So hopefully everyone has picked up VIBE’s final issue for the Dungeon Family “Am I My Brother’s Keeper?” article. If you haven’t seen it yet then maybe you shoulda been sitting next to Squishy on a flight to Utah. Truthfully I’ve been trying to find a PDF of it for the last couple days to share with ya’ll but I’m turning up flat. However while searching for DF articles online I definitely haven’t come up empty handed.
The first selection I have for you is from 2003 via atlanta.creativeloafing by Roni Sarig. More person by person recount than article, it starts in 1980s Atlanta with Andre in elementary school and continues till Speakerboxxx/The Love Below is released.
Late September 1993: Atlanta’s LaFace Records, interested in grooming young talent, asks local production team Organized Noize to do a song for the label’s upcoming Christmas album. LaFace head L.A. Reid wants the track to feature Organized’s new proteges, OutKast, the teenaged duo that Reid is considering signing to LaFace. The song, “Player’s Ball,” with its laid-back groove, razor-sharp rhymes and old-school soul melody, kicks off a new era for Southern hip-hop.
Late September 2003: Southern hip-hop hits flood the radio. Arista Records President L.A. Reid is one of the most powerful men in the music industry. And OutKast, the flagship of Organized Noize’s Dungeon Family crew, has sold more than 10 million albums worldwide.
But in the three years since the group’s previous studio album, Stankonia, much has changed. The rest of the Dungeon Family struggles to regain momentum after a string of commercial disappointments, and OutKast seems to be pulling apart at the seams. Their much-anticipated new album, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, arrives this week in the form of two separate solo albums packaged together as a double disc.
Here’s the rest of the story…
Fade in: Southwest Atlanta, 1980s Andre: I grew up in the ghetto just like everybody else, right across the street from the projects. But my mom bussed me to schools like Sarah Smith [Elementary] and Sutton [Middle School], right in the middle of Buckhead. So by me going to school with a lot of white kids, I got into skateboarding and the music and everything. I’d come home and I might hear Eric B. & Rakim or Too Short, then go to school and hear another thing.
Cee-Lo: I’ve known Andre since the third grade. We were good friends in elementary school. I don’t think our artistic nature was cultivated back in the third grade, but I think a lot of my artistic energy came out in moments of misbehavior. I remember a moment when Dre’s mother came and had to chastise him in front of the class.
Big Boi: [Dre and I] were new to the high school [Tri-Cities High in East Point]; this was 10th grade, 1989 or ‘90. The first time Dre and I really talked was on the way back from Lenox mall; me and my little brother rode back with him. We just got to kickin’ it, and I found this cat was cool. So we went back to his crib in East Point. We talked about music and girls and shit.
Andre: We listened to the same types of music. We both loved De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest. I had stopped going to Tri-Cities and started going to an alternative school, because I was skipping class and got kicked out.
Big Boi: We used to steal cars off of Old National Highway. We tried selling dope, but we’d get some and smoke the shit before we could sell it. So that’s when we knew we had to get us some jobs at the shoe stores.
Cee-Lo: Dre and I didn’t see each other again until about the 11th grade. We were at an alternative school called Frank McClaren for dropouts and teen mothers and individuals who have to work a job and were trying to come in and get their GED.
Sleepy: My dad [Jimmy Brown] was in a band called Brick, and they had some hits. I would go to concerts and be backstage and get to see all the funk bands — Cameo, Bar-Kays, Commodores, Parliament-Funkadelic.
Rico: Lamonte was just a black man who owned a business [Lamonte's Beauty Supply in East Point's Delowe Shopping Center]. I got the job with him when I was about 13, just going around saying, “Can I take your trash out? Can I sweep your carpet?” By the time OutKast came around, I was like 19, and I was the manager there.
Gipp: Ray Murray was the first guy I had been around who kept a drum machine. Ray introduced me to the graffiti thing, kind of took me under his wing. He really hipped me to hip-hop. I met Khujo and T-Mo once I started going to Mays High School. The first time I met Cee-Lo, he came over to my house with his cousin. That’s when they used to call him Chickenhead.
Ray: I moved into the Greenbrier area in 1987. That’s when I met Gipp and Khujo and all of them. They all went to high school together at Benjamin E. Mays.
Big Boi: We were sitting at my aunt’s house. Dre had made some rhymes, and I had some. And I would start where he ended.
