Welcome to five hundred Greatest Songs, a podcast based on Rolling Stones hugely popular, influential and sometimes controversialist.
I'm Britney Spanos.
And I'm Rob Sheffield and we're here to shed light on the greatest songs ever made and discover what makes them so great. This week we're talking about a gray one m Miss Jackson by Outcast.
Yeah.
This is one of four Outcast songs that made the list. Miss Jackson is at number one forty five, and then we have hey Ya in the top ten at number ten, Bob Bombs over Bagdad at number thirty nine, and of course their UGK collaboration International Player's Anthem is at number ninety one.
I love Miss Jackson.
I think is probably the first Outcast song I'd ever heard, but it's I'm so excited to talk about today.
That's so amazing. It's such a beautiful song.
Yeah, and this was on their two thousand albums Sanconia, and it was the second single after Bob and Bob was ended up being you know, sort of kind of not the biggest hit to debut from the album. It was also banned from rap radio and it just you know, it wasn't wasn't really like the launching point that their label intended probably for the album, but of course Miss Jackson ended up becoming this like massive breakout hit for Outcast and just like a giant moment for them.
Absolutely really the opposite of Moms for Baghdad, just in terms of the sound and approach.
And this was a song that ended up hitting number one and it was It won the Grammy for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or a Group. And it's also a very personal song for the band. This is about Andrea's relationship with Eric Abadou, which it had ended prior to the album being released, which I kind of loved this like little homage to his relationship with her and her mom.
Yeah, very unusual to have a song to her mom at all.
Yeah.
Yeah, and very kind of like great sort of dedication to you know, the idea of breaking someone's daughter's heart and kind of like how you deal with that, and this like apology to both of them at the same time, and it just comes out so well.
This song is just very different from anything anybody was doing at the time.
Yeah, and even for Outcasts it ended up being you know, this was kind of a moment for both of them where they were sort of shifting their sound a little bit. I think even for Andrea specifically, like this was kind of the beginning of him doing more search like melodic singing, sing rapping instead of just like straightforward rapping on every
Outcast song. Of course, we would see a lot more kind of of that sort of diversity of his own performance style on speaker Box, Love Below and Idlewild, but this was sort of that beginning for him of like really honing in on that.
Something like Bombs over Baghdad. I mean, it was so avant garde, it was so challenging, it was so hard, Miss Jackson. It just comes straight from the heart. Yeah, very personal story, very unusual kind of thing for to be singing about real life relationship that way.
Yeah, and Andrea talked about how the song kind of started out as this acoustic guitar song and ended up switching it because he felt like it was just not really what Outcast was doing or kind of what people would want to hear from them, So ended up switching
the song. And they have this like really great sample of the Brothers Johnson's version of Strawberry Letter twenty three and kind of have this like cool sort of like reverse flip of the of the sample and the song on it, which is like that kind of I you know, like reverse kind of flip under it. I've always really really loved the way that sounded under under the vocals.
Yeah, a familiar seventies sound with very outcast twist on it.
Yeah.
Eric has talked a little bit about the song and about sort of like her own reaction to it, and I really love that. She kind of talked about how it was sort of like a sore spot for her at first, just because especially with Big Boys verse, she kind of liked that part was sort of it was a little tougher because they had broken up. They you know, heard Andre Shrison that they had had over the course of their relationship, and she said it hit kind of
a sore spot. I didn't want to hear that, especially when I heard Big Boys verse. When I heard Andre's verse, I felt very good because his verse was really really inspiring. He just said how he felt and it was his honest feelings, and I always respected that and listened to
what he felt and appreciated it. And she said that In twenty sixteen, I talked about how her mom Loves a song and like a Miss Jackson license played and you know, a mug and an ink pen and just kind of course embraced kind of being the titular Miss Jackson in the song.
Absolutely, and Eric's legend had really grown so much over the past few years. It was wild that you could hear the song as most people did, not knowing who it was about a specific person, but for somebody as legendary as Erica, it was just really enhanced knowing her work and how powerful that is.
