The album Dave Grohl called the ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ of rap: “They are doing a good thing”
Though Dave Grohl has spent nearly 30 years filling stadiums with Foo Fighters, he was once deeply rooted in the alternative music underground—first as Nirvana’s drummer and later as his own band rose through the rock charts. Yet one thing he’s never lost is his genuine love for music. The artists and bands that excite him still strike a chord beyond the fame, beyond the Wembley sell-outs and Paul McCartney collaborations. At his core, he’s still the kid staring up at his Sex Pistols and Kiss posters, inspired.
While an authority on all things punk and hard rock, Grohl also has a deep appreciation for hip-hop. Sharing a love for Public Enemy along with his former bandmate Kurt Cobain, listing 1987’s Yo! Bum Rush the Show as one of his favourite records, and confessing to GQ in 2008 that mumble rapper and future Maga advocate Lil Pump may well be punk’s reincarnation.
Speaking on Steve Lamacq’s Session Obsession BBC Radio 1 show in 2000, one newly released hip-hop album struck Grohl’s affection with its colourful production: “I read somewhere, somebody called it ‘The Bohemian Rhapsody of Rap’, and in a way it works. They are doing a good thing for rap music by making it fun to listen to, rather than a threat to your well-being”.
Georgian duo Outkast had taken a curious journey to 2000’s Stankonia. When first putting Atlanta on the hip-hop map along with fellow LaFace Records’ Goodie Mob, Dré and Big Boi were dealing with coming-of-age lyrical examinations grounded in familiar thematic territory on 1994’s Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, exploring the urban strife and existential musings along the East Point and Decatur neighbourhoods. Granted bigger label advances and creative control, follow-ups ATLiens and Aquemini saw the duo progressively more psychedelic territory, evoking the acid-fried spirit of P-Funk as well as their science-fiction obsessions.
By their much-anticipated fourth LP, Outkast’s transformation was complete. Adopting the new alias André 3000 introducing his vocal veer between singing and rapping, and Big Boi coralling numerous local musicians from the various clubs they frequented to create the record’s chequered mosaic of eclectic genres.
Purchasing Bobby Brown’s old Northside Drive studio, the unreined production process inspired the album’s title and ethos, affectionately coining the portmanteau of “stank”, meaning funky, and the fictitious futuristic city of Plutonia to instil a creative headspace: “Stankonia is this place I imagined where you can open yourself up and be free to express anything,” Big Boi told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Stankonia catapulted Outkast to a whole new level of fame. Injecting some eccentric flair into a hip-hip scene dominated by a gangsta rap growing ever staler coupled with lyrical challenges to the misogynistic trappings hungover from the days of G-funk, Outkast cut a fiercely unique character in the 2000 pop world, topping the Billboard and UK Albums charts off the back of ‘Ms Jackson’ and ‘So Fresh, So Clean’.
While 2003’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below and its Hey Ya!’ monster would enmesh themselves even further into the mainstream, for many, Stankonia is still their crowning achievement, an album which bucked all of rap’s trends at the time and helped pave the way for the likes of Kanye West‘s future expanse of hip hop’s sonic frontiers.
