>> Cover

Who’s your daddy?

With his solo album Sir Luscious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty, rapper Big Boi launches the first strike in the return of Atlanta, Georgia’s godfathers of Dirty South hip hop, Outkast

SIZING THINGS UP: Big Boi

Inside the walls of Atlanta, Georgia’s Stankonia Studios—musical home of Outkast and birthplace of “ATLiens,” “Ms. Jackson,” “B.O.B.” and “Ghetto Muzik”—eucalyptus candles and Nag Champa incense fill the air. Antwan Patton, also known as Big Boi, is putting the finishing touches on his upcoming album, Sir Luscious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty, when the Mirror reaches him on the phone in the middle of a session.

“I have eight more bars to go and then my new single will be done,” he explains, minutes after leaving the recording booth. He tells his sound engineer to “hit it,” and a few seconds of silence are followed by a sonic assault of bouncy drums, a funky synth melody and a loud verse from the “Knight in Rhyming Armor.”

The song has a different sound, not reminiscent of any other Outkast work, but without a doubt, it’s coming from the same source.

Essential services

In case he needs to test out the potency of his music, Big Boi has a club inside the studio, a lavish lounge with a swing hanging from the ceiling, purple velvet walls, a full bar and of course a state-of-the-art sound system.

“I actually like to work in the smaller room, it’s more compact and comfortable for three people. That way, I keep the energy levels together. You gotta make the studio vibe comfortable because you can be in there for days. When you are in, you gotta capture the essence.”

The essence that Big Boi speaks of is something close to the hip hop Holy Grail, a recipe for wide-scale success that has earned Big Boi and his partner in Outkast, Andre 3000, six Grammys to date. Big Boi insists that there’s nothing complicated about the matter.

“My only goal is to give ’em the funk. Bring new sounds and a new feel to music. Basically, what me and Dre [Andre 3000] been doing for the past decade or so. No formula. Just come in the studio, experiment and vibe out. You gotta have fun and just wrestle with the music.”

Star of stage and screens

Big Boi’s debut solo effort was the first half of the Outkast double album Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, which went platinum 11 times and in 2004 became the only rap album to date to have won the Grammy for Album of the Year. There were murmurs that the album marked the end of Outkast as the two paths diverged, with Andre 3000 delving into leftfield pop while Big Boi remained staunchly a rap artist.

The folding of Outkast’s Aquemini label that year, and Big Boi’s establishment of his own imprint, Purple Ribbon, further fuelled such speculations. In 2005, he released the compilation mixtape, Got Purp? Vol. 2, with the Purple Ribbon All-Stars, a roster of affiliated artists including Sleepy Brown, Killer Mike, Bubba Sparxxx and Konkrete, which includes his younger brother James “Lil Brotha” Patton.

The following year, however, Idlewild, the full-length movie musical starring Big Boi and Andre 3000 and comprised of their original songs, came out to a less than stellar reception. The hip hop sound married with Depression-era visuals and storyline didn’t go over that well, though some considered it another breakthrough for the group.

Fond of breaking barriers, Big Boi recently teamed up with the Atlanta Ballet to perform Big, a one-of-a-kind performance at Fox Theatre in Atlanta, where he rapped songs from the Outkast catalogue and others on stage while ballet dancers performed with him.

“You hope to open people’s minds to different avenues,” he says of the experience. “When you put together creative minds, the combinations are endless.”

Though his time was being spent in elegant theatres and on movie sets and TV shoots (he’s appeared on Wild ’N Out and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit), all along, Big Boi was preparing his return to the streets.

Return of the funk

Over two years in the making, Sir Luscious Left Foot will finally see the light of day by the end of this one, followed by an Andre 3000 solo record and finally a new Outkast album by next year.

Two years of label woes with Jive and strong rumours that the album would be released on Def Jam ended recently with what he describes as “an offer I couldn’t refuse” from his record label. Now, Big Boi is sure he will get the music out soon.

“Last week, I Ustreamed the song ‘For Ya Sorrows’ that I did with George Clinton and Too Short, and hit it live on the little Twitter thing, ya know? People were going crazy, begging for the song, so I put it out, man. The people want the funk and I just want to let them know that I cannot wait to get the rest of the album to them.”

After hearing “For Ya Sorrows,” alongside the two other singles, “Royal Flush” with Andre 3000 and Raekwon, and “Something’s Gotta Give” featuring Mary J. Blige, it’s clear that something is happening on this record. The home production team, Organized Noize, responsible for so much of the sound and texture of Outkast ever since 1994’s Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, is on board for the project and Big Boi is also getting beats from Lil Jon, Scott Storch and EPMD’s Erick Sermon—making Sir Luscious Left Foot the meeting point between the pioneers of Atlanta funk, the symbolic face of crunk, Dr. Dre’s ex-protégé and one of Golden Era New York’s strongest producers.

Father and son

When it comes to the album title and inspiration, Big Boi kept it in the family. “It’s just a moniker I have, man,” he says of the Sir Luscious handle. “People got their names, you know. That’s the one for my real grown-man persona. I started in the game when I was 16 years old. I have a whole different outlook on life than what I had when I was a teenager. My father was Chico Dusty. He was a Marine and in the Air Force as well. He’s the figure I looked up to when I became a man. That’s why the album is an ode to him.”

Big Boi is a father of three kids himself, Jordan, Cross and Bamboo. Moreover, he’s become a paternal figure to the newest generation of Atlanta rappers, like T.I., Gucci Mane and B.O.B., who all have guest spots on the new album and vocally recognize Outkast as the godfathers of the Dirty South’s 10-year reign over the airwaves.

Big Boi hardly feels crowded out by this next wave. “I love everybody out there. These new cats coming in the game, they’re definitely doing something right for so many people to dig them. The music is good. I think that everybody can’t do the same kind of beats, feel me? So they gotta start somewhere different. It’s all about your character and it’s about flavour. It’s people selling character, you know what I’m sayin’?”

Character development has ultimately been what Outkast is about. Two teenagers from East Point, Georgia who introduced the world to Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik are now entering a new chapter, one that begins with Sir Luscious Left Foot.

“For every album I’ve done, I consider each song like a time capsule and then my life expands from what happened in that last song or album. That’s where I get my subject matter from, just living. Be yourself. That’s what Outkast is about.”

WITH EMPIRE ISIS, 4 D’Z, FRIME,
UNDERGROUND REALROAD, JAHNICE,
MUGZ AND KAHLIFA AT CLUB SODA ON
SATURDAY, OCT. 17, 7 P.M., $40, ALL AGES