My Gut Reaction: Big Boi - Boomiverse (June 16, 2017)

Boomiverse is only Savannah native Antwan “Big Boi” Patton’s third album since his gig as one-half of OutKast (alongside Andre “3000” Benjamin) would down in 2006. This is one of those facts that doesn’t sound correct no matter how much research one puts into their write-up, but it’s true. Given how often you hear the man on the radio, Big Boi is one of those artists that seems to always be around, having put out so much content over the years that he’s constantly in the spotlight, but even that description isn’t exactly accurate, given that OutKast only released six albums (and one greatest hits collection) from 1994 through 2006, four of which are regarded very highly, one of the remaining two snagging the ever-elusive (for a rap act, anyway) Album of the Year Grammy award in 2004, and the last one being, well, nobody gives a shit about Idlewild so this will be the only sentence I’ll dedicate to it.

Indeed, I thought Big Boi had just dropped his singles from Boomiverse maybe a year ago at most, so I was shocked to discover that this album is four years old. Again I point to the fact that you always seem to hear the man on the radio, but that’s easily attributed to how popular OutKast was at their height and how timeless their best tracks sound – trust me, you’re not ever going to hear “Kill Jill” on hip hop flashback playlists. To his credit, Big Boi is an artist content with letting the work speak for itself, following his own muse and only recording when he feels inspired to do so, as he has the luxury of not being under any pressure to keep his name active within our culture, allowing his investments to help build his wealth while focusing on what really matter sin his life. Nobody’s going to forget him anytime soon anyway, as his name is dragged out for a bullshit bad-faith comparison with his former partner-in-rhyme on social media every other day because hip hop Twitter seems to have the collective memory of a goldfish.

Boomiverse follows 2012’s Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumors, a critically well-received but ultimately hollow-sounding sophomore effort that featured Big Boi forging a new path outside of the scope of OutKast, collaborating with bands he genuinely enjoyed such as Phantogram, Wavves, and Little Dragon in addition to the usual suspects (Killer Mike, Sleepy Brown, T.I.), his beguiling smoothed-out pimp talk presented over soundscapes both familiar and foreign. (It also follows a 2015 joint EP alongside Phantogram, which will be discussed at a later date, possibly on a different website.) Although five whole years had transpired in between full-length projects, Boomiverse fails to recognize how the landscape had altered, as Big Boi and his producers (most excitedly his friends in Organized Noize) present twelve tracks unstuck in time. The guest list, however, tells a different story altogether, as our host calls in favors from the likes of Adam Levine, the aforementioned Killer Mike, Jeezy, Snoop Dogg, Kurupt, LunchMoney Lewis, and Trozé, among many others – every single fucking song on Boomiverse features at least one outside guest, causing this to play as more of a compilation of tracks that happen to also include Big Boi than it does a cohesive album.

1. DA NEXT DAY (FEAT. BIG RUBE)
Boomiverse sets off its evening with a rap album intro, albeit one featuring a rapped verse from our host and, as a throwback to the Dungeon Family days of yore, a spoken-word rap piece from first-generation member Big Rube, one directed toward the hip hop heads fueled by nostalgia. (“Days of yore”? It’s not like Rube has popped up on every project since Southernplayalisticadillacmusik, the fuck am I even talking about?) The pairing of Big Boi with production team Organized Noize, which only really happened twice on his previous full-length project but takes up real estate on half of Boomiverse, is always welcome around these parts, and “Da Next Day” does not disappoint. Even though Ruben’s deep voice and doom prophecy delivery dominates the second half of the track, Antwan’s voice is the first we hear on this intro, as he delivers a verse that helps to level-set the listener with playful shit-talk, although he is quick to establish that he still isn’t the one to be fucked with. Organized Noize gifts their longtime collaborator with a catchy beat that grows much more ominous when Big Rube steps into the booth, shifting back to its factory settings during the vocal-free outro. A brief track that successfully recaptures the vibe OutKast fans have been missing.