Yeah, what do you remember of like hearing Outcasts for the first time or kind of hearing kind of this band that was just like such like an explosive moment in hip hop and in pop music when they kind of came on the scene and started to blow up.
Yeah, hearing Outcasts for the first time was a total transformation. It was the Equimini era. Yeah, I was watching MTV. I saw the video for Rows of Parks and that was the first time I ever heard of Outcast and Rose of Parks completely blew my mind.
Yeah, all the.
Innovation in that song, all the humor in that song, all the brilliance in that song. And I went out and got in the car and drove to the mall. It was right before closing time so I could buy that CD. So I took it home and just listened to a Quemini all night.
Yeah, I think I think it was like Miss Jackson was the first one that I'd heard, especially because that video was such like a heavy rotation and TV video of course, you know, with all the kind of animals bobbing their heads and just sort of, you know, ingrained
in my own kind of consciousness type of video. But obviously you know speaker Box Love below coming out when it did, and sort of being in middle school and all those songs, Like, I mean, Outcast ended up becoming just like one of the most important and biggest acts of that time for I think a lot of people listening to pop music to rap music at that time.
It was so huge and so innovative. That was absolutely incredible, their band doing things on every level that was unpredictable. Nonetheless, it's so much pop appeal.
Yeah, I mean, even coming after Ms Jackson and Bombs of Her Baghdad and Rosa Parks like was kind of the later music that Outcast released. Was that like a very big shock or was it something where you were just kind of like anticipating to be shocked by whatever outcast was.
Yeah, I mean the way they would evolve from album to album and after a Qumini a Qumini was just so mind blowing, and it seemed like both of their personalities, their artistic personalities were so pronounced at that point, and their originality was so pronounced at that point. And then hearing them move on to Stanconia, which is such a diverse album, such a radical album in so many ways. Yeah, and as so many different kinds of songs on it, Miss Jackson really stood out though.
Yeah, I feel like the first time I'd listened to a full album ended up being Speakerbox Love Below, and like then going back and listening to their previous albums just feeling like not really knowing what to anticipate, you know, everything they're doing, and like everything they had been already sort of establishing as their career and as their their sound, Like it was just so many things at once and still felt like so uniquely outcasts in the way that
they expressed themselves their own flows, like they had such distinct identities both Big Boy and Andre as their own performers and it just kind of always translated really well over no matter what genre they would do or kind of what sound they would want to like evoke in their songs.
Yeah, they could do any genre, and that there were pop songs that were mostly andre inflected and then Big Boys more hardcore sound that was there, and their sound from the beginning, Andre had that really pronounced poetic streak, Yeah, and that was there on Quemini. That was there, going back to the earlier stuff, but it was really incredible how they would evolve album to album and they would get more extreme, big Boy would get more Big Boy,
Andrea would get more andre Intel. An album like speaker Box Love Blow is really split between their personalities in a way that Quemini already was. The Quemini is their astro signs the Aquarius and the Gemini Speaker Box Love below, it's gotten so extreme how different their approaches are.
I always just really really love that the way they play off each other, with andre Bean sort of this like lover boy and like almost kind of coming off this like very sort of not not always but typically pretty romantic sort of view of the world, and kind of the way that even just on mis Jackson of course, just like his sort of dedication and like this like tenderness that he has towards his partner and his partner's mother, and then Big Boy kind of being much more of
the player, like a little bit of like, you know, just a little bit of the fuck boy character and opposition to Andrea.
I always love the way they played against that.
Well, and in such a personal song. For Andre to drop that verse, it was wild how Big Boy gets so pronounced in his personality in this song drop it into his song. That's very personal for Andre.
Yeah, and you had mentioned earlier the idea that people didn't really know about it, being like Erica a bad inspiration kind of what was the level of like, like, who were Andre and Erica? I guess as a couple. Were they very public or were they kind of like I feel like there's so much of that lore and people sort of like having this romanticized kind of version of this couple that existed twenty years ago. But at the time, did people know a lot about their relationship? Were they very private?
