Outkast vs Public Enemy

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  • staxwaxstaxwax 1,474 Posts
    single handedly shattering the popular archetype for the young black male

    bw

    taking youth music seriously

    blogger pleez

  • batmonbatmon 27,574 Posts
    Didnt it take a while for Outkast to really crossover despite their hits?

    Was Rosa Parks their crossover hit? Did it get played on POP/Hot radio?

    I thought Stankonia was where they entered the next zone.

  • batmonbatmon 27,574 Posts
    noz said:
    Love Below, a record that for better or worse single handedly shattered the popular archetype for the young black male

    Pharrell Williams

  • thropethrope 750 Posts
    outkast a novelty act? lolwut?

  • HarveyCanalHarveyCanal "a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
    Spazwax hadta step in and ruin the thread.

  • Being a white dude, I never felt quite right listening to P.E. I couldn't relate to the message and the anger.

    Outkast never felt wrong.

  • Novelty act? Really? Where you been?

    As this was mentioned earlier, I think the choice really is tied to where AND when you grew up.

    If you grew up in the South in the 90's, you will say Outkast. Bar none. And with no hesitation. Every sub-genre in the South, as well as the major "Southern" aesthetic to consuming and making music, shifted when they entered.

    My theory on "post-hip-hop" (not my phrase - I just know it's the one that most agree with) is currently thus - 85% of all major trends in the genre (style, production choices, lyrical approach etc.) can be tied to what Jay-Z and Outkast have done over the past 15 years. (Dre shot himself in the foot by not sealing his influence/legacy with a prompt and worthy final chapter to his trilogy but few are closer to designing the sound aesthetic of modern hip-hop). Have there been incredible musical forces outside of those two entities? Of course. And their legacies are untouched but these two, in my opinion, have been in the driving seat at different times over the past decade and a half.

    Not to be so "your blogger is showing" but I don't think people understood how much impact Stankonia really had on music as a whole. Everything shifted with it - the Southern reign was started (which has lasted 5 years past it's expiration date while Detroit and California have been producing the best music out) , the official sounding call for rappers to seriously consider (for better or much worse) singing was rung, the kinds of music incorporated bitch-slapped hip-hop (one of the widest ranging music compositions in the 90's/00's easily - sample choices and production styles had to evolve afterwards) and introduced hip-hop across the genre chasm. Also, someone mentioned the subtlety of the sociopolitical content in their music. Virtually unheard of in the genre and if people were really paying attention, Outkast would have been in the "conscious" category. The way they tow that line by pointing to truth and not threatening listeners with it hasn't been duplicated.

    Anywhere.

    A media darling after it was all said and performed and played over and over again? Yes.

    Was it made with that intention? No.

    And was it all them (Outkast/Organized Noize)? Absolutely.

  • HarveyCanalHarveyCanal "a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
    Fadenuf fa Erybody > Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik + ATLiens.

    Outkast's 1st 2 albums, the ones that get cited as their classics, are basically boring to me. I can listen to Hoodie Hoo on repeat for days, but other than that...eh. (Player's Ball is of course a classic but I've by now heard it about 500 times too many). I keep this cd in my truck and whenever I throw it in, I wind up skipping tracks left and right. ATLiens is of course the money track off of ATLiens, but that album could have really benfitted from having Benz and a Beamer on it, as it's another album I find myself using the fast forward button on quite a bit.

    As far as Southern albums from that era, give me Til Death Do Us Part, or Somethin' Serious, or Super Tight, or Comin' Out Hard, or Fadenuf fa Erybody any day of the week.

    But really, none of this is said to diminish from what Outkast has done. They kept on doing it bigger and better, just more in the direction of pop music, with Aquemeni and Stankonia and Speakerboxxx. They should definitely be in contention for greatest group ever.

    I just think people overdo it in lauding their first 2 albums, when there were frankly better examples of Southern rap surrounding their efforts.

