For many, Outkast were the rap Beatles that could ‘stank’. As the only men in hip-hop not content to sit back on their bitches and bling all the way to the bank. Outkast were innovators eagerly taking a scalpel to the vital organs of a Hip-Hop.
Rather than two parts of the same whole, OutKast now presented themselves as interdependent individuals, and the album “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below” was essentially two solo albums stuck together with a deliberate lack of effort at concealing the fact. GhettoMusick was among the double disc’s few genuine OutKast songs – the beat was crafted by André, with him providing the chorus, while the rapped verses are left to Big Boi. The only other way it links to previous OutKast records is in its rejection of all templates and preconceptions: it’s breathtaking in both its pace and in the contempt it appears to hold all of the music that has come before it in.
The main part of the track is a frenetic buzz, punctuated by André’s lines about trying to find a way to fit in and to get the music out. an electronic organ is buried deep within in the mix with also two inserting huge chunks of Patti LaBelle’s “Love, Need and Want You”, with no attempt made to hide the fact that it’s a far slower track with no obvious connection to the new piece into which it’s stitched, Frankenstein’s monster-like.