What was that? Like?
They were very private? Andre and Erica both had their own legends, and Erica was so such a poet, she was so inflected with that progressive R and B that she perfected in the nineties, so her legend was already secure. It didn't overlap that much with the kind of stuff that Outcast was doing. And definitely it was more Andre than Big Boy, Yeah, that sort of soul aquarian perspective. But Erica was an artist who evolved album to album as well.
Yeah.
I mean it's been so like fun to kind of see over the years, especially they went on hiatus in two thousand and seven, and they unity in twenty fourteen for a string of festival dates, which was great to kind of catch them at that point and be able to finally see them live.
But you know, they've.
Had such appropriately divergent career of hats since two thousand and seven.
Of course, most recently, Andrea.
Released an album that's entirely flute compositions, which is I don't know if anyone s could have expected anything else from Andre right now.
It's so hardcore. I love that, And with people waiting so long for new music from Andrea, yeah, and it turns out to be the flute, and people listened to the flute.
Yeah, I have I know a lot of people who went that he just did a concert and that was kind of a big pilgrimage for a lot of people to go to the show and just see Andre play the flute. Big Boy, of course, has released several solo albums. He's done a lot of collaborations and production work with other people, and he's very instrumental in Ghannamne's career and
you know, working with a lot of younger artists. And also has his owls that you know, I'm a very big fan of Big Boys three owls that he has at the Stanconia Recording Studio and and Ben building. But he has three great owls that I'm obsessed with that he posts a lot about on Instagram and allegedly worked at a song with Kate Bush as yet to be released, but that he talked about a few years ago that I'm very much looking forward to.
I cannot wait for that collaboration and the way their sensibilities overlapped. But it's about their careers since then have gotten so different. They've gone to opposite extremes. But the owls, well, the flute is kind of the owls.
Yeah.
Instruments, Yeah, I think that it definitely makes sense, Like you know, that's kind of the unifying part of Outcast right is like a little bit of the flute owl kind of dynamic that they have.
Yeah, for artists like them to have their own careers after being together for so long, but there's still those sort of there's still those personalities that they were in Aquimina.
Yeah.
Do you have a favorite track or several tracks.
By Outcast well Rosa Parks, Yeah, kind of goes back. That's the shock of the new Yeah, bombs over bag Dad was bigger for me personally than Miss but Miss Jackson is equally radical. Yeah, they're both Bob and Miss Jackson are both really radical songs and that they're unlike anything else that was going on at the time.
Yeah, Yeah, mine is Roses. I'm a big speaker Box Love Below fan. That album was I think released at the exact right time for me, where it was like hay On Roses were like the first two songs I'd ever bought on iTunes, you know, this was like finally had like my own way of buying music, and it was that song I always really loved just kind of how the drama of it, the weirdness of it, the theatricality of that in the video, like before I entered
my full theater kid era. I feel like that was a good precursor to what was going to come for me in a few years.
That's an amazing song. It was just very funny to hear on the radio. Sometimes you know, the word poopoo would get ansored and sometimes it wouldn't.
I think it was also probably the eleven year old tensive humor of hearing out Cass poopoo on the radio and.
Definitely the first time it had been done hit that.
Mass hit and who else could have a hit other than a Cast with that?
No, but it kind of it typifies their originality and as you said, the theatricality is so important in that song.
Yeah, And I mean, what is it about like Outcast, especially this era of Outcast that has had such an impact on music or pop culture in your mind, Like, what kind of is that legacy of miss Jackson and this particular moment for Outcast.
For such a personal hip hop song, and it's at a time when it was very different from the kind of song that it was autobiographical. But like you said, there's a lot of tenderness in the song, the emotions that he expresses are very introspective and very delicate. Ye, He's talking about personal weaknesses, personal failures. He's talking about a relationship that, as we were saying, was very private at the time, and talking about the end of it
but also facing the responsibilities that came with it. So it's about their past, it's about their future, but that it's such a personal song just really different.