Andre: Me and Big Boi were a group by that time named 2 Shades Deep. We both had jobs at shoe stores. One day, Big Boi couldn’t get off of work and I had set up our first shot to perform — on this cable access show. So Cee-Lo went with me. So we performed, and some guy called in and said, “I just wanted to let you know y’all sounded like shit!” To this day, me and Cee-Lo never can forget that.
Big Boi: Cee-Lo was damn near about to be in the group for a minute. Me, Dre and Cee-Lo would go back to my auntie’s house. We used to make loops on the tape deck, and Cee-Lo would have beats on tape that were so fucking funky it was retarded.
Andre: The first live performance was at this club called Club Fritz in the West End. We went, and Big Boi’s uncle gave us weed. We smoked it in a napkin, so it was burning all wrong. So then we got on the mic and just crunked it up. We was on one mic, passing it back and forth, busting each other in the lip.
Big Boi: We were 2 Shades Deep, but there was a group called Four Shades Deep. We were going to do Misfits, but there was already a group called the Misfits. So we went down till we found OutKast, which meant what we wanted.
Sleepy: I met Rico through a girl I was dating at the time. She was good friends with him and T-Boz [of TLC]. Me and Rico started out in a singing group, the Uboys. At the time, when T-Boz got with TLC, she told Pebbles [TLC's manager, then married to L.A. Reid] about us. Pebbles liked our music, but vocally we weren’t that great. So she just flat-out told us, “I like y’all’s beats; I think you should get more into production.”
Rico: I can’t sing, though I was just fly — like a local celebrity. I had a car, girls liked me, I had a perm. I danced and I looked like I sang.
Ray: Me and Gipp had been a group, Sixth Sense. The Gulf War was going on, and we recorded a song called “Pray for Peace.” We had talked to NBC’s “Today Show” and we were going to perform, but the war stopped.
Big Rube: This guy Joe Carne — his mother was the singer Jean Carne. He had some musical equipment over his house, so we [Rico, Sleepy, Rube] were going over there working on stuff. And that’s how we met Ray. But working with Joe was getting kind of hard, so then we decided to branch off on our own. We got a little setup in Rico’s apartment in Delowe Gardens. And it was 24/7 after that.
Ray: Jellybeans [skate rink] was an institution; that’s where everybody went. In 1990, we had a studio up there. There was an office and we had converted it into a live performance room. There was no ventilation, so if you were in there for 15-20 minutes, you’d be in a complete sweat. We were the producers for [rap group] P.A. After they got the deal with Pebbles, that’s when we officially became Organized Noize. The name comes from a singing girl group Rico and Sleepy put together, but we couldn’t find the girls for it. So we said, “That’s a fly ass name. Fuck the girls.”
Rico: A friend of mine knew [former Atlanta police chief] Eldrin Bell, and he owned a house in Lakewood that he was renting out. We had the apartment at Delowe and a studio at the skate rink, and I couldn’t afford to pay rent at both places, so we moved to the house and made everything one.
Ray: The Dungeon was under the kitchen floor at Rico’s house. It’s a dirt floor. We had a table and chairs set up, an MPC with dust all over it, keyboards, records all over. When the shit flooded, we had to pick up, take the shit upstairs, because it warps. The vibes down there were otherworldly. Sometimes we’d be sitting down there writing, then the drum machine would go on. Because of the moisture in the machine, it used to go haywire. It would trigger samples, crazy shit.
Big Rube: The whole idea of calling it the Dungeon came from the way the basement looked. There were red clay walls, pipes over your head, like a boiler room or something. People didn’t leave. You’d go over there and you basically was living there, so it was almost like you was held captive. So it just fit perfectly.
Andre: We had started to perfect our craft, meet after school and trade rhymes in Big Boi’s auntie’s kitchen. We had two meetings set up. One was with a manager called Don Ray, he’s Cody ChestnuTT’s manager now. But we met Rico first that day. He worked at the beauty supply store right up the street from Big Boi’s aunt’s house, so we just walked.
Ray: Me and Rico were at this hair products store that Rico worked at. We were having some creative differences with P.A., and we were saying to ourselves, “Man, we need two fly-ass young MCs that we can really get with and help shine, help nurture.” Right as we said that, these two dudes came walking over the hill.
Rico: I was like, “What y’all got? Y’all got songs?” Then they put in [A Tribe Called Quest's] “Scenario” — the seven-minute instrumental version — and they went back to back until the tape stopped. No hooks, no errors. As soon as one finished the other one came up right behind.
Gipp: I played the tape in my Isuzu Trooper. They could really spit like an up-North rapper.