    And as far as Public Enemy, no other group ever, except for maybe Run DMC and NWA, slapped us upside the head as PE did. Outkast certainly never did. There was just a brute rawness to their production alone that to me took rap music to its absolute apex. Throw in all the symbolism and how PE shaped an entire social movement at that time, and there's really no comparison.

  • batmonbatmon 27,574 Posts
    I cant agree with Oukast never being duplicated in "pointing out the truth in a white friendly way" statement.

    There have been plenty of Hip Hop acts that were conscious lite in the 90s on. Outkast doesnt stand alone doin that shit.
    The Roots, Nas, Common,Tribe, Derek X, to name a few were continuing being aware right along side Outkasts.

    In no way were they on some special other shit.

  • faux_rillz said:
    novocaine132 said:
    desert island scenario.
    playing outkast, you might just make your peace with being stuck.
    listening to pe is going to remind you to get off that god-damned island...

    Jesus... this has got to be one of the most cornball things anyone has ever poasted on this site, which is significant achievement

    so that means you choose outkast?

  • I'll take Outkast - ATAliens, Aquemini, Stankonia and Speakerboxx/Love Below is a hell of a run.

    YO Bumrush, Nation Of Millions, Takes a Nation and Fear of A Black Planet all amazing and groundbreaking in their own right but at the end of the day Chuck D is just not as good of a rapper as Andre or Big Boi and I think thats what makes the differance for me.

  • HarveyCanalHarveyCanal "a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
    Listened to Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik in its entirety thsi morning...

    1. It's a solid album, and people aren't wrong for loving it.

    2. But outside of Hoodie Hoo, IT DOES NOT BUMP...nor does it reflect the Southern rap sound to come after it. Organized Noize gets waaay too much credit IMO with those weak drums and hardly any sort of trunk-rattling bass, whereas dudes like Mike Dean and Pimp C already had that Southern Fried Funk sound on lock...and dudes later like Juicy J and Mannie Fresh and Lil Jon deserve the credit for crafting what the Southern rap revolution would sound like.

    3. While lyrically, it's damned good...there's something corny to the melodic patterns Andre and Big Boi were using over and over again, which could also be labeled as forced in too many instances on that album. They of course went on to fix that problem moving forward, but still.

  • batmonbatmon 27,574 Posts
    People treat me like Kareem Abdul Jabbar

  • DrWuDrWu 4,021 Posts
    As someone who was in college during PE's reign, it's really hard to imagine a more important band. We waited for Fear of Black Planet like the new new Testament was coming. I remember so clearly driving around with my boy just absorbing the sounds, not talking at all, just thinking about the topics they were highlighting (Hollywood racism, police injustice, interracial sexual relations) and having my mind blown by the production. Nothing in hip hop has ever been like that before or since. To me they were the Beatles, a group that took pop music and turned into art at the deepest levels, musically, aesthetically, symbolically and spiritually. Not surprisingly, like the Beatles, they were targets of national controversy for what they said and for their critique of society. Shit was beyond deep.

    I'm also interested by that fact that PE was the first hip hop group to get the intelligentsia involved. If you read the Village Voice Poll essays about Nations at that time, it was the first time that a hip hop group was demanding serious critical consideration at every level. You weren't considered a serious person if you didn't have an opinion about them. That's lasting influence. I wonder if guys like ODub would agree that PE put hip hop intellectualism on the map. Chuck was certainly the first hip hop artist I remember speaking at colleges (caught him at Harvard Spring of 92), talking about topics well beyond his artistic output.

    Plus, they were great live.

    In this battle PE scores a first round knock out.