Yeah, I mean, even just in the way that the Beak kind of does that sort of rewind kind of record scratch thing, Like there is so much of that kind of like evoking of that nostalgia for relationship, that sadness, that kind of like just general kind of energy that especially Andre is bringing to that story about you know, of him and Erica and this relationship with her and
her mom. But yeah, I mean, I think, you know, just again them sort of playing with these two different sides of like how to approach a very like delicate type of relationship with.
Your partner's parent is very kind.
Of that unique outcast humor and kind of weirdness that they bring to everything.
Yeah, there are not enough songs about dealing with the partner's parent. Yeah, and it's a topic that had not been explored on this level. Definitely not in the song this great. Yeah, but for him to get so introspective and confessional about real life and that real relationship at that time was really it was really innovative for him.
Yeah.
Outcast breaking up was not a surprise. Yeah, everybody knew it was come. And they've been drifting apart artistically really, even Speaker Box Love Below, where it's basically two separate albums. Yeah, but even on Stanconia and even in Miss Jackson, that divide is.
There, Yeah, definitely it. You know, there is so much of them really wanting to establish who they are as artists and be bigger than just the group, which is you know, it can be such a trap for anyone to be in a duo or in any type of group, and so it's very clear that they want to establish early on that they have individual identities that are outside of Outcast and that at some point they will be exploring those identities because they are such disparate artists, you know,
there is so much of that chemistry that they have is because they're so different, and that makes it work so well, is that they have you know, there are a lot of things that bond them musically, and you know, kind of creatively, but their personality is their own delivery, is the own way that they approach things is very
clearly different from the beginning. And again that's that's a lot of the appeal of how Cast works is that they find this like really miraculous and cool way of making that feel so seamless and kind of play off of each other in a really fun way.
Yeah, they coexisted for so long. Did you see their amazing Saturday Night Live performance around the time that Stankonia came out.
No, I don't think I did.
They did an absolutely iconic Saturday Night Live and it was bombs over Baghdad and it was seeing them bring that sort of that flare to the presentation of it just as a live presentation, Yeah, it was something totally different. It was definitely one of the most iconic Saturday Night Live appearances ever. The song sounded like nothing that anybody had ever heard, but just as a live thing, it was such a full show. There were so many people
who are making it a full on presentation. Yea, it seems like a very different song to do live.
Yeah, And also, like while we've been talking, I've been thinking about other sort of especially with this season of the podcast, and like other episodes we've talked, I feel like we've talked about we've brought up Outcast a lot, and I feel like, even for the artists that we both kind of like talk about a lot, like, I feel like Outcast has come up a bunch, like and the you know, when we talked about Kate Bush, when we talked about Beyonce, and we talked about of course
the International Player's Anthem, where we had like the other another Outcast song, Like, I feel like they've ended up sort of organically coming up a lot, And it's so fascinating how much Outcast feels like kind of like the center of the of the pop universe in a lot of ways. And it feels like there there's such a long sort of tale to their musical legacy and to their musical influence. But I also cannot think of a single act that sounds like Outcasts since since.
Them absolutely very different dynamic for a duo, and even though they've been so influential, you do hear them everywhere. They kind of embody pop music because they had such diverse tastes and because they were willing to try so many different things.
I think, especially within the group. You know, it's like Big Boy was already the person that he knew he wanted to be as like a performer as a rapper, and like we've you know, the big Boy character and the big Boy style performing has has existed since then and kind of you know, grown in other ways. But you know, he he has sort of this firm and like like you mentioned, like Andrea is such like this
like very fluid type of performer. So it's been so fascinating to kind of see the different angles he's taken on who he is. You know, even just like the year's leading up to this Flute album, Like it just was the times we saw Andrea in public was like you know, you would see someone share a photo on like Twitter or Instagram. That was like ran into Andrea three thousand at the airport and he was just playing
a flute. I mean, I'm curious, like what you sort of you know, as we kind of I think so much of the Outcast Prime era.
