Return of the “G” - Intellectual

Like Dre, Big Boi would much rather just chillax, make the kind of music he wants to make, and let his daughter play in the yard while he watches instead of dealing with his critics.

Music made for the real fans and ATLiens. And a middle finger to the dickriders.

Whenever André tries to eliminate stress and get a peace of mind, his enemies try to rob and degrade him. In order to counteract this, he has to keep a “piece” (firearm) on him at all times to keep himself safe.

In hiphop slang, a gat is a term referring to a gun or firearm, commonly a pistol. It originated in the early 1900s as a shortened version of “Gatling gun”, a rapid-fire machine gun invented during the American Civil War.

Big Boi mistakenly cites Club Noveau as the artists responsible for the song “Rumors”, when the actual artists were the Timex Social Club. The two acts were both signed to Jay King’s Jay Records label, and often get confused with each other.

The meaning of the line is that Big Boi is sick of dealing with the endless rumors surrounding OutKast; whether it be that André is gay or the two of them hate each other, Big Boi has had enough of the gossip.

Ever since the day André and Big Boi decided to join forces and create OutKast, there has been constant speculation that the two were incompatible and close to breaking up. But they have made it more than clear in interviews and songs that this “rift” is non-existent, and the two will be together until the day they die. Big Boi even revealed recently that despite their artistic differences, the two remain close friends to this day.

But [Andre’s] my partner. You know, when we meet behind closed doors – And you get the articles and [it’s] “he said this” and “he said that;” muthafuckas taking shit outta context; they don’t really know us. That’s my brother. He comes to my house; our kids play together. They play video games and we sit and listen to music and just catch up. But, that’s out of the public eye. But when you been with a guy since the tenth grade, we don’t have to see each other every day. And we don’t have to make records all of the time; we got a catalog that’s unprecedented.

Big Boi had to earn his stripes in the hood in order to flash his Vogue tires that the duo loves shouting out in their songs. If Big Boi wasn’t such an established player, he would risk getting jacked by rivals everytime he drove down the street.

Many members of OutKast’s fanbase wrote off ATLiens as overly preachy (i.e. “gospel rap”) because it tried to spread positive messages instead of promoting the destructive cycle of gang violence from their first album. These critics would rather listen to a gangster album than ATLiens; it was too “different” for their tastes. They poke fun at these critics with the skit at the end of this track where a consumer would rather listen to the (fictional) group Pimp Trick Gangsta Clique than buy an advanced copy of a new OutKast album.

The phrase “get down” has a dual meaning here:

André is telling his audience to get down with the messages he is trying to promote in his songs
He’s also warning those around him to literally get down to the ground and avoid the flying bullets

Although Big Boi did experiment with more personal and soulful music on ATLiens, he caught less criticism than André because he still maintained his gangster persona throughout the album for the most part. Because of this, many critics were in disbelief that he would associate himself with a “soft” rapper like André 3000.

The cult part could be a reference to the duo’s newfound belief in the Nuwaubian Nation, and gay rumors follow 90% of rappers that don’t brag about their guns and hoes. But the belief that drug use influenced his new style particularly amused André because he was completely sober for the album – Southernplayalistic was the only album where he used drugs while recording, and that was the only album where he rapped like a gangster!.

He speaks on this more in this interview:

I was young and wilder and some of my fashion choices people didn’t accept at the time. I started getting flak from some people, so they were like, ‘Either he’s gay or on drugs.’ And it’s funny because I was high as hell all the way through Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, but by ATLiens and Aquemini I wasn’t smoking or drinking."

This is a reference to the self-destructive cycle of the ghetto. When parents spend their money on drugs instead of improving the quality of their children’s lives, it often leads to the children becoming drug addicts, just like their parents. These kids will start experimenting with drugs when they are too young to understand the consequences, and by the time they realize what they’ve done to themselves, they’re already become burnouts. This was especially prevalent during the crack epidemic in the 1980’s that André witnessed first hand.

This reality convinced André to depart from the gangster lifestyle on his last album, but now he has to come hard with a gangster persona on this album in order to scare some of these people straight.

André plays on the light/dark motif here to creatively depict the ignorance and eventual understanding of these underprivileged ghetto youths. While their parents are ignoring and mistreating these kids, they are “in the dark”; they’re not learning a positive lifestyle. By the time they finally “see the light” and see the big picture, they’re so corrupted by their dark past that they are bound to the lifestyle of crime and spiritual neglect.

Big Boi and André worked hard to make it from a pair of young southern kids from the ghetto to household names in hip-hop. Big Boi compares their relationship to another famous bromance between Mel Gibson and Danny Glover’s characters in the Lethal Weapon series.

In the context of G’s or gangsters, them saying “peace” is contradictory since the lifestyle many of them live is far from peaceful. Many times they are found terrorizing others, as Dré essentially says in the following lines about his own “peace of mind.”

Flour and water stick together and create dough when you mix them, and that’s just how André and Big Boi will always make “dough” as long as they stick together.

Andre is both referring to people who misinterpret Outkast’s work and his personal artistic expressions. The majority of rapping at this time was Gangsta Rap – people naturally had some odd reactions to Andre’s raps.

I heard this line as “The First Nigga To Buck is Gon’ be the first nigga we “A-Tat””. As in “Rat-a-tat-tat” the onomatopoeia sound for the firing of an automatic weapon. This is also supported by the sound of gunfire we hear in the background during the line itself.

After rapping from the perspective of southern gangsters on their debut album Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, OutKast (André in particular) flipped the script and replaced their Glocks with their powerful lyrics on their follow-up album ATLiens. This drew the criticism from the “real hip-hop” folks that considered the decision to stop rapping about guns and violence to be soft.

So André decides to let the audience know on the very first track of Aquemini that he is reluctantly bringing back his gangster persona for this album. Partially because he has to physically defend his baby son Seven and partner Erykah Badu, but also because he has to defend his reputation from these critics who would rather hear songs promoting gun violence than songs promoting individuality and non-conformity.

But instead, due to the constant criticism his partner and friend got following the last album, Big Boi feels the need to make it clear he and André are still tight, and he isn’t going to tolerate anymore break-up rumors.

Big Boi:

Back then, there was a whole bunch of shit talking. People just couldn’t understand how we were making the type of music we were making. There were a lot of attacks coming at my partner, so we wanted OutKast to be like, ‘You fuck with my homeboy, we gonna fuck you up.’ We wanted to let people know, this man doesn’t stand by himself. I mean, that’s my dog. It’s a team effort.“

Despite the rumors and criticism that were swirling around him while this album was being recorded, André was still enjoying life. He released the album that he wanted to release, one that has since achieved classic status, met a pretty lady, and became a father for the first time. So André suggests that the critics are the ones that need to reevaluate their lives and wake up, because André is doing just fine.