2. KILL JILL (FEAT. KILLER MIKE & JEEZY)
“Kill Jill”, one of two singles released on the same day to kick off the Boomiverse promotion, doesn’t share anything with the Kill Bill series of films aside from a willingness to culturally appropriate. (To be clear, I love Kill Bill Vols. 1 & 2, and I wholeheartedly believe that, while Quentin Tarantino is problematic ion many many other areas, the man treated his homage to the king-fu flicks he grew up watching with the respect and reverence of the film nerd that he is. But still, cultural appropriation.) Producers Young Cali, Organized Noize, and Big Boi himself building the instrumental for “Kill Jill” around vocal samples from virtual singer Hatsune Miku is a… well, it’s a choice, one which instantly dated the song in my mind when it first hit rap radio back in 2017, as its aesthetic reminded me of back when our chosen genre was enamored with lifting samples from the Middle East for a time. Altogether different regions, but same general feeling, you get it. Big Boi and longtime friend and collaborator “Killer” Mike Render take up the most screen time, each talking their respective shit (Mike almost exclusively describing a woman he wants to introduce to his wife so that she will agree to a three-way, a topic curiously missing from every Run The Jewels project this far) in charismatic fashion, while guest (Young) Jeezy handles hook duties, managing to unleash some catchy line readings even in his limited role (“They say it’s lonely at the top, but this the best shit ever”). The instrumental is annoying, but not so much that you’re distracted from the performances, which are uniformly entertaining (except for the unnecessary coda provided by Rock D the Legend, which can be easily lopped off without any damage to the original track). This wasn’t bad at all, even with my misgivings regarding the musical backing, but that just means I’d be open to hearing someone remix the shit out of this.

3. MIC JACK (FEAT. ADAM LEVINE, SCAR, & SLEEPY BROWN)
The first thing you’ll notice about “Mic Jack”, and likely the only thing you’ll remember as you hit the ‘skip’ button, never to hear from this track again, is how pop radio-ready the instrumental, credited to DJs Dahl and Khalil, sounds, thick slabs of 1980’s cheesiness wrapped between two pillowy slices of drums. As such, there’s no real place for this to fit onto a Big Boi album anyway, but it really doesn’t make sense to sequence it immediately following “Kill Jill”. (The fact that this was the other single pushed prior to the album’s release makes it very obvious that both Big Boi and (especially) Epic Records were trying to reach as broad an audience as possible.) Surprisingly, Adam Levine’s chorus isn’t the worst thing about “Mic Jack” – it isn’t good, but it’s perfectly serviceable for a song about dancing at the club, which seems to be what he thought the song was about even though Big Boi had his own plans, shuffling through boasts-n-bullshit and even managing to work in the goofy-ass line, “U Build-a-Bear before I build a bitch”, which, huh. You chose to leave that one on the album, bruh? Are we still married to the idea that Big Boi was just as great a lyricist as Andre 3000? Okay then. There was an awful lot of vocalists crooning on “Mic Jack”, a song that truly didn’t require nearly as much participation, as Big Boi never manages to sell this to any audience, so it flops around on land starving for oxygen. Le sigh.

4. IN THE SOUTH (FEAT. GUCCI MANE & PIMP C)
There’s something disingenuous about the line, “Even though the radio refuse to give us airplay,” coming from the mouth of Big Boi, an artist whose group has had multiple successful songs that became popular on mainstream radio airwaves, such as “Rosa Parks”, “Ms. Jackson”, or even “The Way You Move” and “Hey Ya!” (that last one doesn’t count for my purposes today, but you understand). Maybe he was specifically referring to his solo career? It doesn’t truly matter anyway, since “In The South” is so bland that it couldn’t find an audience with a map and a flashlight. A spiritual cousin to Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumors’s “In The A”, “In The South” subs out the city of Atlanta for the entire goddamned Southern region of the United States, dragging along Gucci Mane and the ghost of Pimp C for good measure, and the end result is rather dull. For a song about how they believe the South dominates our chosen culture, there are no convincing arguments made by either Big Boi or Gucci Mane, as both are content with lazily talking shit while hiding behind piles of money, which, as we all know, if obviously the only true sign of a successful career in hip hop. Neither that, nor the bland instrumental provided by the team of Houston producer-slash-rapper Cory Mo, Atlanta’s TM88, and Organized Noize, will ever compel the average listener to give a damn about this track. How could it possibly take this many cooks to conjure up some unseasoned meh in the kitchen? Gucci threatening to pull up on you after he “MapQuest[‘s] your house” is a fucking hilarious image, however.

5. ORDER OF OPERATIONS (FEAT. ERIC BELLINGER)
Scott Storch isn’t a name many expect to read in a rap album’s liner notes these days, but there he is with a production credit on “Order of Operations”. This hardly compares to what the man was pulling out of his ass during his Roots Crew / Dr. Dre ghost-producing heyday, but it isn’t bad: “Order of Operations” finds our host describing his thought process when it came to knowing when to spend and when to save his money, all so he could amass his wealth and have something to pass down to future generations, while crooner Eric Bellinger provides a hook that is a little bit corny, but otherwise straightforward. “Been fucking up some commas way before I could buy a bottle,” is both absolutely true (he was only around seventeen years old when OutKast first broke through, mind you) and exactly the sort of thing one expects to hear a rapper brag about. Less expected is the follow-up two bars later: “I balled throughout my twenties, by thirty, see, I was stashing.” This isn’t even braggadocio at this point, it’s just how Big Boi lives his life, and that authentic feel sells the song much more than the beat ever could on its own. I also enjoyed that shout-out to “Dungeon Family, first generation, still here,” even though it could have been cool if any of them were gifted cameos on Boomiverse, but I realize that’s asking a lot these days.

