Music Review: Big Boi's "Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty"

For the first real post on my boring blog, I'm going to review a month-old album. How boring! If you're racist and don't like hip-hop or if you shun artists with intentionally misspelled names on principle, I'm planning to follow this up with a semi-related post about the moral conundrum of downloading music, so look out for that.

I've always seen Big Boi as the more hardcore, straight-up hip-hop member of OutKast, in contrast to Andre's space-cadet eclecticism, so, not having read much of the advanced hype about "Sir Lucious Left Foot," I was expecting an album full of hood anthems and gangsta bangers like "West Savannah" and "Ya'll Scared." Boy (or should I say Boi, har har) was I wrong. This album is nothing like anything I've heard in hip-hop for a long time, and not really like much I've heard from OutKast (although, for whatever reason, I never listened to "Speakerboxx/The Love Below").

I'll delve into thoughts on some individual tracks in a minute, but first some thoughts on the album as a whole: Nearly every track on the album could be a club banger (and in fact some might actually be, but how I would know? If I made a habit of going to clubs, I might actually be interesting, which would defeat my whole purpose), but it still manages to maintain artistic integrity, which is a pretty hard line to straddle. It almost seems unfair to label this album as "just" hip-hop, as the array of synthesizers, heavy drum beats and other eclectic elements push it into funk/techno/club territory. Now my thoughts on some individual tracks:

-Track 2: "Daddy Fat Sax" - In the grand tradition of OutKast albums, the first track is a short burst of awesomeness that announces we're in for a wild ride (OK, so "Return of the 'G'" was too slow-tempoed to be called a burst, but it was still kind of short and very awesome). This is one of the most straight-up hip-hop tracks on the album, but still manages to get across the idea that Big Boi is going for something totally different with some heavy synth use to accompany a booming drum beat. The chorus, with its scratches and repeated phrases, sounds like DJ Premier on speed, and Big Boi brings some lyrical heat.





-Track 5: "Shutterbug" - This was the album's first single, so I don't think I need to describe it, but I wanted to praise two things: First, I love the line "I'm shittin' on n****s, and peein' on the seat." Getting shit on is bad enough, but peeing on the seat just adds insult to injury. Seriously though, I love the way Big Boi takes a hackneyed rap cliche and adds something new and funny to make it fresh. Second, I love the beat-stopping "Back to liiiiife/back to reality" interlude in the middle of the song. Stopping the beat in the middle of a song usually comes off as either really cheesy or really great, and in this case it's the latter.

-Track 10: "Be Still" - How do I love this song? Let me count the ways. I'm a sucker for pianos, spacey synthesizers (best example ever being Cannibal Ox's "Iron Galaxy"), and haunting female choruses in rap songs, and this has ALL THREE. Plus other stuff! In fact, there are so many layers to this song's production, and they're so well blended, that I didn't even realize there was a piano in there until my 4th or 5th listen. The production is incredible, but it's Janelle Monae's voice and delivery on the chorus and her short verse that make this song. I might have to check out her album, given the alarming lack of female vocalists on my iPod and the way she just kills this song. Oh yeah Big Boi raps somewhere in there too (just kidding, he drops a pretty good verse to open things up).

-Track 11: "For Your Sorrows" - Is anyone in life better at anything than Too $hort is at saying "Beeee-itch" in rap songs? The guy has been going strong off one word for nearly two decades now, and it never gets old. Impressive. This album also reveals that Big Boi has a real talent for saying, appropriately enough, "boy" (pronounced "bwaa"), but no one can touch Too $hort. It's also worth noting that I like this song despite the fact that in real life I absolutely hate it when people blow their smoke in the air as if no one is standing there. Any time you can make me enthusiastically sing along to a chorus about behavior I loathe in real life, you're doing something right.



There a bunch of other standout tracks, but this is running long and I can't think of anything interesting or clever to say about them, so it's time for some final thoughts.

I notice that I haven't really mentioned Big Boi's lyrical stylings much, which seems odd considering that this is, after all, his album. If it seems like he's overshadowed by his own production, that's kind of true, especially on the first listen. The production is just so complex and impressive that the lyrics tend to fall by the wayside, but I concentrated more on listening to the words the second time through and came away thoroughly impressed.

Big Boi does a great job of mixing up his flow and delivery to match the diverse range of production, which should come as no surprise given that he's shown a talent for doing that throughout his career. His lyrics are especially strong on "Daddy Fat Sax" and "Follow Us." And if he is occasionally overshadowed by the production, that isn't necessarily an indictment; having a good ear for production is important, and he has producer credits on more than half of the album.

Another important thing to note about this album is that it has some pretty cool, bold cover art. Now with the death of CD's you might think this isn't important anymore, but I beg to differ. In fact, I think it's more important than ever. If you conspicuously flash around your iPhone with this cover art showing on Metro, people will undoubtedly think you're cool. In my case they'll be wrong, but it's perception that matters.

And here's a final question if you've actually read this far. Looking up videos for this post made me wonder: is YouTube now the primary outlet for music videos? I don't really keep up with pop culture, but MTV doesn't play them anymore, right? So why are they still made? Are record companies really spending millions on glorified YouTube videos?