Outkast vs Public Enemy

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  • StoneHandsStoneHands 341 Posts
    I totally understand why PE is the majority choice. Personally, Id pick Outkast, because the Bombsquad production, as innovative and multi-layered as it was, sounds dated to me. Which makes most of PE's catalogue difficult to enjoy, musically.

  • MjukisMjukis 1,675 Posts
    StoneHands said:
    I totally understand why PE is the majority choice. Personally, Id pick Outkast.
    I agree. It's partly an age thing, but also, PE is more something I pull out once in a while. I could listen to Outkast every day and not tire of it.

    Outkast vs Tribe might be more even - 90s vs 90s related.

  • PrimeCutsLtdPrimeCutsLtd jersey fresh 2,632 Posts
    PE crazy, crazy PE!!!

  • 4YearGraduate4YearGraduate 2,945 Posts
    When PE dropped my world changed. People had to reroute thier whole shit. Teh streets were listening.

    When outkast dropped I said to myself, gee thats the first time I heard sleighbells on a southern track. A small ripple In a huge pond until they became Becky darlings.

    I think for anyone who lived through both eras as a follower of hip hop there is no comparison.

    YMMV

  • StoneHands said:
    sounds dated to me. Which makes most of PE's catalogue difficult to enjoy, musically.

    "Yo Chuck, they must be on the pipe, right?"

  • DJ_EnkiDJ_Enki 6,471 Posts
    No disrespect to OutKast at all, but PE is the greatest rap group of all time.

  • jleejlee 1,539 Posts
    Jonny_Paycheck said:
    I think Public Enemy is the better catalog in a sense. You're really talking about groundbreaking shit there. On a musical level, there are more layers to pick apart - I'm still noticing small things here and there in those recordings. Chuck D's lyrics are certainly more full of specific cultural references and a depth of political, socioeconomic, and religious knowledge than Outkast's. I think Public Enemy wins a "versus" argument on merits, all other things being equal. But if it were a "desert island" sort of decision, I think I would go with Outkast; while Dre and Big Boi don't drop gems with the kind of bibliotechnical specificity that Chuck D was capable of, and the production isn't as mindblowingly inventive (particularly given the technical limitations of the era that the Bomb Squad operated in), they cover a broader range of emotions in their songs, and a broader musical range, than Public Enemy does. If I was headed to that vaunted desert island and couldn't bring anything else musical, that'd be my choice.

    bold above.

    again, there is no reason to explain yourself for saying PE, and for overall hip-hop importance/legacy I would concur they are more important. And while PE's significance goes beyond what can be expressed in a forum post, Outkast probably still gets my vote for exactly what Johnny said above is his desert island scenario. The emotions that they rap about (especially in their first 4 albums) have impacted me in a way that PE's just have not. Whether that is a related to my age, race or region I grew up in, I am not certain, but I just know Kast has impacted me in ways that few other musical groups have.

  • batmonbatmon 27,574 Posts
    Im sorry but Racial Politics can very emotional and have varied range.

  • StoneHandsStoneHands 341 Posts


    I think for anyone who lived through both eras as a follower of hip hop there is no comparison.

    /quote]

    Thats the thing - if you werent (I wasnt) old enough to remember the cultural impact of PE and the feeling in the air, you cant feel them the same way on musical terms. They dont have a timeless, transcendent sounds, which again, Id have to attribute to their production

  • StoneHandsStoneHands 341 Posts
    ^how did that happen

  • batmonbatmon 27,574 Posts


    I think for anyone who lived through both eras as a follower of hip hop there is no comparison.

    /quote]

    Thats the thing - if you werent (I wasnt) old enough to remember the cultural impact of PE and the feeling in the air, you cant feel them the same way on musical terms. They dont have a timeless, transcendent sounds, which again, Id have to attribute to their production

    Welcome To The Terrordome is TIMELESS.

    Maybe your age puts you at a disadvantage to witness the shift within the game.

    Rebel without a Pause wasnt just some hit street record. That shit was some new food.

    Ill agree that some of it can sound dated.

  • BrianBrian 7,618 Posts


    >


  • edpowersedpowers 4,437 Posts
    Outkast

  • minimini 879 Posts

  • HarveyCanalHarveyCanal "a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
    Public Enemy > Outkast.

    A Tribe Called Quest > Outkast.

    UGK > Outkast.

    And I love me some Outkast.

  • noznoz 3,625 Posts
    DB_Cooper said:
    If you were old enough and listening to rap when Public Enemy really started hitting, it's not a contest. That shit changed the way people thought about not just music, but the world around them.

    This would be a notable distinction if what you describe wasn't exactly what Atliens did for me when I was 14. That shit blew my tiny world to pieces in terms of both sonics and sociology. Just because you were breathing during the Outkast era doesn't mean that you lived it. I suspect that by then a lot of you dudes were too old/disconnected/distracted/cynical to let yourself experience those records in the same way you did PE (probably off counting the organ samples on endtroducing AMIRITE?) but I most certainly wasn't the only one so fortunate. And on top of that plenty of kids 5 or 10 years my junior would tell you the same about Love Below, a record that for better or worse single handedly shattered the popular archetype for the young black male and left a creative mark all over hip hop that quite blatantly remains eight years after the fact. Did any 1996 hip hop bear even the slightest Nation Of Millions influence? Or the more exact comparison would be to ask if any 2002 hip hop sounded like Muse Sick. PE was a big bang in a vacuum.

