Idlewild (2006)

By Ian Cohen

Perhaps it’s a sign that I need to broaden my social circle, but here’s a list of movies I’ve been able to discuss in depth with my colleagues over the past seven years: Cash Money's Baller Blockin’, Master P's I’m Bout It, Redman and Method Man's How High, Roc-A-Fella's Paper Soldiers and State Property, Three 6 Mafia's Choices: The Movie, and the absolute motherlode, Cam'ron's Killa Season. Yet I might not have a single friend who has seen, or will ever see, Idlewild.

This seems impossible. Unlike the aforementioned, Idlewild is a real Hollywood production and has numerous advantages over your typical vanity movie: It features actors with legitimate acting experience, including Andre 3000 and Big Boi. Beyond that, because OutKast is one of the most popular and beloved musical acts of all time, their movie had a real budget and was released to actual theaters; you didn’t necessarily need to be an OutKast fan to see Idlewild, just someone looking for a way to kill a Friday night. Moreover, it has a plot that’s something other than rappers playing barely fictionalized versions of themselves: Idlewild is exactly like Purple Rain, except OutKast invent rap in a Depression-era speakeasy, and one of them is named Rooster. (I can’t remember which one, though.)

But even if Idlewild the album revealed little about Idlewild the movie, it proved to be a total spoiler, because the actual plot of the film was secondary to the meta-context of making the film: After years of trying to will their dream project into existence, OutKast finally got the greenlight… after they had all but stopped working together. Would Idlewild result in Andre 3000 and Big Boi being OutKast again? Anyone expecting a Hollywood ending could look at the dead center of Idlewild’s tracklist: “Hollywood Divorce”.

The connotation of bitter acrimony from that track is actually somewhat misleading: Idlewild moves with the finality and begrudging purpose of someone cleaning out their old apartment just enough to receive that security deposit. In spite of the strangely thrilling prospect of revisiting the one OutKast album unsullied by over analysis and radio airplay, Idlewild is a punishing listen—or at least karmic payback for the duo’s godlike run of the previous decade. Twenty-five tracks clock in at 77 minutes and yet both of those numbers seem like laughable lowball estimates. For those skeptical of the film, the soundtrack was their worst fears confirmed: a record full of ideas that were clearly sat upon for years and then rushed out with Andre 3000 and Big Boi working with separate agendas but without any of the gleeful experimentation that marked their solo albums.

If someone gushes to you that Idlewild is OutKast’s “weirdest” album, they are likely obsessed and impressed with their own contrarian thinking. Though the experience of listening to Idlewild is certainly weird—it’s still tough to ascertain how OutKast could release a movie and an album in 2006 that completely vanished without making a mark on pop culture in any way whatsoever. You may have forgotten the hungrier guest artists whose performances respected the fact that this is still an OutKast album. Namely, an untamed Killer Mike, an unheralded Janelle Monáe, and Lil Wayne in his Best Rapper Alive mania. But it’s more bizarre to hear OutKast so uninterested in itself, so utterly lacking in invention, so joyless.

There’s as much stylistic breadth on Idlewild as on previous records, but here it’s of the iPod variety: no integration, no Organized Noize, just costumery. At the very least, Andre’s solo excursions are sourced from a wider range than they were on The Love Below, but they're just as derivative: Cab Calloway on “Mighty ‘O’”, “Higher Ground” on “Idlewild Blues”. Idlewild literally ends on “A Bad Note”, eight minutes of migraine inducing “Maggot Brain” mimicry that may have been intended as a joke but felt like a final insult; this is the thanks we get.

For OutKast traditionalists who felt like the praise accorded to The Love Below was a backhanded slight to Big Boi, Idlewild provided some schadenfreude—justice was served, but not in any way that proved meaningful. Big Boi was likely starting to craft Sir Lucious Leftfoot already and while his technical skills are still sharp, he at least had the foresight not to squander his best material here. Instead, on songs like “N2U” and “Peaches”, the libido feels lecherous. Women are either treated as burdens or trophies on these songs and, perhaps to align with the 1930s blues aesthetic of the film, all of them are up to no good. Andre 3000 likewise lets real life trample upon this supposed fantasy construct and brings none of his flower-child levity—he attacks welfare recipients, music critics, Hollywood execs, and basically everyone who questions why he’d do anything other than the one thing he’s better at than anyone else drawing breath on planet Earth: rapping.

As the final excruciating seconds tick off from “A Bad Note”, there’s a comfort in how little OutKast left to the imagination; Idlewild is not generating its legend from never being followed up. In fact, the existence of a track like 2008’s completely inexplicable “Royal Flush”—which had Dre and Big Boi rapping astoundingly well on the same beat—only serves to show just how easily OutKast could reunite and how good they could be. It also shows how easy it is for them to say no.