Happy 18th birthday to one of hip hops greatest duos fifth studio album, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. The double sided, R&B funk album dropped three years after their album Stankonia in 2003.
The Atlanta duo put together an album full of hits with beat switches and unreal features including Jay-Z, Norah Jones, Ludacris, Cee-Lo, Lil Jon and the The East Side Boyz, and Big Gipp.
Speakerboxxx/The Love Below had a field day on the charts. It hit number one overall on UK R&B Albums, number one on U.S. Billboard 200, number one on U.S. Top R&B/Hip Hop Albums, and third in New Zealand and Ireland.
The album was even ranked as the 33rd best album of the decade and finished second on the U.S. Billboard Top 200 Albums for the year 2004 behind Ushers album Confessions.
While Speakerboxxx/The Love Below isn’t my all time favorite Outkast album, ATLiens takes the cake for that, it has some of my all time favorite Outkast songs like The Way You Move, Bust, Hey Ya!, and Roses.
Arguably the biggest song off the album is Hey Ya!. It was recently ranked the tenth best song of all time by Rolling Stone Magazine.
Look, do I think Hey Ya! is the tenth greatest song of all time? Probably not. Am I going to argue it because I like Outkast? Absolutely not.
What is bizarre about Rolling Stone naming Hey Ya! a top ten all time song is that it was the only major magazine to mark Speakerboxxx/The Love Below below a four star. They thought the album was a three star.
For myself, I love Outkast, but they had a massive impact on my all time favorite musician, Spose. He made his album, Dankonia, where he rapped over Outkast beats. My favorite song that he made was Hide Your Drugs which he rapped over I like the way you move.
It’s been an unreal past few weeks in Outkast history as ATLiens turned 25 and Speakerboxxx/The Love Below turned 18.