OutKast on Vinyl: A Guide to the Atlanta Duo's Complete Studio Run

Antwan Patton and Andre Benjamin met in 1992 at Lenox Square mall in Atlanta, both sixteen, both at Tri-Cities High School in East Point. They were 2 Shades Deep until a local act turned out to have something close to it. Within a year they had fallen in with Organized Noize and the Goodie Mob circle, the nucleus of the Atlanta collective known as the Dungeon Family, and signed to LaFace as teenagers.

What follows is one of the great twelve-year runs in American music, and no two records in it sound alike. Organized Noize produced the 1994 debut front to back; by 1996 the duo had formed their own production company, Earthtone III, with David "Mr. DJ" Sheats and started building tracks themselves. Aquemini brought in live players and George Clinton. Stankonia sped everything up and ran it through a fuzzbox. Speakerboxxx / The Love Below split the group into two solo albums sharing one sleeve. The two have worked separately since 2007 without ever announcing a split, which is why the catalog reads as unfinished rather than closed.

GTR carries all six OutKast studio albums plus the 2001 retrospective, one of the few catalogs in the shop where the entire run sits on the shelf at once. Several early titles come two ways: the domestic LaFace and Legacy editions, and a set of UK import pressings on colored vinyl. Either side of the arc below, our Essential 90s Hip-Hop guide maps the era they grew up in, and our Essential 2000s Hip-Hop guide places Speakerboxxx / The Love Below among the records that followed.

Outkast - Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik Vinyl LP

Released in April 1994 on LaFace, Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik is the sound of two eighteen-year-olds who had decided Atlanta did not need New York's permission. Organized Noize produced every track, laying live bass and slow, humid funk under rhymes already more conversational than anything on the radio. "Git Up, Git Out" brought Goodie Mob in and gave the record its conscience.

• Why it's worth purchasing: the 1994 debut, cut when both rappers were eighteen
• Why it's worth purchasing: produced start to finish by Organized Noize, the Dungeon Family's house trio
• Why it's worth purchasing: includes Player's Ball, Git Up Git Out, Crumblin' Erb and Hootie Hoo, with a two-disc orange tangelo import as the color option

Outkast - ATLiens Vinyl LP

Eighteen months later they pulled hard the other way. ATLiens, out in August 1996 on LaFace, is cooler, slower and considerably stranger than the debut, with dub-tinged space where the funk used to be. It is also the first record where Big Boi and Andre took the board themselves, splitting production with Organized Noize under the Earthtone III banner.

• Why it's worth purchasing: the second album, released August 1996 on LaFace
• Why it's worth purchasing: the pivot where the duo began producing their own tracks as Earthtone III
• Why it's worth purchasing: includes Elevators (Me and You), Wheelz of Steel and Jazzy Belle, with a marbled emerald green import alongside it

Outkast - Aquemini Vinyl LP

The title welds Big Boi's Aquarius to Andre's Gemini, and Aquemini is where the two halves of the group stop trading verses and start arguing productively. Released in September 1998 on LaFace, it runs on live instrumentation, gospel organ, harmonica and a southern looseness no sampler can fake. If you buy one, buy this one.

• Why it's worth purchasing: the third album, released September 1998 on LaFace, and the hinge of the catalog
• Why it's worth purchasing: guest turns from Raekwon, Slick Rick, George Clinton and Goodie Mob
• Why it's worth purchasing: includes Rosa Parks and SpottieOttieDopaliscious, with a pink splatter import as the alternative

Outkast - Stankonia Vinyl LP

Out at the end of October 2000 on LaFace, Stankonia is where the pair stopped sounding like a rap group and started sounding like a band with a fuzz pedal and somewhere urgent to be. "B.O.B." runs at a tempo borrowed from drum and bass, "Ms. Jackson" turns the end of Andre's relationship with Erykah Badu into an apology addressed to her mother.

• Why it's worth purchasing: the fourth album, released October 2000 on LaFace
• Why it's worth purchasing: Killer Mike's first appearance on record, on Snappin' and Trappin'
• Why it's worth purchasing: includes B.O.B., Ms. Jackson and So Fresh So Clean, with a 25th anniversary purple marble edition also here

OutKast - Big Boi & Dre Present... OutKast (Purple Marble Color) Vinyl LP

Released in 2001 on LaFace and Arista, Big Boi and Dre Present... OutKast gathers the first four albums into one place. Several older songs appear in alternate versions rather than the mixes you know, and new tracks were cut for it, among them "The Whole World" with Killer Mike. It is the sensible gift for someone who wants the arc before the albums.

• Why it's worth purchasing: 2001 retrospective drawing on the first four albums
• Why it's worth purchasing: includes the newly recorded The Whole World with Killer Mike and Funkin' Around
• Why it's worth purchasing: two LPs on purple marble vinyl, with several songs in alternate versions

OutKast - Speakerboxxx / The Love Below Vinyl LP

The boldest move either of them made. Released in September 2003 on Arista, Speakerboxxx / The Love Below is two solo albums under one roof: Big Boi's half is bass-heavy Atlanta rap, while Andre's abandons rapping almost entirely for Prince-sized funk, bossa nova and jazz-club crooning. "Hey Ya!" and "The Way You Move" came off opposite discs and ran at the same time, which tells you how little the two sides needed each other.

• Why it's worth purchasing: released September 2003 on Arista, a double album built as two separate solo records
• Why it's worth purchasing: Big Boi's Speakerboxxx and Andre 3000's The Love Below, one disc each
• Why it's worth purchasing: includes Hey Ya!, The Way You Move, Roses, Prototype and GhettoMusick

OutKast - Idlewild (Grey & Red Marble Color) Vinyl LP

The last one, out in August 2006 on LaFace, and the one most people skipped. Idlewild arrived alongside the Prohibition-era musical of the same name, directed by Bryan Barber, with Andre playing a character named Percival. Seven of its songs come from the film. Big Boi's line was simply that this is an OutKast album, and heard that way the ragtime piano, blues horns and guest list make more sense than they did in 2006.

• Why it's worth purchasing: the final OutKast album, released August 2006 on LaFace
• Why it's worth purchasing: companion album to the Prohibition-era musical, with Janelle Monae, Macy Gray and Killer Mike among the guests
• Why it's worth purchasing: two LPs on grey with red marble vinyl, includes Mighty O, Morris Brown and Hollywood Divorce

If You Like OutKast

• A Tribe Called Quest: the New York group OutKast were measured against early on, jazz-sampling and conversational in the same unhurried way.
• UGK: Bun B and Pimp C out of Port Arthur, the Texas counterweight to Atlanta in the southern canon.
• Bun B: the solo run after UGK, still the most generous elder statesman the South has.
• Erykah Badu: the other pole of that late-90s axis, and the subject of one of Andre's best songs.
• Run The Jewels: Killer Mike and El-P, carrying the Atlanta half of this story into its loudest chapter.

Six studio albums, one retrospective, and twelve years in which a duo from East Point rebuilt what a rap record was allowed to be. Browse everything by this artist in the OutKast collection, dig into the era around them in our classic hip-hop collection, or go wider in the full hip-hop collection. Better still, come flip through the bins in person at 4 Thacher St in Boston's North End. It's all in GOOD TASTE.