6. ALL NIGHT (FEAT. LUNCHMONEY LEWIS)
If you’re hard-pressed to describe the potential audience for “Mic Jack”, then you’ll find yourself be-fucking-fuddled by “All Night”, another radio-friendly (save for the occasional curse) concoction with an annoying-as-shit saloon piano loop and some repetitive motions from both crooner LunchMoney Lewis and Big Bii himself. “All Night” isn’t inherently a terrible song: no, it earns that distinction by failing to hold a general understanding of who Big Boi is and an artist, ignoring his pump game, shit-talking, and smooth flow in order to craft a pop song that our cringeworthy host sounds just as uncomfortable over as we will be when listening to it. No bullshit, “All Night” may be the very worst Big Boi solo track of all fucking time. And that’s before I even tell you two that it was produced by pop maestro-slash-alleged rapist-slash-professional not famous person Dr. Luke, a name one doesn’t expect to see on a hip hop album. (I mean, it happens – he did produce a remix of “Respiration” for Black Star, but still.) This was so goddamned corny and terrible that I almost want everyone to listen to it just so you can share my pain. Almost.

7. GET WIT IT (FEAT. SNOOP DOGG)
“Blessed with the gift, and only 3 Stacks can match me,” Big Boi boasts of his rapping prowess and that of his OutKast partner in crime, a line that could also be construed as referring to dick size (hey, no judgment here) except the very next pair of bars are, “Light years ahead of you n----s, another galaxy / Boi keep the club packed to capacity,” so. (Although the like after that is, “Hands in the air, bitched make it clap for me,” which, honestly, could go either way.) “Get Wit It” is an Organized Noize effort that doesn’t really sound like there was any “effort” pit into the throwback-y radio vibe – Big Boi‘s claim that he’ll never cheat on his wife because he isn’t about to risk it all and break up his family aside, there was nothing memorable about this one. Snoop Dogg [pops in with a verse that checks all of the Snoop Dogg boxes (reference to Long Beach, California, check! Reference to being a Crip, check!) but fails to entertain, as the dude’s been around long enough that he can throw sentences together at random, call that a “verse”, and nobody will call him out on his bullshit because he’s motherfucking Snoop Dogg. Le sigh.

8. OVERTHUNK (FEAT. ERIC BELLINGER)
“Overthinking is a drug.” With just four words, guest crooner Eric Bellinger fucking nails how some overly anxious people with a tendency for trying to see each and every possibility for a decision playing out can somehow feel soothed by that very particular pain. (The rest of his hook…eh, not so much. I mean, it’s catchy, but not worthy of a footnote in the DSM-IV.) “Overthunk” is two verses of Big Boi shit-talk over an uncharacteristic Organized Noize synth-heavy instrumental that sounded goofy at first, but grew on me pretty quickly (as did Bellinger’s chorus), and our host flows over it like rushing water over a creek bed. I’m going to try to not overthink this shit and will just say I enjoyed it, which is why I’m cutting this paragraph sho

9. CHOCOLATE (FEAT. TROZÉ)
Big Boi takes a trip to the club, and I discover that I was much too hasty earlier in this write-up: “Chocolate” is the worst song in our host’s solo catalog, with “All Night” coming in a very close second. I wish I could erase the memory of this techno throbbing migraine from my memory, and you will, too, if you’re sadistic enough to force the suffering. There is literally zero audience for this kind of shit, which reminded me of when the late Prodigy released that dubstep project that you two likely have long forgotten about. (It sounded worse than “Chocolate”, but not by much. Here’s a refresher if you truly enjoy self-flagellation.) You should have been smashed that ‘skip’ button by this point.

10. MADE MAN (FEAT. KILLER MIKE & KURUPT)
“Made Man” is a prime example of a song whose value appreciates at one million times the normal speed if you’re quick enough to cut it off at a specific point, which in this case would be right when everything is about to take a turn for the absolute fucking worst. That exact moment is two minutes and twelve seconds into the track, after Killer Michael Render finishes a pretty engaging verse and just before you hear guest star Kurupt’s voice. (I mean, he does appear during the intro, but I mean his rapping voice.) Up until that point, “Made Man” is somehow both subtle and flashy, a punchy instrumental from Beat Butcha and Siege Monstrosity (quite the nickname there) giving Big Boi, Killer Mike, and uncredited guest Renegade EL Rey an opportunity to talk their shit, and the song itself is entertaining as hell.

