Aquemini is the first album I have ever heard from OutKast, obviously I've heard a lot about Andre 3000 but never actually heard him rap that much. Hey Ya is obviously a huge song but I wasn't sure if it truly reflected what kind of MC he actually is.
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I was expecting a lot of double-time and triple-time flows, but apart from a couple of bits here and there that wasn't really the case. They both rode the beats really well and flowed comfortably and put together some really mad rhyme schemes. Definitely listen to "Synthesiser" and go to 2.07 and listen to how Andre rides that beat perfectly. The whole album seemed effortless to them, and that in turn made the album effortless to listen to, despite it having a long running time of over an hour.
The skits did inflate that running time, but they also helped a lot with connecting the songs. At the end of each song was basically an intro to the next one. I never got bored of them, although it does make some of them have less replay-ability and less likely for me to add them to a playlist that just gets shuffled.
The skits were really interesting and offered good insight into how people speak and treat each other in Atlanta and that's what music as all about, kind of inviting people into your life for a couple of minutes in the most creative way possible.
The album at times had a weird aesthetic, for example the skit at the end of the track "Aquemini" which is on some mad scientist shit and transitions sick into "Synthesiser". I liked that though. The hooks were really strong, some of the best were on "Rosa Parks, "Chonkyfire" and "Aquemini", but really they were all class. You can hear OutKast's influence in rappers that came after them, for example Mac Miller, J Cole, Yelawolf are some that come to mind.
Many beats had that classic bass-heavy sound that is pretty typical of southern Hip Hop, although they were all fairly simple boom-bap beats they never felt empty or missing anything, they'd do so much with their voices over them to make up for that, for example the song "Mamacita". "Chonkyfire" was a great closer for the album, I knew that beat from an Eminem freestyle on Westwood in 2009, but yeah they chop that beat up nicely. I managed to find a mashup on Youtube which has OutKast, Em and Kid Cudi on it.
Yeah I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this album and I'm looking forward to listening to some of their others. Aquemini has some proper spitting on it, catchy hooks and dirty beats, can't really complain to be honest.
8.5/10
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