Is still in the air. You know.
It's like it's still kind of feels like feels like, hey, a happened yesterday, so it feels like, hey, I still number one.
Somewhere.
I'm curious where you think that sort of legacy will continue on, especially as they get further and further away from I'm assuming was their only reunion tour the other do I would be very very surprised if they ever did another. One would love to be surprised, but I
very highly doubt they will do it again. I guess, like, where do you kind of see that sort of developing in the years going forward, and like how that will be maintained by outcasts, by the fans and by the artists influenced by them.
They're going to keep influencing everybody. Like you said, there's little of them all over pop music. Every song that we talk about seems to relate to outcasts and for them to be so influential and yet not to have any imitators, I mean, nobody tries to sound like them because nobody can sound like them. And so I think going forward, they're just going to get more influential and inspire more different kinds of artists.
Yeah, and after the break, we have Simon Valsick Levinson to talk about Miss Jackson. We are joined now by Rolling Stone w Music editor Simon Valsik Levinson. Simon thank you for joining.
Us, Hey guys to see us all.
Thanks Simon.
Do you remember sort of like the first time that you heard Outcast and kind of like what they they to music? The first time that you listened to.
Them, taking it back to let's say, you know, like the mid to late nineties, this is probably like nineteen ninety seven, nineteen ninety eight, there was just nobody doing it like Outcast. Like I remember, you know, hearing probably the first Outcast record that I heard that really made
an impression on me. It was a Quemini listening to that album and listening to just you know how much like personality and style both Big Boy and Andre you know, we're bringing to the table, how they kind of played off of each other. It just it felt like it was kind of outside of genre, it was its own thing. It was just like this incredibly compelling thing, and I was kind of hooked from you know, that point forward.
I think, so we're a lot of other people.
You know, with Stantonia, like where do you kind of see that falling within the Outcast discography and like what it did for them.
It can be wild to think about how far Outcast went over the course of a relatively short period of time in the nineties. Right, Big Boy and Andre started you know, makeing music together when they were teenagers in Atlanta in the early nineties. Their first album came out in nineteen ninety four. At that point, you know, that was a time win for a lot of people hip hop with something it happened, you know in.
New York or LA.
Right, they had to really you know, plant the flag and remind people, you know, literally, Andre famously said at the nineteen ninety five Source Awards, and you know, the South has something to say. That was like a controversial statement at that time. People were like whoa, Like wow.
Once they had kind of established that Southern app was exciting and important, you know, all the things that we know it is now, they immediately went to kind of exploding and reinventing that blueprint that they had made themselves. And I think, you know, from there it was like every two years, Outcast would drop a new album that
was even more incredible than the one before it. That kind of made it feel like the last thing they did, which had felt kind of mind blowing and incredible, was kind of yesterday's news, and they were on a whole other planet. Now and they did that with at Aliens, with the Quemini, and then in two thousand, I feel like Stanconi was like the ultimate fruition of everything that Andrea and Big Boy had been doing prior to that point.
It was like nothing else, you know, anyone had ever heard, you know really.
Yeah, especially Andrea like starting to explore more singing on it, and I guess testing out sort of his own style.
I'm kind of reinventing himself.
Yeah, I mean, I think the thing that's amazing about Atcast to me is like you have one of the greatest rappers ever, Big Boy, who's just like an incredible rapper. You have Andre who's also an incredible rapper, but who was almost never felt, you know, content to just be a great rapper, right. He was always, even from the beginning, trying to kind of, you know, get to this higher philosophical, spiritual,
mystical plane. And he pushed that farther and farther with each album, and you know, it got to the point where by the time you get to Stanconia, you press play on that album and it starts with Andre like metaphorically burning the American flag over, like you know, hard rock guitars and a funk beat, and it's like it's you know, telling you you're you're kind of you're in a different realm now, and you know that that album
encompasses so many different exciting styles. And you know, I think Miss Jackson shows you that one of the styles that Andre was interested in doing and Big Boy could kind of go along with him to do was pop music, you know, and they could they could really do that as well as they could do anything else.