  • jamesjames chicago 1,863 Posts
    As the past few pages have attested, I think this is kinda impossible to get any real read on, since anyone old enough to have full-on experienced Public Enemy would have also--via the twin mercilessnesses of human nature and mathematics--been necessarily of different mind, of different heart, and of more hard-wired taste by the time Outkast ascended. There is a way you listen to music when you're in your mid-teens that simply cannot be replicated, you know? And likewise, anyone who was of the right age to have their whole life (as opposed to their adult life) changed by Outkast would necessarily be too young to have caught any more than an echo of What Public Enemy Meant. Anyone who was a mid-teen in 1996 (the year ATLiens came out) would have had to been doing a little read-up to feel strongly about PE, I think, and you're never gonna feel as strongly about the second-hand stuff as you do about the stuff you're experiencing first-hand and in real time. Both sides are looking across an age gap that's pretty irreconcilable.

    To me, one of the sharpest, most important points in this whole thread, one that's being mostly overlooked, is:
    noz said:
    PE was a big bang in a vacuum.
    I think this cuts to the heart of the versus at least as much as does the factor of age, because it speaks to the idea of how you prefer your art. PE was huge and dense and dissonant and ultimately too fucked-up, contradictory, and undigestible to really have much of a commercially sustainable impact or spawn many worthwhile imitators. "Vacuum" is a good way to put it; there just wasn't a lot of context for what they were doing. Outkast was warmer, more obviously earnest, and more organic; and have subsequently had a wider, deeper, and thus more lasting effect down here on the ground. Outkast was the ripple effect on the water, PE was the rend in the void.

    So, even putting aside all issues of the listener's age, geography, circumstances, etc., I think a big part of Public Enemy v. Outkast boils down to whether you draw more inspiration from art that a) reflects and reinforces something of your life and your sensibility or b) disrupts all of it. That's not to say tthat one is better than the other, and not to say that Outkast never disrupted anyone's shit, just that when you get down to it, everyone I know who really pulls for Outkast speaks of them in terms of feeling some deep familiarity, some essential connection, while everyone I know who really pulls for PE talks about feeling undone, like shit was from some other planet ("I didn't know what the fuck I was hearing"). That distinction seems important.

  • HarveyCanalHarveyCanal "a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
    Not bad, James, not bad.

  • HarveyCanal said:
    Not bad, James, not bad.

    yeah, wow. fucking great post, man.

  • batmonbatmon 27,574 Posts
    The first PE album wasnt THAT much of a musical sidestep compared to what was happening.

    In 87, Epmd and Ultramagnetic were alongside PE stretching the boundaries and setting up the sonic changes in the game.

    PE#1s shrill sound was NEW but overall as an album shit was still in the Def Jam steez.

    I knew alot of folks that hopped on at Nations and didnt put the time in with YO.

    It seemed to me that the OMG factor was heightened since they werent really paying attention.

    From PE#1,Rebel,Bring The Noise to Dont Believe their game was snowballing.

    I dont know about the Vacuum theory.

    Krs and the JBs were right there.

  • bassiebassie 11,710 Posts
    james said:
    As the past few pages have attested, I think this is kinda impossible to get any real read on, since anyone old enough to have full-on experienced Public Enemy would have also--via the twin mercilessnesses of human nature and mathematics--been necessarily of different mind, of different heart, and of more hard-wired taste by the time Outkast ascended. There is a way you listen to music when you're in your mid-teens that simply cannot be replicated, you know? And likewise, anyone who was of the right age to have their whole life (as opposed to their adult life) changed by Outkast would necessarily be too young to have caught any more than an echo of What Public Enemy Meant. Anyone who was a mid-teen in 1996 (the year ATLiens came out) would have had to been doing a little read-up to feel strongly about PE, I think, and you're never gonna feel as strongly about the second-hand stuff as you do about the stuff you're experiencing first-hand and in real time. Both sides are looking across an age gap that's pretty irreconcilable.

