It’s been almost 11 years since the world heard an OutKast album that heavily featured both Antwan “Big Boi” Patton and Andre “3000” Benjamin on the same tracks, but the duo has been keeping busy, says Grammy-winning OutKast collaborator Killer Mike.
"It’s very important to me because I’m a fan and I need my OutKast,” Mike told CNN. “There’s a lot of bulls- out here...So when people say ‘get back together,’ I don’t take it like they’re saying they broke up they just mean like, ‘literally, we need that energy!’ That energy only works when there’s two poles, a positive and a negative and energy’s conducted through.”
After 2000’s genre-bending “Stankonia,” the group released the diamond-selling Album of the Year, “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below.” It was a project that carried the OutKast name but featured Big Boi and Andre 3000 on two separate solo discs packaged as one.
Fast forward three years, and the OutKast album/soundtrack “Idlewild” - with the exception of a few cuts - didn’t satisfy the ‘Kast diehards longing for the "Southerplayalistic" days of old. Things only got more frustrating when label politics blocked Andre from being featured on Big Boi’s solo album, “Sir Lucious Leftfoot: The Son of Chico Dusty.”
Let’s just say the frustration has reached its zenith and the need for both Andre and Big Boi to get back in the studio together is more dire than it’s ever been, Mike says. Thankfully, for fans and critics alike, that day may come sooner than you think.
“Dre called me a week or two ago and he’s back at it [rapping],” says Mike, who just returned to Atlanta from performing with Big Boi in Sweden. “He’s recorded some stuff solo and he’s also indicated there’s going to be another OutKast album.” The rapper couldn’t pin down an exact date, but he did intimate that it’s on the way, adding, “I definitely want to be on that album if it all possible.”
While Mike insists he’s more fan than expert, he let it be known that Andre and Big Boi are currently together.
“I can definitely say Big and Dre are together now, they’re on a cruise hanging out,” he said, laughing. “I know that sounds funny, right? They took the families out – I missed it. I hate that I missed it too.”
Mike also gave CNN some news about fellow Southern hip-hop legends Goodie Mob, who recently reunited with the return of their most recognizable member Cee-Lo.
“On the Goodie Mob news they got a record coming and they even got a title,” he says of the album, which in his opinion won’t hit shelves 'til next year. “I can’t say yet, Big [Boi] shared it with me on the low, but they got a title and they got an album coming, so it feels like Atlanta’s hip-hop is coming full circle.”