Yeah, the transition from a Quemini to Stanconia Our Remember is a really kind of shocking transition because everybody would have been del I did with just a Quimini part too. Everybody kind of wanted more of the same.
Yes, That's the thing about out Kest was that I think, you know, they were so committed to kind of reinventing themselves with every album that they did kind of weave you wanting more each time, right, So like if you wanted more of that, you know, A Quemini was already an album that was pushing beyond the box of straightforward Southern hip hop to incorporate all kinds of funk and soul and so many other things, right, But they weren't
you content to stop there? And I think I think specifically Andrea was interested in doing even more than that. Wanted to tear up the rule book like yet again for like the third or fourth time in as many albums.
You know, Yeah, and what is it about Miss Jackson? I guess, like why is it? That song kind of broke the way it did and kind of reaches my people, is it did?
It's a great song. It's only one of my favorite Outcast songs. I don't know if it's my number one favorite, but it is, I mean for sure, Like Miss Jackson, I think was their first number one hit, right, it was a It was a really exciting thing to see like this, you know, if you had been kind of following them and listening to them album after album to hear that big Boy Andrea were capable of making up hit like a song that people would sing along to that you could hear coming out of like you know,
taxis and playing on the radio all the time. That was kind of like a new thing for them that they and they did that like so effortlessly and without kind of like losing who they were. That it was really exciting to see those two guys making a number one song.
Yeah, what is your number one?
Outcast on Oh.
My God, my personal number one song. I mean, it's it's hard to they're also, I mean, out Guests were such a great albums band that it almost feels like reductive, you know, sorry to uh to reduce them to one song, right, but for the purposes of this podcast, I mean for me, you know, Bombs over a Backdad also on the same album from Sanconia.
That's the song that just like completely.
Re scrambled my brain when I heard it, but still just kind of like no other group really picked up that torch, Like no one else is making that kind of like psychedelic you know, drum and bassed hard rap like at the same time on one song the way that you know Andrea and Big Boy did there.
Yeah, I was rereading your twenty fourteen interview with Andre and how he mentioned the label wanted kid Rock to do with the guitar solo on it, which just like blew my mind, just like I cannot believe this as a concept, like imagining the version of the world where there's like the Bombs of our Bagdad featuring kid Rock.
Yes, that's that's a classic moment of like, you know, no offense to whichever you know A and R person that was that idea. But that's like a classic moment in like major label brain thinking where they're like, what Outcast needs on their extract is a kid rock guitards That.
Made sense to someone at some time in nineteen ninety ninety.
But then part of the great est of Miss Jackson we've been talking about is that it sounded nothing like Outcast in terms of like what we already thought Outcast were. I mean, we're talking about fore it. The first one I ever heard was Rosa Parks, and it was so different from anything anybody had done, so aggressively southern, so rural as well as so urban, and just such a mix of things that it just seemed like it was
completely insane. That it was like by you know, the group that did elevators right, and that they were always so committed, like you said, to just rewriting the rule book every.
Time, right, exactly, no, And they did that so many times that it was almost it became like a game. Listening to them, like what are they going to do next time? How is this going to completely upend my expectations? And you know, right now, I think for Andre three thousand and that's you know, by doing what he's doing now is something it's not even on just like a it's on a whole different planet from what he did with Outcast, and that's you know, it's exciting to see.
Yeah.
Yeah, even like I mean my introduction to them was speaker Box the Love Below and kind of the bigness of hay On and Roses and everything around the entire album, and even that, you know, kind of going back afterwards and hearing everything or like it just feels like such like a different group each time. And of course like at a wild after like that, it's just like it
feels like something completely different. Like the fact that they were able to kind of keep it in a way where each album is so much inventing themselves, Like it does end up making sense that eventually, you know, Andre kind of goes like completely left field and like try something completely new. You know, it just felt like such a different group every single time in a way.
