Speakerboxxx/The Love Below

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Speakerboxxx/The Love Below

Studio album by OutKast
Released	September 23, 2003
Recorded	September 11, 2001 - September 17, 2003
Genre	Southern hip hop / Funk (Speakerboxxx) Funk / R&B / Pop music (The Love Below)
Length	56:26 (Speakerboxxx) 78:30 (The Love Below)
Label	LaFace/Arista
Producer(s)	OutKast, Earthtone III
All Music Guide Image:4.5 stars.svg link Rolling Stone Image:3 stars.svg link Pitchfork Media (9/10) link Robert Christgau (A-) link
OutKast chronology
Big Boi And Dre Present...OutKast (2001)	Speakerboxxx/The Love Below (2003)	Idlewild (2006)

Speakerboxxx/The Love Below is a double album by the hip hop group OutKast, released on September 23 2003 on LaFace Records. The release includes a solo album from each of the group's two members. Speakerboxxx/The Love Below won Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards of 2004. Speakerboxxx has Big Boi performing tracks more representative of the older OutKast style, while The Love Below, the solo project of André 3000, is performed in a more funk-based style. André primarily sings rather than rapping on The Love Below, marking a significant departure from his past work in OutKast.

1 Overview
- 1.1 Critical success
- 1.2 Chart success
2 Track listing
- 2.1 Speakerboxxx
- 2.2 The Love Below
3 External links

[edit] Overview

André 3000's The Love Below is substantially longer than Big Boi's Speakerboxxx, clocking for almost 78 minutes, compared to 56 minutes of Big Boi. Featured guests on Speakerboxxx include Sleepy Brown, Jazze Pha, Jay-Z, Cee-Lo, Killer Mike, Goodie Mob, and Ludacris. Guests on The Love Below include Rosario Dawson, Norah Jones, Kelis, and Farnsworth Bentley. Songs that were to be featured on "The Love Below" included "Millionaire" featuring Kelis and "Long Way To Go" featuring Gwen Stefani. Those two were scrapped, instead included in the collaborators' own albums.

Big Boi included André 3000 in producing and cowriting quite a bit of Speakerboxxx. On the other hand, the only song on The Love Below featuring a rap by Big Boi is "Roses." [1]

[edit] Critical success

The album was released on September 23 2003 on Arista Records. Speakerboxxx/The Love Below has been certified diamond and 11 times platinum by the RIAA for shipping more than 11 million units (or 5.5 million sets—double albums of 100 minutes or more count as two units). [2][3] MC Hammer's Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em The Notorious B.I.G.'s Life After Death and Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP are the only other hip-hop albums ever certified diamond. The album also achieved critical success; it was voted as the best album of the year in The Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics poll. In Australia, "Hey Ya!" was voted #2 on the 2003 Triple J Hottest 100, the biggest alternative music poll of its type in the country.

[edit] Chart success

The album reached the top of the Billboard 200 in 2003 and was a best-selling album around the world. "Hey Ya!" went to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States, topped the charts in Canada and Australia and has charted in 28 countries around the world. "The Way You Move" also topped the U.S. charts in 2004 and has charted in 17 countries around the world. "The Way You Move" knocked "Hey Ya!" off the top of the charts in the U.S., the first time a band has had one song replace another of its songs since 40 years ago, when The Beatles did it in 1964 at the height of Beatlemania (coincidentally, the music video for "Hey Ya!" parodies 1960s music performances such as The Beatles' appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show). The third single released from the album was "Roses" from The Love Below while the fourth and fifth singles released were "Prototype" (The Love Below) and "Ghetto Musick" (Speakerboxxx) respectively.

[edit] Track listing

[edit] Speakerboxxx

"Intro" (Produced by Cutmaster Swiff) – 1:29
"Ghetto Musick" (Produced by André 3000) – 3:56
"Unhappy" (Produced by Mr. DJ) – 3:19
"Bowtie" (featuring Sleepy Brown and Jazze Pha) (Produced by Big Boi) – 3:56
"The Way You Move" (featuring Sleepy Brown) (Produced by Carl Mo) – 3:54
"The Rooster" (Produced by Carl Mo) – 3:57
"Bust" (featuring Killer Mike) (Produced by Big Boi) – 3:08
"War" (Produced by Mr. DJ) – 2:43
"Church" (Produced by André 3000) – 3:27
"Bamboo" (Interlude) – 2:09
"Tomb of the Boom" (featuring Konkrete, Big Gipp and Ludacris) (Produced by Big Boi) – 4:46
"E-Mac" (Interlude) – 0:24
"Knowing" (Produced by Mr. DJ) – 3:32
"Flip Flop Rock" (featuring Killer Mike and Jay-Z) (Produced by Big Boi) – 4:35
"Interlude" – 1:15
"Reset" (featuring Khujo Goodie and Cee-Lo) (Produced by Big Boi) – 4:35
"D-Boi" (Interlude) – 0:40
"Last Call" (featuring Slimm Calhoun, Lil' Jon & The Eastside Boyz and Mello) (Produced by André 3000) – 3:57
"Bowtie" (Postlude) – 0:34

[edit] The Love Below

All tracks produced by André 3000 unless otherwise noted.

"The Love Below" (Intro) – 1:27
"Love Hater" – 2:49
"God" (Interlude) – 2:20
"Happy Valentine's Day" – 5:23
"Spread" – 3:51
"Where Are My Panties?" – 1:54
"Prototype" – 5:26
"She Lives in My Lap" (featuring Rosario Dawson) – 4:27
"Hey Ya!" – 3:55
"Roses" (Produced by Dojo5 and André 3000) – 6:09
"Good Day Good Sir" (Interlude) – 1:24
"Behold a Lady" – 4:37
"Pink & Blue" – 5:04
"Love in War" – 3:25
"She's Alive" – 4:06
"Dracula's Wedding" (featuring Kelis) – 2:32
"The Letter" (Interlude) (does not appear on edited CD or Explicit LP versions) – :21
"My Favorite Things" – 5:14
"Take Off Your Cool" (featuring Norah Jones) – 2:38
"Vibrate" – 6:33 (edited CD, Explicit LP), 6:38 (explicit CD, Edited LP)
"A Life in the Day of Benjamin André (Incomplete)" – 4:50 (edited CD, Explicit LP), 5:11 (explicit CD, Edited LP)