The career of Big Boi, one half of genre-bending Atlanta rap duo OutKast, has long relied on baring his influences, and his new solo release, Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty, is a return to form.
After 2006’s Idlewild film soundtrack, OutKast has been on a long hiatus and both Big Boi and his partner-in-rhymes André 3000 have planned solo releases before the next group record. Almost four years later, Big Boi has finally released his solo debut, getting the world one step closer to a possible new OutKast LP.
But don’t just look at Sir Lucious as a release that is half of a whole. Much the opposite: Big Boi busts out of the splintered-music-group stigma to forge a record that is decidedly powerful and forthright.
At the forefront of the album is Big Boi’s iconic stop-start, nearly conversational delivery style that sets him apart from others in the rap game.
This vocal style shares a direct lineage with psychedelic funk all-star George Clinton’s relaxed delivery, who unsurprisingly makes his second OutKast-related guest appearance on this album with the head-bobbing fast soul track, “Fo Yo Sorrows,” also featuring Too $hort and Sam Chris.
With or without Clinton in tow, the Parliament Funkadelic influence is immense, notable on almost every track. Take single “Shutterbug,” led by a deep vocoder-affected bass voice that will rhythmically slap listeners’ speakers. The thick sub-phonic snarl distinctly recalls Parliament’s “Give Up The Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker).”
What really helps the album pull away from the ravenous wolf pack of homogenous-sounding rap albums are the beats, which for the greater part of the album will surprise listeners with their originality and catchiness without failing to show their influences.
Many of the beats go well off hip-hop’s beaten path, particularly “Tangerine,” featuring T.I. and Khujo Goodie. The beat swirls with natural-sounding eastern percussions and a perpetual distorted guitar riff, as well as multiple vocal effects.
Interesting sound aside, Big Boi and company don’t feel a need to take this particular track to another level — perhaps an intellectual one — and choose to rap instead about hip-hop’s constant: voluptuous vixens. The rhymes aren’t bad but the obviousness of the subject in this genre might cause more than a few groans.
“Shine Blockas,” which features jailbird Gucci Mane on the chorus, has one of the best beats on the album — a bouncing funk-gospel exploration that acts as a triumphant penultimate track on the album.
In other places, Big Boi makes expert decisions in his guest casting. The melancholy “Be Still” features repeated Big Boi collaborator and hot young artist Janelle Monáe in a starring role. Realizing the strength of her chorus and voice, Big Boi lends himself a single verse and allows Monáe to take the rest of the song into the stratosphere.
Sir Lucious is a record that carries few disappointments and many clear references to the past.
While many recent musical artists have decided to conform, perhaps simply copying other contemporaries to make a snappy number, Big Boi continues to delve into a rich back catalogue of influences in order to formulate new sounds.
With OutKast out of the picture for so long, listeners who are really looking for something different than the rest of the mainstream may have found their album — and proof that Big Boi hasn’t grown two left feet.
RATING: 4 stars out of 5
zberman@umd.edu