Yeah, that's a great point, and I'm glad you brought up with Speakerbox to love Blow. That's another like an even more successful album and an incredible album, but you know that's obviously famously like an album that has two halves, where you know, Big Boy and Andrea were on such different pages that they had to make sort of two albums. They couldn't make one album that contained both of their visions.
In retrospect, Stanconie is kind of the last time that their diverging visions could be fit on one album and could kind of work together. And I think, I mean Mims Jackson is an example of that, right, Like you can hear on that song, Andrea is stretching to you know, do these these new things and to make a love
song and a heartbreak song and a pop song. Big Boys is still there, you know, keeping keeping outcasts grounded in the kind of the traditional kind of like clever slick talking, you know, rap music that he's so excellent at, and you hear both of their visions kind of for one of the last times still kind of working together.
Yeah.
I love the way that you described Big Boys kind of keeping outcasts sort of grounded in kind of what they've like, what they've always done, and sort of what the core of outcasts and who they are. I mean, tell me about sort of your own kind of relationship with his solo music sense and like what he's sort of I mean, he's also had like I mean, I feel like, just like such a fascinating journey since Outcast has broken up and then reunited and then broken up again.
But yeah, right, yeah, no, it's it's fascinating, like so one interesting thing that happened with Outcast. You know, in the nineties, I would say, there were always these debates about who's the better rapper, Andre or a Big Boy, And for many years people would kind of maybe would would think that Andrea was the greater. And you know, there's a strong case to be made there, right, He's someone who has this kind of this other level to him, who is constantly kind of like pushing and expanding at
the same time. I think you can make an argument that Big Boy on his own, even you know, without Andrea on his own, is an incredible, you know, top category rapper. And I think he's shown that in his solo career. Sir Lucius left Foot, the first Big Boy album that he put out, is an example of how you know, I think there was a real question for him there, like can big Boy make a great album without Andre pushing him to kind of you know, try new things and expand and the answer.
Is like, yeah, he can.
Like that's just an incredibly fun, charismatic, kind of enjoyable Southern rap album that you really shows that, you know, big boy can hold his own and hold the spotlight. And he's done that many times since then in his solo career.
And we've talked a lot about on this podcast, and especially with bands like this or artists like this, where their legacy is always evolving and the way that they sort of interact with it is complicated and you know, unique and Okay is a perfect example of that. I mean, what do you sort of see as sort of the future of Outcast legacy and influence? I mean, we were trying to piece together artists that are more explicitly inspired by them. It's so hard to pin down because no
one can really do what Outcast has done. So you know, of course the influence is there and kind of looms over everything, but there aren't any there's no one who can do exactly what Outcasts was able to do. And so I mean, I guess what do you kind of see as the future of that legacy and influence over the years.
Yeah, No, it's s right right on one level, like
no one is outcast, no one can be outcast. At the same time, I think that you can see their influence in you know, almost just like the whole category of music and pop music in terms of what you know, a group can do, what two people can do, there are so many, you know, at the time in nineteen eighty eight or nineteen night nine, two thousand, it was still controversial and kind of like challenging to say that, you know, a rapper might want to sing on an
album instead of rapping, or might want to make funk or rock or psychedelic music. Now that kind and we kind of take that for granted and tons of artists you know, do that and do great things at that. It's not questioned anymore, and that's you know, that's a way is something that I think Outke has kind of opened the door to in a lot of ways.
Yeah, yeah, Thank you so much for joining us today, Simon.
Thank you so much for having me, Thank you anytime.
Thanks so much for listening to Rolling Stones five hundred Greatest Songs. This podcast is brought to you by Rolling Stone and iHeartMedia. Rinnan hosted by me Britney Spanis and Rob Sheffield executive produced by Gus Winner, Jason Fine, Alex Dale and Christian Horde, and produced by Jesse Cannon, with music supervision by Eric Seiler