    To me, one of the sharpest, most important points in this whole thread, one that's being mostly overlooked, is:
    noz said:
    PE was a big bang in a vacuum.
    I think this cuts to the heart of the versus at least as much as does the factor of age, because it speaks to the idea of how you prefer your art. PE was huge and dense and dissonant and ultimately too fucked-up, contradictory, and undigestible to really have much of a commercially sustainable impact or spawn many worthwhile imitators. "Vacuum" is a good way to put it; there just wasn't a lot of context for what they were doing. Outkast was warmer, more obviously earnest, and more organic; and have subsequently had a wider, deeper, and thus more lasting effect down here on the ground. Outkast was the ripple effect on the water, PE was the rend in the void.

    So, even putting aside all issues of the listener's age, geography, circumstances, etc., I think a big part of Public Enemy v. Outkast boils down to whether you draw more inspiration from art that a) reflects and reinforces something of your life and your sensibility or b) disrupts all of it. That's not to say tthat one is better than the other, and not to say that Outkast never disrupted anyone's shit, just that when you get down to it, everyone I know who really pulls for Outkast speaks of them in terms of feeling some deep familiarity, some essential connection, while everyone I know who really pulls for PE talks about feeling undone, like shit was from some other planet ("I didn't know what the fuck I was hearing"). That distinction seems important.


    I pick b)

  • I dont see how something is in a vacuum when it creates huge ripples through mainstream culture and practically define the identity of a generation. Was spike in a vacuum too?

    And on an inspiritaional level, the behind the scenes leading up to PE's first 12" release as documented in the run Dmc biography tell the whole story. Dudes saw the end of the leather and the beginning of the future. Groups that caught wind were rerouting thier whole shit.

    Don't get me wrong, I like outkast. I also love the beatnuts and pete rock and preme but this argument is extremely subjective. I don't understand the need to discredit PE defining an era in rap by comparing them to any other good group, from outkast to gangstarr to pr&cl; to nwa.

    Nobodys dorm room ATLiens experiences can change the social impact of pE. That shit happened. Deal with it and move on. When outkast dropped they had a good Christmas song on a compilation. When PE dropped...

  • jamesjames chicago 1,863 Posts
    batmon said:
    The first PE album wasnt THAT much of a musical sidestep compared to what was happening.

    In 87, Epmd and Ultramagnetic were alongside PE stretching the boundaries and setting up the sonic changes in the game.

    PE#1s shrill sound was NEW but overall as an album shit was still in the Def Jam steez.

    I knew alot of folks that hopped on at Nations and didnt put the time in with YO.

    It seemed to me that the OMG factor was heightened since they werent really paying attention.

    From PE#1,Rebel,Bring The Noise to Dont Believe their game was snowballing.

    I dont know about the Vacuum theory.
    I'd never say that PE started in a vacuum--they certainly had their peers/comepetiton early on--but they definitely moved into their own sphere pretty quickly. There was only about one year, maybe two, where it made any sense to even mention EPMD, KRS, Ultra, or the JBs in the same sentence as PE. In terms of sonic innovation and ability to leverage their music into broad cultural impact by getting whitey on board, those other dudes (all of whom I love to greater or lesser extents) got left on the launchpad in pretty short order. EPMD and Ultra's shit sounded new to rap fans; PE's shit sounded new to everybody.

    And while I understand your (oft-stated) frustration with folks that picked up the thread with Nations, I'm not sure how much that mitigates PE's overall impact. It mostly seems like some "Pfft. You should have know her back in high school--she was nothing special" type saltiness. I mean, one of the measures of important music--PE or Outkast or MJ or Prince or whoever--is precisely the extent to which it affects people who were not predisposed to give a shit, who "weren't really paying attention."

  • HarveyCanalHarveyCanal "a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
    I know a certain sector of upcoming rappers who routinely cite Andre as the best to ever do it...which I can live with to a certain degree once it turns into, okay well maybe he is top10 after all. But then they start saying Eminem is up there as well...and with that, their opinions across the board quickly turn to mush. I mean, they get to vote just like everyone else...but there's a reason why we run with the electoral college. Can't have mob-rules democracy disrupting this great representative republic of ours. And with that being said, Public Enemy > Ya Mama.

