An OutKast reader : essays on race, gender, and the postmodern South / edited by Regina N. Bradley.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Bradley, Regina N., 1984- editor.

Series:

Music of the American South.

Music of the American South

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Hip-hop--United States.

Hip-hop.

OutKast (Musical group).

OutKast (Musical group)--Influence.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (244 pages)

Place of Publication:

Athens, Georgia : University of Georgia Press, [2021]

Summary:

"OutKast, the Atlanta-based hip-hop duo formed in 1992, is one of the most influential musical groups within American popular culture of the past twenty-five years. Through Grammy-winning albums, music videos, feature films, theatrical performances, and fashion, André "André 3000" Benjamin and Antwan "Big Boi" Patton have articulated a vision of postmodern, post-civil rights southern identity that combines the roots of funk, psychedelia, haute couture, R&B, faith and spirituality, and Afrofuturism into a style all its own. This postmodern southern aesthetic, largely promulgated and disseminated by OutKast and its collaborators, is now so prevalent in mainstream American culture (neither Beyoncé Knowles's "Formation" nor Joss Whedon's sci-fi /western mashup Firefly could exist without OutKast's collage aesthetic) that we rarely consider how challenging and experimental it actually is to create a new southern aesthetic. An OutKast Reader, then, takes the group's aesthetic as a lens through which readers can understand and explore contemporary issues of Blackness, gender, urbanism, southern aesthetics, and southern studies more generally. Divided into sections on regional influences, gender, and visuality, the essays collectively offer a vision of OutKast as a key shaper of conceptions of the twenty-first-century South, expanding that vision beyond long-held archetypes and cultural signifiers. The volume includes a who's who of hip-hop studies and African American studies scholarship, including Charlie Braxton, Susana M. Morris, Howard Ramsby II, Reynaldo Anderson, and Ruth Nicole Brown"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction. Stank of a Freedomland : OutKast Reckons with the Black New South

SECTION I. Tracing OutKast's Southern Roots. “Power Music Electric Revival” : Contemplating OutKast's Southern Reconstruction and Its Impact on Black Music and the American Pop Mainstream / Fredara Mareva Hadley ; André's Dread : Communicating Survival of Racial Terror / Michelle S. Hite ; SouthernplayalistiCADILLACmuzik : OutKast and the Automobility of the Post-Civil Rights South / Langston C. Wilkins ; ATLiens : OutKast and the Saliency of Place for Black Male Identity / Rashawn Ray, SunAh M. Laybourn, and Melissa Brown ; SouthernQueeralisticadillacMuzik : André 3000 and Big Boi's Lyrical and Aesthetical Queering of Black Southern Masculinity / Kaila Story ; Bringing the Church Back to Your Feet : Affirmations of Faith, Religion, and Community in the Music of OutKast / Birgitta J. Johnson ; When ATLiens Boarded tha Muthaship : Funk's Influence on OutKast / Charlie R. Braxton

Section II. OutKast's Country-Fried Futurities. Stanklove : Hearing OutKast's Afrofuturist Erotics / James Edward Ford III ; Stories from the Dungeon : OutKast, Future, and the Afrofuturistic Lineage of Organized Noize / Clint Fluker and Reynaldo Anderson ; Idlewild : Afrofuturism and the Hip-Hop Musical in the Twenty-First Century / Susana M. Morris ; In the Forever Eva : An Artist Visualizes OutKast's Southern Hip-Hop Utopia / Stacey Robinson

Section III. Tracing OutKast's Lasting Legacy. A Jazzy Belle ReTell : Betrayals of Black Girlhood, Method, and Southernness / Jessica L. Robinson, Ruth Nicole Brown, Porshé R. Garner, and Blair E. Smith ; Two Dope Boyz in a Visual World / Tiffany E. Barber ; Humble Mumble : Text Mining OutKast / Kenton Rambsy and Howard Rambsy II ; Blurring Era and Aesthetic in OutKast's Film and Video Imagery : A Conversation with Bryan Barber / Joycelyn Wilson ; Idlewild : Spatial Narratives and Noir / Akil Houston

Outro. Preserving OutKast's Legacy at the National Museum of African American History and Culture / Timothy Anne Burnside.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-8203-6014-7

OCLC:

1272993172