RDAT Tournament – Game 11 – Groups Bracket

No. 2 Black Star – Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star vs. No. 3 OutKast – Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik

I always viewed Bugs Bunny as the answer to Mickey Mouse, except the former was way funnier. The animated cartoon character was humorous, but anytime Daffy Duck was brought in the comedy jumped up a notch. Whether they joined forces to embarrass Elmer Fudd or were battling each other, it was gold.

Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik went gold after two months and took nearly a year to go platinum. It’s the siren song of Southern Hip Hop, announcing it to everyone as something similar but distinctively different. I wrote about how ‘The South Got Something To Say’ when OutKast moved past Smif-N-Wessun in Game 1.

Like Bugs and Daffy, Big Boi and Andre 3000 can work separate, but few would argue that they’re not better when paired together. On this first album, they were still both close to their roots but it’s easy to hear the different realities each artist comes from. Big Boi was raised in Savannah, about 250 miles southeast of Georgia’s state capital, before moving north to finish high school. He mentions his past in “Git Up Git Out”.

In the middle school, I was a bigger fool
I wore with tank tops to show off my tattoo, thought I was cool
I used to hang out with my daddy’s brothers, I call them my uncles
They taught me how to smoke herb, I followed them when they ran numbers
So in a sense I was Rosemary’s baby
And then I learned the difference between a bitch and a lady

According to Wikipedia, Andre grew up around Bankhead and East Point, two predominately black neighborhoods surrounding downtown Atlanta. While he raps about the ‘gangster life’, it seems to be from a different place with a different temperament.

Nowhere to duck, bullets fly, niggas die
By getting blasted, how drastic
They got the nerve to ask me why I do the things I do
I got the nerve to serve you up just like a waiter do
But naw, I take that back, that’s my problem
Turning and walking away
This ain’t gon’ work when they be robbing

On this initial effort, the duo counterbalance each other. As they continued, the division would become more evident until the obvious separation on Speakerboxxx/The Love Below a decade later. That was their fifth album, which is four more than Black Star released.

Mos Def and Talib Kweli seem to be together all the time. Both appear on songs on each other’s albums and are visibly present on Dave Chappelle’s Block Party. But both are essentially solo artists, part of a quiet collaborative from the late 90s that was, IMO, the next generation of the Native Tongues. The Spitkicker Tour from 2000 featured De La Soul, Common, Mos Def, Pharoahe Monch, Talib Kweli & Hi-Tek and Biz Markie.

At that point, Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star had been out for over a year and both artists had moved on. Black on Both Sides, Mos’s debut album came out in 1999 and Talib, along with Hi-Tek, would release Train of Thought in October of 2000. But that shouldn’t diminish from the excellence they created together.

In 1997, despite the recent murders of Biggie Smalls and 2Pac, rap was still living deep within its gangster roots. Other RDAT albums like Capital Punishment, It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot and Get Rich or Die Tryin’ were still to be released under that same vein. So to have two clearly gifted MCs skillfully speaking about community upliftment was like a black star shining bright in a dark sky. Even something as simple as the chorus from the album’s first single, ‘Definition’, was revolutionary.

In an era dominated by scantly clad women, posing as strippers and hanger-ons in every rap video and album cover, a track like ‘Brown Skin Lady’ is an island against the tidal wave of commonplace mistreatment of the opposite sex. And while the title seems to focus on the brown skin, it’s actually speaking to women of all color. It’s speaking to an imaginary standard of beauty that convinces the masses to look one way instead of what they actually are.

Both Tina Fey and Amy Poehler aren’t traditional Hollywood beauties, both are beautiful and talented. They both came into the public spotlight via Saturday Night Live, but it wasn’t until the 2004–2005 season that they co-anchored ‘Weekend Update’ together. That union only lasted two seasons before Fey left to produce and star in 30 Rock. The duo have joined forces for a couple of films like Mean Girls, Baby Mama and Sisters but are famously linked for their hosting duties at the Golden Globes from 2013 through 2015.

While the expectation of comedy increases when both Fey and Poehler are together, either can hold their own individually. Each member of Black Star gets an individual track on Black Star with ‘K.O.S. (Determination)’ being blessed by Vinia Mojica on the chorus, just like she did on “Verses from the Abstract” from The Low End Theory.

You must be history, you repeatin’ yourself out of the pages
You keepin’ yourself depleatin’ your spiritual wealth
That quick cash’ll get your ass quick fast in (houses of detention)
Inner-city concentration camps where no one pays attention
Or mentions the ascension of death, (’til nothing’s left)
The young, gifted and Black are (sprung addicted to crack)
All my people where y’all at cause, y’all ain’t here
And your hero’s using your mind as a canvas to paint fear
With broad brush strokes and tales of incarceration
You get out of jail with that (knowledge of self determination)

That Talib’s lyrics still stand true today is both powerful and sad that over a decade later, the same issues he saw and sung about are just as prevalent, if not more so. I feel OutKast was on a similar plain of thought five years earlier and the most honest revelation of this is a track neither Big Boi or Andre are on.

Big Rube is a spoken word poet featured throughout Dungeon Family releases and I relate to his words from Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik.

Are you an OutKast?
If you understand and feel the basic principles and
Fundamental truths contained within this music, you probably are
If you think it’s all about pimpin’ hoes and slamming Cadillac do’s
You probably a cracker, or a nigga that think he a cracker
Or maybe just don’t understand
An OutKast is someone who is not considered to be part of the normal world
He is looked at differently
He is not accepted because of his clothes, his hair
His occupation, his beliefs or his skin color
Now look at yourself, are you an OutKast?

I know I am and wouldn’t want to be anything else.