  • edpowersedpowers 4,437 Posts
    Public Enemy's "social impact" is a crock of shit

  • Random thoughts...

    It's a totally subjective thing, to be sure. But some of you cats are protesting too much....

    Both Nation of Millions and Fear Of A Black Planet (not to mention Amerikkka's Most Wanted) were defining rap records for me. I mean, you don't have to have been 23 years old in 1990 to have had your mind blown on all levels by those records. There's certainly a generation of kids that "experienced" both groups authentically - I did, and I'm surely not alone or special. How we experienced it? There's always old heads that say "you had to be there". Cats have been saying that since the dawn of popular music. Whatever.

    When Southernplayalistic dropped, at that point we were "off that" with PE. Apocalypse '91 was not all that... They had to go get that Pete Rock remix (itself an indictment). Shit had moved on. The world hadn't changed, in fact a year later THE fucking CHRONIC happened.

    Was Outkast more built for Becky and Brad? Let's not forget the legions of metalheads that hated all rap music except for PE. There are reams of whitefolks music crit on PE from that time. I can't think of another credible rap group from that era that was more adored by white people. They toured with Anthrax, and U2! And their legacy has been used as a cudgel for the whole "if it's not socially conscious/musically adventurous, it's for the birds" mentality that conservative listeners of all stripes trot out to this day.

    Outkast was really big in the Bay Area. It's one of the first places they came to tour, before the album had really dropped... the sound was on point, the cultural signifiers were right. Cats I met when I first moved to NYC were skeptical, but they were feeling ATLiens. And Outkast didn't really cross over until later. Aquemini was really the record that got them into the Becky orbit.

    Oh yeah, Robert, I question your slappery set-up! I jammed Southernplayalistic this weekend, plenty of bump all over that thing.

    Like I said when this thread first came up.... Public Enemy is the "right" answer.... I probably play Outkast more. Whatever. I don't feel a need to prove my hip-hop cred. I guess I wasn't there, or something. nokrs

  • DJ_EnkiDJ_Enki 6,471 Posts
    Jonny_Paycheck said:
    I guess I wasn't there, or something. nokrs


  • DORDOR Two Ron Toe 9,899 Posts
    Jonny_Paycheck said:
    There's certainly a generation of kids that "experienced" both groups authentically - I did, and I'm surely not alone or special.

    This is how I feel. I wasn't even a teen yet when I saw PE live in concert for the first time before Nation even came out. Going on to buy Southernplaya by the time I was leaving my teen years.

    To be fair, it would have be interesting to see how Outkast would have come across in the late 80's or PE in the mid 90's for that matter. Both are unique to the climate of the times, I doubt either group would have had the success they had.

  • HarveyCanalHarveyCanal "a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
    Jonny_Paycheck said:
    Random thoughts...

    Oh yeah, Robert, I question your slappery set-up! I jammed Southernplayalistic this weekend, plenty of bump all over that thing.

    You're certainly on to something as my system is nothing special. But my Ghetty Green knocks. Same with my Ridin Dirty and my Guerilla Warfare and my Rise and my CVE and Mr.512 and even my Funk Dynasty cassette. I don't know really why CadillacMuzik won't bump for me. I mean, I want it too.

  • HarveyCanal said:
    CadillacMuzik

    best first 8 tracks on a debut ever recorded by man.

  • batmonbatmon 27,574 Posts
    Didnt it take a minute after PEs reign for Hip Hop to shed its direct influence of what PE did?

    Didnt the Chronic have The Day Niggaz Took Over connected to PEs vibe post NWA?

    OutKast comes out with Playa's Ball on the Xmas Comp in 93 and Tribe has Steve Biko on MMaurauders.

    Krs does Black Cop and Sound of Da Police.Gangstarr continues to lace their shit with politicks.

    Brand Nubian does In God We Trust........

    Blah blah blah
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