Boom to Move | Big Boi

Nov 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Tony Ware

ALTHOUGH STEPPING OUT SOLO, OUTKAST'S BIG BOI CORRALS A FAMILIAR CAST OF CHARACTERS FOR SIR LUSCIOUS LEFTFOOT... THE SON OF CHICO DUSTY

The first time visiting Stankonia Recording Studio holds almost mystical promise. Like an invitation to Abbey Road or Paisley Park — legendary studios where the bizarre and the business must go hand in hand — a summons to Stankonia comes along with visions of psychedelic shag-covered tracking suites, wood-paneled rumpus rooms and retro-futuristic furnishings. Sharing a name with the genre-altering, millennial-year album of its proprietors — Atlanta, Georgia's hip-hop duo Outkast — Stankonia has gotta be equal parts incense and peppermints, side-tipped Kangols and ridin' on chrome, so fresh and so clean, clean.

In reality, Stankonia is nondescript, a brick complex on a short dead-end street, drawing attention only from its entourage of SUVs and promo vans. The vending machine has powdered donuts but no space cakes. There's Outkast memorabilia, but no excessive decor to get the synapses fired up.

That feeling is reserved for Control Room B, not because of anything on the walls but because of what's on the hard drives. For the last 21 months, this part of Stankonia has been on lockdown at all hours while recording the original B-I-G, Big Boi of Outkast, who is “debuting” as a solo artist (you could almost say artists, considering the mad styles he exhibits) with Sir Luscious Leftfoot…The Son of Chico Dusty (LaFace/Zomba, 2008).

ON THE RIGHT…NO, LEFTFOOT

“My daddy told me it was mine for the takin', a true gift of god, the stars aligned when they made me,” Big Boi rhymes a line from the track “Daddy Fat Sax” as he struts into the control room, pausing only briefly by the light switches. “I like to keep it dim as a muthahfuckah, 'bout like you're comin' out of a cave,” he explains, describing the room — basked in the red glow of a Digidesign ICON D-Control board — that has been his creative sanctuary.

Once settled at a rackmount processor-stuffed “credenza,” Big Boi establishes eye contact and holds it for the next hour and a half. It's one of many small marks of professionalism he exhibits, appropriate considering Sir Luscious Leftfoot is intended to showcase how Big Boi, aka Antwan André Patton, has grown from boy to man. “Not that any confidence was lacking,” Big reinforces. “There's just a sense of urgency for me because people want more music in their music. And Luscious Leftfoot is a lead man, takin' charge, bringin' the different styles of the way I make that music.”

More than a decade-and-a-half deep in the game, Big has had plenty of time to harvest sounds from the streets and with his eyes on the skies. With André 3000 in Outkast — as recently as on 2003's separate-but-equal double release Speakerboxxx/The Love Below and 2006's soundtrack Idlewild — Big Boi has approached production like it's some universal solvent. Liquid, solid or sublimated, Outkast brought together electro, gospel, bass, blues, rock, poppin', lockin' and hip-hoppin'. And starting almost immediately after Speakerboxxx was released, Big collected beat sketches and melodic swatches in his MPC2000XL and onto his phone's voice recorder for Luscious Leftfoot.

Concurrently, Big called in producers such as Organized Noize — the production group whose live instrumentation emphasis has been associated with Outkast since the southernplayalistic duo's 1993 debut — plus a large cast of longtime local session musicians and DJ Cutmaster Swiff. Even with an in-house writing lab (the “Meatloaf Loft,” complete with full bed and bath), Big spent most of his time in longtime favorite Studio B, its intimacy preferred over Studio A's larger, more party-prone space.

Writing with two pads — one scratch pad to bleed ink all over during revisions and one for keeping the final finished verses — Big mapped out the lyrics while at the same time collaborating on the music with engineer Chris Carmouche. They exchange in a language probably even too abstract for Outkast.

“I can say, ‘I need…I need…this to sound like a kitty cat…a kitty cat that just got kicked in the ass by the bus stop. I need…I need…let's go to Jupiter on this one, passing stars on it,’ and [Chris] will know what module to go to that I want,” Big says. “And we'll just start fuckin' with it…rounding it off.”

“Everything was pretty much done in Pro Tools right here,” says Carmouche, who worked on the latter half of Speakerboxxx and eased into full engineer duties on Sir Luscious Leftfoot after mixing first session “Backup Plan.” “We did use [Studio A's] SSL 4000 G+ console at times to track into Pro Tools. We did use some outboard preamps, but once in the box, it didn't go out. We're at [Pro Tools] 7.4, and the right-click options did make it more flexible. You could throw more on while the track was still running. Working with Big, Pro Tools helps keep up with the pace of ideas he throws out. He can ask for a purr sound, and I can see he wants bite on the high end with me brightening up the sound, using a flanger, EQ, amp simulator, etc.”

A solely Big Boi-helmed album may seem like new territory to most people, like Big taking a big step out from under a nearly inescapable Technicolor umbrella, but it actually came about in very familiar circumstances.

“A lot of people don't know me and Dre hadn't recorded together productionwise since Aquemini,” Big reveals. “We both write, rap, produce, arrange…. So how we'd do it was, we'd be in our own respective creative spaces. I'd be here a lot…and we'd just record songs.

“Later, we'd trade off songs, see what we like, then we'd go back into the huddle and finish them off, add different ideas,” he continues. “This record we recorded…. Well, I keep saying ‘we’; I'm so used to saying ‘we’…. I co-produced about 12 of the tracks. I was privileged to work with Organized Noize, and they'd give me different elements of beats, and I'd come and put the music on it, orchestrate things.”

Acceptable Use Policy blog comments powered by Disqus

Want to use this article? Click here for options!