that 2001 album corresponds to this "Boomiverse".
“Oh absolutely it does!” It’s like going to school and getting different degrees you know what I mean? I like to take a look at little bits of everything that I’ve learned. I like to consider myself a master, a Jedi-master, and a master is always a student because they are always learning. You never know everything and you should always be trying to search for something... I mean, you can always build on what you know already, right? I’m just influenced by life, man. Life’s lessons, you live and you learn, know what I’m sayin’?
So whether you’ll be joining me in the front row at Golden Plains or you’ll be orbiting 170 Russell’s dance floor (also with me), here’s what we can expect from Big Boi’s Boomiverse show.
“Well the show switches up. It’s the same energy, but we cater to the crowd and therefor what the song selection might be. I’ll say its 80 minutes of nothing but high impact jamming. We don’t do a lot of talking, there’s a whole lotta music to navigate in the Boomiverse so we just goin’ turn it up.”
Click on theGuide for a look at all of Big Boi's Australian dates.
