Pop & Hiss

The L.A. Times music blog

Category: Big Boi

Cee Lo Green, Big Boi to hit road in joint 'Georgia Power' tour

November 23, 2010 |  1:23 pm

Ceelo_bigboi

Hip-hop heads, rejoice!

On the heels of their current critically acclaimed albums, hip-hop heavyweights Cee Lo Green and Big Boi have announced they are teaming up for a co-headlining 2011 tour they're calling “Georgia Power,” a shout out to the utility company headquartered in their home city of Atlanta.

As founding members of their own respective rap sets -– Cee Lo is known for his time in Goodie Mob, and Big Boi is one-half of the multi-platinum Outkast. The two groups formed the collective known as the Dungeon Family alongside production team Organized Noize, a nod to the basement studio where they did their early recordings, and became a force in the '90s Southern rap movement.

“We all lived in one house, eating off of one plate. It was a real brotherhood,” Big Boi recalled earlier this year. “It was like a real rap Jedi school.”

The tour marks Green’s return to his solo career after putting it on the backburner for his duo Gnarls Barkley. His recently released album, “The Lady Killer,” debuted at No. 9 on Billboard's 200 chart after selling 41,000 copies in its first week. Those sales are likely the result of his awesome (and fabulously profane) kiss-off, “Forget You,” which became a chart smash after going viral -- the song was covered on this week's episode of "Glee" by Gwyneth Paltrow.

Big Boi already has been on the road touring his solo debut, “Sir Lucious Leftfoot: The Son of Chico Dusty,” which remains one of the year's top-rated albums, according to Metacritic (Times pop critic Ann Powers gave the “pleasure cruise of an album” 3 1/2 out of four stars).

Dates for the tour have yet to be announced, but our anticipation for a Dungeon Family reunion, including a long-overdue one from Outkast, begins right about now.

In the meantime, read Powers' profile on Green and get inside the mind of "The Lady Killer."

-- Gerrick D. Kennedy
twitter.com/gerrickkennedy

Photos, from left: Rapper Big Boi performs Sept. 4, 2010, during the "Heineken Inspire" Atlanta concert series. Credit: Rick Diamond / Getty Images. Cee-Lo (born Thomas Callaway) performs as part of Gnarls Barkley. Credit: Stephen Osman / Los Angeles Times


Big Boi talks Kate Bush, Chico Dusty, 'Rap Jedi School', and the timeline for a new OutKast album

September 29, 2010 | 12:23 pm

BigBOI Speed certainly isn’t a part of Antwan "Big Boi" Patton’s creative process. It’s been more than four years since Outkast, the platinum-selling, Grammy-winning group he co-founded with Andre "Andre 3000" Benjamin, released an album, despite more than a few promises to fans.

It took almost as long for him to release his solo debut, “Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty,” which came out July 6 on Def Jam Recordings.

But the wait -- mostly due to label drama -- was worth it, he said on Monday night at Los Angeles chapter of the Recording Academy,  where he sat down for an  interview with songwriter/producer Harvey Mason Jr. in which Patton discussed label politics, the birth and (highly anticipated) return of OutKast, and shared some surprising anecdotes about the life of Sir Lucious Left Foot.

Upon its release in July the record was critically hailed and remains one of the year's top-rated albums, according to Metacritic (Times pop critic Ann Powers gave the “pleasure cruise of an album” three-and-a-half out of four stars).

Below are a few highlights of the entertaining, insightful interview.

On getting a ‘kick’ of inspiration

Patton said it was his grandmother who got him into music. She would send him and his siblings to the store to buy 45s of soul classics (and cigarettes) on weekends. But it was an uncle who broadened his musical tastes when he introduced him to the music of British singer Kate Bush.

“[She] became my favorite artist of all time. Her and Bob Marley would tie for first. I used to listen to 'The Kick Inside' and 'Wuthering Heights' and 'This Woman’s Work' and just admiring the style of music she was making, from the production side of it to the lyrics,” he said. “It was kind of mind-blowing. I was like OK, I wanted to be like her. My thing was if [the music] was jamming, if it felt good [I liked it].”

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Big Boi streams his new album, drops "Mix Tape For Dummies"

July 2, 2010 | 10:38 am

Big-boi-mix-tape-for-dummies-cover1Up until this point, Big Boi, a.k.a. Daddy Fat Sacks, a.k.a. General Patton, has been best known for being one half of Outkast. But the release of his forthcoming "Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty" ushers in a new phase in his career: one of the finest solo artists in rap music.

Following a trying three-year ordeal with repeated release date postponements and a switch from Jive to Def Jam, his first official solo record is currently streaming on Myspace and finally hits stores Tuesday. The finished product was well worth the wait -- a fat slab of back-breaking modern funk -- a different iteration than that of Dam-Funk, but with all the post-Zapp signifiers: vocoders, rainbow synths, with clapping drums that knock like the best Southern rap.

It's not an Outkast record, it's a Big Boi record: lush, bright and deliriously funky. In a major label rap environment plagued by awkward commercial compromises and mediocrity, this is the rare release worth rewarding with your wallet. But for those looking for a free lunch, Big Boi is giving away his "Mix Tape for Dummies: Guide to Global Domination" , a career retrospective including new tracks from "Sir Lucious Left Foot." 

Tracklist below the jump.

Continue reading »



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