Even amidst Southernplayalistic’s pimptastic hustle-heavy verbiage there were signs of Dré and Big Boi’s emotional estrangement from the streets in the beautifully meditative “Crumblin’ Erb” and an outright Scared Straight-style morality play, “Git Up Git Out.” By ATLiens, though, this sense of disconnection had infected their relationship with a rap music landscape they’d already begun growing bored and disenchanted with. As a matter of fact, fuck being anything else”) both a declaration of identity and expression of solidarity with anyone young, black, Southern, or otherwise ostracized by society at large. Granted, self-exploration was an essential part of OutKast’s output from jump, Southernplayalistic’s defiant centerpiece query and retort (“Are you an OutKast?.I know I am. More specifically they looked upward and inward, contemplated the cosmos and themselves, and re-entered the earth’s atmosphere as ATLiens.

Instead they did what important artists do when given the chance-they rejected complacency. Coming off a beloved debut from two years prior, Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, that redefined and reclaimed ATL rap post-Arrested Development/-Kriss Kross/-imported booty bass as the domain of thinking-man’s dope boyz, OutKast could have stayed the course of their flagship anthem “Player’s Ball” and continued making wickedly soulful and stylish S.W.A.T.S. This might seem like an obvious point now with the ability in hindsight to chart André 3000 and Big Boi’s joint creative shape-shifting from album to album, but there was a time when such things weren’t necessarily perceived as part and parcel of OutKast’s ethos. If listening to OutKast over the past 22 years has taught us anything it’s that the truest act of hip-hop bravado is confounding expectations and allowing oneself to evolve. This is part of Complex's The 1996 Project: Looking Back at the Year Hip-Hop Embraced Success.

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