    I mean I don't think PE is necessarily a bad answer to this question - they're a fucking incredible rap group! - and you're right that it mostly comes down to age. But dismissing a vote for Outkast on some you had to be there shit is just that typical arrogant old head tunnel vision that makes it virtually impossible to have a thoughtful discussion about hip hop around here. (Not gunning at you specifically here DB, your shit was level headed as fuck...)

  • noznoz 3,625 Posts

  • DORDOR Two Ron Toe 9,896 Posts
    Is not the point of saying "you had to be there" due to the fact that you might have actually been there for both groups output and can have a valid opinion on the subject, that someone who only was around for Outkast's years might not be able to do?

    I'm not a hip hop expert by any means. But I was around for both groups peak periods, as well as the days where very few people had heard of either group.

    Personally I go with PE. Which doesn't mean anything, since opinions like this are subjective. If this was on charting or sales this would be much easier.

    The only place I can say (IMO) that Outkast had a higher impact is in the clubs. But there are very few hip hop groups that had the same type of world wide impact than PE. And Outkast is not one of them.

    In any case, I enjoy both groups releases.

  • noznoz 3,625 Posts
    ITS ALMOST LIKE YOU DIDN'T READ ANY OF THE WORDS I WROTE

  • DORDOR Two Ron Toe 9,896 Posts
    I only read "hip hop"

  • 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...

  • DocMcCoyDocMcCoy "Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,913 Posts
    noz said:

    See also; RATM, Korn, Limp Bizkit, loads of generic nu-metal sludge / Chemical Brothers, Prodigy, sundry other post-rave-with-a-rock-dynamic dance acts.

    Fine if you believe Industrial Rap isn't even a minor footnote in the development of the form (I happen to agree), likewise if you think that its significance is often wildly over-emphasised by people who otherwise wouldn't touch rap (I'd agree there, too). But PE's broader/lasting influence is more apparent beyond hip-hop. I mean, go and listen to some 1996-2002 rock music; where did all those bands like Rage or Korn or whoever get the idea of using noise as a rhythmic element from, for example? Likewise the Chems and Prodigy within their chosen idioms. What the Bomb Squad/PE did has arguably had a more enduring effect within genres other than rap and I think that's something worth acknowledging, irrespective of your feelings about the end product.

    By the same token, something about Outkast which often gets overlooked is their subtlety. An unfortunate after-effect of PE was how quickly "political rap" came to mean "politically-explicit rap", so the nuances of even a lesser-known Outkast song like In Due Time are dismissed or disregarded by people who've barely listened to, say, Goodie Mob or who'd snort with laughter at the notion of the music of Trick Daddy having a political aspect, yet will think nothing of declaring polemicist bores like Immortal Technique or dilettantes like Lupe Fiasco to be The Truth. I mean, look at the kind of people who suddenly paid attention to Outkast just because they did a song called Bombs Over Baghdad while simultaneously betraying the fact that they hadn't actually listened to the words - "Yeah, dude, it's so deep and insightful, because now there really are bombs over Baghdad, yo..."

    I think it's a worthy comparison to make, though. Both acts emerged during particularly fruitful periods in rap, both produced a bunch of great records and both forced lots of people to re-examine their view of hip-hop and its broader artistic/cultural significance. How important you feel that last point to be will probably depend upon how important rap is to you to begin with, but I'd imagine most people who are fans of rap would be able to express a preference without feeling they had to reduce it to a simplistic either/or choice. FWIW, I'd choose PE, and not just because I'm old. Moreover, I do think that "being there" will make an enormous difference to how you perceive PE's importance in retrospect. Even at their best, I can't find a moment in the Outkast catalogue that personally hit me as hard as when I heard Public Enemy #1 or Rebel... or Terrordome for the first time. That being said, I doubt I could argue for any post-PE group being as important as Outkast, if only for the reasons that both you and batmon gave. I just think their impact is measurable in a different way.

  • Public Enemy

  • batmonbatmon 27,574 Posts






















  • faux_rillzfaux_rillz 14,343 Posts
    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

  • batmonbatmon 27,574 Posts
    noz said:
    Did any 1996 hip hop bear even the slightest Nation Of Millions influence?



    want more

  • 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

    lol

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



    great post, tho.

  • DORDOR Two Ron Toe 9,896 Posts
    noz said:
    Did any 1996 hip hop bear even the slightest Nation Of Millions influence?

    /quote]

    Doesn't sampling laws prohibit making anything that bears a resemblance of nation? Or you mean political hip hop? It's not surprising since everything runs in cycles.

    The one group that comes best to mind for 96 is Dead Prez tho.

  • staxwaxstaxwax 1,474 Posts
    Excuse me while i derisively snort the FUSK outta this one.


    Remember when you first heard this?

    PE was a complete facemelting game changer across the board - changing the dna of a whole era of music.

    And btw, Bombsquad ko'd the eastcoast and the west coast, in case you forgot about AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted.

    Outkast = a novelty act with mad crossover appeal, arriving on the scene close to a decade later.

    Mad kids may have ATLiens - with its tepid production, affected sped up flows, and - it has to be said - ugly ass cover & wack ass comicbook - in their top 10.

    The same kids were usually about ten years late to the party.

    Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik was decent enough, but those bone thugs spun off melodic staccatto flows stay cringe worthy.

    Plaese to keep that commercial-rap apologist shit in the closet.
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