Stankonia by OutKast (2000), № 73 in The Lead-In’s 100 greatest albums. OutKast at their commercial peak. Big Boi rapping over breakbeats while André wrote 'Ms. Jackson' upstairs. The last great Southern rap double album.
Twenty-four tracks in seventy-three minutes. Recorded across roughly eighteen months at OutKast's Stankonia Studios in Atlanta with OutKast, Organized Noize, and Earthtone III co-producing. OutKast's fourth LP, Big Boi and André 3000 at their commercial-and-critical peak, released by LaFace / Arista in October 2000. The album that pushed Aquemini's genre-omnivorous template to maximalist commercial-pop scale. Diamond US.
Twenty-four tracks in seventy-three minutes. Recorded across approximately eighteen months at OutKast's Stankonia Studios in Atlanta. The duo's fourth LP and commercial breakthrough, André 3000 and Big Boi at their most-eclectic. The album that consolidated OutKast as a mainstream commercial-pop force and provided the template for the deliberately-eclectic 2000s commercial hip-hop LP.
OutKast in autumn 1999 was twenty-four-year-old André 3000 and twenty-four-year-old Big Boi, four albums into their Atlanta hip-hop career. The plan for the fourth LP was that it would consolidate the deliberately-eclectic vocabulary that Aquemini had introduced into a deliberately-commercial-pop statement.
Recording extended at OutKast's Stankonia Studios (which they had purchased in 1999) across approximately eighteen months. The deliberately-collective Dungeon Family roster continued; the deliberately-multi-genre integration was extended.
The album's twenty-four tracks consolidated the deliberately-eclectic vocabulary into a commercially-viable register. The deliberately-jazz-influenced, deliberately-funk-influenced, deliberately-electronic-influenced production approaches established the founding template for 2000s commercial hip-hop's deliberately-eclectic register.
LaFace Arista released the album on October 31, 2000. The album debuted at US #2 with 525,000 first-week SoundScan units; 'Ms. Jackson' peaked at US #1 in February 2001. The album was certified 4× Platinum by 2003.
Stankonia belongs at number seventy-three because it is the album that consolidated OutKast as a mainstream commercial-pop force and provided the template for the deliberately-eclectic 2000s commercial hip-hop LP.
Original 2000 US pressing on LaFace Records / Arista, catalog 73008-26072-1, a double LP mastered at Absolute Audio in NYC. First-press copies carry a front-cover hype sticker ('THE STANKIEST ALBUM OF THEIR CAREER!' citing 'B.O.B.' and 'Ms. Jackson') and an insert. A later orange translucent vinyl variant exists, so verify the standard black vinyl with the full 73008-26072-1 catalog number for the original. Black vinyl was a normal concurrent release alongside the primary CD.
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