Sleepy: They had bald heads, and that was kind of crazy; nobody was into that yet. When they first rapped for us, I just thought they rapped long as hell. Each one had a rap for like 15, 20 minutes. I was just standing there, like, “Damn, when you gonna end?”
Rico: They reminded me of myself. One of them had on cut-off jeans; they had thermals, sweatshirts, some huaraches on. They were fresh; they weren’t no ghetto Atlanta niggas — no gold teeth. They were hip-hop.
Andre: The first thing Rico said was, “That’s dope, come to my house tonight.” Rico was the hustler, the mouthpiece of Organized Noize. He would say stuff like, “Yeah, we can get you a deal next week.” And we believed him. So we went to the Dungeon.
Big Rube: It’s funny, because the personalities were already there. Dre had the kind of quiet personality, Big Boi had this reputation for not giving a fuck — talking about you right in your face even if he don’t know you.
Big Boi: I thought it was going on over there. Ten, 15 people in the studio downstairs. Niggas just writing on pads everywhere, smoking their herb, 40 ounces. The atmosphere said, “Damn, this is where we need to be.”
Ray: We didn’t have anything. We used to scrape money together to go buy cigarettes. Everybody would eat off of a $3 basket from Church’s. Ten, 15 niggas in the room, on the wood floor with blankets rolled up as beds.
Rico: Every day after school they’d come to the Dungeon, spend the night, go to school from the Dungeon sometimes, stay over on weekends. It was to the point where it started to get ugly. Andre’s momma was just so concerned, like, “What the fuck is going on?” That’s when she started making crazy comments, like calling my momma and asking me some really disrespectful shit, like, “What, you gay or something? Why they want to be around you?” She turned around years later and became the most important person in his career. She’s a great person, so I don’t fault her for nothing.
Cee-Lo: We happened to be in Greenbriar Mall one day, and my homeboy was telling Marqueze [Etheridge, Organized Noize associate who co-wrote TLC's "Waterfalls" with them] that I sing. He was going over to the Dungeon, so we decided to give him a ride. We went over there, and I sung for Sleepy Brown. At the time, Rico, Dre and Big Boi had rode off to get something to eat. They came back and saw me sitting there and Dre got excited, like, “That’s my homeboy Cee-Lo I was telling you about. He can rhyme, he can sing.” That particular day, T-Mo and Khujo and Gipp walked in the door — I knew them from high school. When I saw their familiar faces, I was immediately comfortable.
Khujo: Me and T-Mo started fucking with them Crown Royal liquor bags, the purple and gold bags. We used to strap them on our belts and have goodies in them — weed, a couple dollars. Just a little bag we used to walk around with, and it would swing on the side. We’d say, “It’s the goodie bag, man.”
Late 1992: OutKast makes its first recorded appearance on an Organized Noize-produced remix of TLC’s “What About Your Friends.”
Andre: Organized Noize had a relationship with L.A., so L.A. said he’d check us out. He called in the entire staff of LaFace and says, “Go.” I’m nervous, but Rico puts in the DAT and we start rapping. I don’t think L.A. got it, but he said he wanted us to do a showcase. After that, he told Rico he didn’t like it. At that point, I decided I didn’t want to do it anymore. Big Boi was like, “We came this far; we can’t stop now.” We kept on, and the buzz started going around town. Polygram had us showcase for them. I think L.A. got wind, and that helped us get another showcase for him. He gave us a single deal to put a song on their Christmas album. We decided to keep it real — talk about what Christmas was about to us. “Player’s Ball” changed OutKast’s sound. We were rhyming in a way that was melodic and funky.
Sleepy: Ray had a beat that I thought was incredible. He said, “It would be fly if we could find somebody to sing it kind of like Curtis.” I was like, “I can do that.” It was like 5 in the morning, and I just went in there and did it. After, I was like, “That’s kind of funky, I may need to mess with that a little more.” I was just trying to sing like what Curtis Mayfield would’ve sung.
Andre: Puffy [Sean Combs, aka P. Diddy] was the new flavor man at Arista [LaFace's parent company]. He loved “Player’s Ball” and wanted to direct the video. So he comes down to shoot the video with Rico. And Puffy was the first person who brought us out of Atlanta to a show at Howard University, opening for Biggie. Then the video comes out and people are loving the song, so L.A. was like, “You have to record an album.”
April 1994: OutKast debuts with the acclaimed, platinum-selling Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik.
Continue reading here.
