Go Big or Go Home

If you were a platinum-selling, Grammy winning rapper, you’d think your troubles were over. But for OutKast MC Big Boi, whose much-delayed solo album will finally be coming out on Def Jam this fall, staying on top is almost as hard as getting there

BIG BOI @ BIGNESS
With Young Dro, Kid Kut, DJ Cipha Sounds, more. Hosted by Little X. Sat, Aug 1. Sound Academy, 11 Polson. $40 advance from www.clubcrawlers.com, Play De Record, Broadway Fashion, Just Incredible Hair, Nappy’s Hair Shop, Shine Salon & Barbershop. Doors 10pm.

From rock stardom to winning the lottery, our most common fantasies are about being magically, instantly liberated from work, bills and having to hunt for a parking space — the little things that aren’t disasters as much as thorns in your side. So when Big Boi starts telling me about the delays surrounding the release of his long-held-up solo album, Sir Luscious Left Foot: The Son Of Chico Dusty, the people leaking his singles and the amount of unreleased material he’s just sitting on while waiting to finalize the deal trading him from Jive to Def Jam, one thing is clear: no matter how rich and famous you are, your life will never be entirely free from annoying, time-wasting bullshit.

“A record that me and Dre [Andre 3000] had been working on for my album that was produced by Erick Sermon, a song called ‘Looking For You,’ leaked on the internet,” the OutKast MC explains over the phone from an Atlanta recording studio, somewhat wearily. “And the jackasses got it out there as an Andre 3000 song. But that’s what you get when people leak records, you know what I’m saying? They don’t know what’s going on.

“I had [singer and Dungeon Family associate] Sleepy Brown come in from California, who put the hook down and then Dre came in and he put two verses on it, but the version that came out only has like one verse of Dre’s on it. So it doesn’t have both my verses or Dre’s other verse on it. They ain’t get the whole song, but anxious-ass motherfuckers, you know how they do it.”

I do, I tell him, thinking that his aggrieved tone is roughly on par with a friend complaining when the liquor store closes early on Fridays. The difference, of course, is that your friend doesn’t have several million people salivating over whether or not he manages to pick up a case of Creemore.

Even after their 1930s juke joint–themed movie/CD project, Idlewild, received a lukewarm reception from both the critics and the public, there are very few hip-hop releases more hotly anticipated than the next OutKast record. With 2003’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below — an album that was essentially two solo discs packaged together — they proved that they didn’t even need each other to make hits. There wasn’t a place on earth you could escape Dre’s ubiquitous “Hey Ya!,” and although Big Boi is less inclined to grab headlines through iconoclastic fashion choices the way Dre does, Big’s “The Way You Move” also reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100.

Before the next duo record can come into being (though Big assures me that they’re working on it: “it’s just in the beginning stages of it, as far as picking out music and stuff like that”), they each plan to release solo albums. Big Boi’s, Sir Luscious Left Foot: The Son Of Chico Dusty, will be first.

“I’ve been recording for two and a half, close to three years now. I got music comin’ out the ass. Understand that. I have enough material now to do a triple CD if I wanted to.”

He just has a few details to work out first, like when it’s going to be released, and by whom. Though they initially signed to LaFace, a major subsidiary co-founded by label mogul LA Reid, a spate of mergers and Reid’s move to Def Jam saw them moved onto Jive Records’ roster, which has become known as the last label any hip-hop artist wants to be signed to.

Clipse famously called Jive out in interviews and in songs such as “Mr. Me Too” for pushing back the release date of their sophomore album Hell Hath No Fury (they were released from their contract soon after, and have since signed to Columbia). Rappers’ animosity towards Jive goes back at least as far as A Tribe Called Quest’s breakup, which was reportedly accelerated by years of label woes.

After publicly calling out Jive in March, telling Rolling Stone that “You can’t work on music for two-plus years and just give it to a label and they just fuck it up,” Big Boi now has conciliatory words for his soon-to-be-former label.

“We were just in a situation where we were on LaFace Records and then got switched over to Jive, there was nothing we could say about it. They’re a great label that do certain types of music, but, I don’t know, man. So right now, we’ve got the lawyers seeing eye to eye at Def Jam and Jive, and then, you know, hopefully in the next week or so, I’ll be back over there with LA Reid, who I started with, and who understands my music.

I really gotta give praise to [BMG Label Group CEO] Barry Weiss for understanding my artistic creativity and letting me kind of want to pursue my career with LA, you know? That was very honourable of him, to even consider letting me go to another label.”

After all they’ve been through, I ask him, why don’t major artists like yourselves just sign to independent labels?

“Some do, but it just depends how much marketing dollars they’re gonna put behind it, you know what I’m saying? I mean, you can go independent and you can sell fewer records and make more money than you would with a major. But being the top-calibre group that we are, you know….”

The resignation in his voice is palpable, and it’s frustrating to hear. Even after all the shakeups in the music industry, a successful group like OutKast still believe they need major labels to maintain their momentum, and they might even be right. So much for the digital revolution freeing music from corporate penury; for megastars, maybe emancipation is still to come.

Still, the Atlanta MC doesn’t hesitate to describe himself as “happy as a motherfucker,” especially when talking about his album. When I ask him who the title character is, his familiar drawl takes on a weird intensity, like a quarterback psyching himself up in the locker room for the big game.

“Sir Luscious Left Foot,” he says, pronouncing it loo-shuss, “basically, the Son of Chico Dusty…. I’m my father’s first-born son. He was in the military, he was also in the marines, he was a bad motherfuckin’ man, you hear me? And I’m his son, and I’m here stompin’. And the whole left foot thing is, we leavin’ our imprints everywhere we go.” His excitement starts to really ramp up.

“We gon’ leave our mark, you hear what I’m sayin’? That’s what the whole left foot come from. We gettin’ out on the good foot. And where we go, whenever we bang this music or whatever, you gon’ feel our presence wherever we go. You know what I’m saying?” Not exactly, but I’m looking forward to finding out.