Big Boi's Speakerboxxx sounded more like an OutKast album, if one a bit heavier on the gospel and soul samples. The first single, "The Way You Move," was almost as big a hit as "Hey Ya!" though being a hip-hop track, it lacked the ubiquity of Dre's three-minute masterpiece. Over the years, I've often returned to Speakerboxxx, while The Love Below, which on its release captivated many critics with its bold vision of a post-genre pop future, I rarely revisit.

Since OutKast went on hiatus in 2007, after the disappointing jazz-infused album Idelwild, André 3000 has all but disappeared from the hip-hop scene. He drops a great verse here and there, like on last year's Frank Ocean album, Channel Orange, but he seems more intent on acting and fashion designing. There's word he's working on a solo release, but whether he's too busy with other projects to complete it, or else bogged down in perfecting the album, like Dr. Dre with Detox (an album that's been in the works for more than 10 years), who knows.

Big Boi, on the other hand, has put out two great albums, most recently last month's Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumors. All the hallmarks of the classic OutKast sound remain: great samples diced with keyboards ("In the A"), distorted vocals mixed into a molasses-thick beat ("Thom Pettie"), a unique hybrid of hip-hop and, in this case, various indie sounds. His musical borrowings are as surprising as anything André might have made—on some songs, Big Boi collaborates with the synth-pop duo Phantogram and the noise-rock, surf influenced bad Wavves.

Lyrically, the political jabs and church wisdom that used to appear sparingly among his more macho boasts have grown in number, and he's moved his liberal politics further to the fore. On "Shoes for Running," he raps about the 99 percent getting screwed over, how poor black men complain about but do nothing to change their situation, and how even elections bring "no progressions, just recessions," though he might be spitting so fast you didn't notice. (Big Boi excels at rapping in double time to the beat.) These topical concerns never bog him down into a morose mood, and jokes and boasts about his love of fun, sex, family, and Cadillacs abound on the album. He's a light, jovial presence, the kind of guy you'd like to hang with at a party.

With these albums, Big Boi has come out from André's shadow, not by doing anything different, but by doing what he does really well. The film critic Manny Farber's essay "White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art" comes to mind, as André and Big Boi seem to epitomize these two styles of art. White Elephant Art is big, made up of grandiose gestures, meant to be taken by others as a masterwork. Think of the self-important Hollywood blockbusters on serious topics (Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan or Lincoln), or the fat tomes of "literary" novels that deal with heavy issues (Jonathan Franzen's Freedom)—works that, no matter how well done, become "a yawning production of overripe technique shrieking with preciosity, fame, ambition," and collapse under their own weight—just like André's The Love Below.