And then Kurupt opens his fucking mouth.

This motherfucker kicks off his brief verse with a prewritten review for said brief verse: “I’m terrible.” Because he is, and even he seems to be cognizant of that fact. Kurupt fucking sucks on “Made Man”, his lazy-as-shit “performance” torpedoing the track, leaving it lost at sea without hope that any survivors could ever be rescued. It had been a while since I had shifted from digging a song to absofuckinglutely hating it so quickly, so kudos to you, Big Boi. I still cannot believe this is the same Kurupt who used to be one of the elite lyricists within this here hip hop culture. Is this what happens when you believe in your own hype so goddamned much that you refuse to exert any effort? Because he's fucking “terrible”.

11. FREAKANOMICS (FEAT. SLEEPY BROWN)
We’re thisclose to the end of Boomiverse, and Antwan decides to throw yet another goofy crossover attempt at the listener for them to digest. Here’s the thing, though – I was okay with {“Freakanomics”. Maybe it’s because I’m, listening to this track on a different day than I did “Chocolate” or “All Night” (yep, there’s a peek behind the curtain for you two, sometimes these reviews can take several days, occasionally non-consecutively, to complete). (Side note: I just re-listened to both of those abysmal tracks to ensure there wasn’t any latent bias on my part, and they still sounded fucking horrible, so. The things I do for the readers, right?) “Freakanomics” is a song about suppressing any sign of economic instability in order to get laid, and it’s poppy sound, provided by Ian Kirkpatrick, Organized Noize, and Big Boi himself, surprisingly never gets that old, and there are even jazzy elements thrown in just to keep you on your toes. The hook is catchy in a “Huh, this isn’t that bad!” – kind of way, and while Big Boi’s actual verses weren’t much in the way of content, his charisma pushes this one over the edge. I cannot with good conscience recommend you add this one to your playlists, but it’s a pleasure that may or may not be considered “guilty”.

12. FOLLOW DEEZ (FEAT. CURREN$Y & KILLER MIKE)
Boomiverse ends its broadcast day with “Follow Deez”, a track that outright refuses to provide any of the closure you subconsciously expect from an album. Hell, Big Boi doesn’t even factor into the equation all that much – guest stoner Curren$y has much more screen time, providing both the chorus and a verse. His is also the first and last voice you hear over this low-key Mannie Fresh bounce instrumental, one that plays as a throwback to the type of beats he provided for all of Cash Money Records before the acts on the label exploded. It isn’t bad, is what I’m trying to say, and it also isn’t as flashy or overtly bling bling-y as his more popular efforts. Big Boi sounded fine in his limited role, while Curren$y’s default pithead drawl would certainly make it seem like he would be voted most likely to be buried by the instrumental, but the ideological clash works wonders for him, as he talks his shit with ease. Killer Mike rounds out Boomiverse with a performance that both sounded great and said absolutely nothing of substance, a critique that could apply to many of this album’s high points, of which there weren’t all that many, if we’re being really real.

THE LAST WORD: Boomiverse is an incredibly disjointed project that would have benefited from better editing, if not someone in Big Boi’s circle telling him to scrap every single goddamn song. This is no album – it’s a collection of singles stacked atop one another wearing a trenchcoat trying to purchase tickets to an R-rated movie. It’s difficult to believe that our host felt particularly inspired to push these songs to the marketplace, especially given how little involvement he has on its final track. Big Boi still sounds cooler than Freddie Jackson sipping a milkshake in a snowstorm throughout, but he isn’t interested in whether or not anyone else wants to take this musical journey with him, and you simply won’t give a damn either way.

That isn’t to say there aren’t some enjoyable diversions on Boomiverse. “Kill Jill” is one of those songs that absolutely shouldn’t work under any circumstances, and yet. I still kind of dug “Overthunk”, too. But three of the absolute worst things Big Boi has ever brought into this world are included on Boomiverse, which is more than enough to curse this fucker with eternal damnation, and the rest of the album is just kind of there, not bad enough to hate but not remotely engaging enough to give a shot. (Except for that Kurupt verse, which, if you have even a mild heart condition, you won't want to come close to hearing, lest you put your health at risk for utter bullshit.) If this is what it took Big Boi five years to come up with, maybe he should have held out for ten, I’m just saying.

At least Boomiverse features some entertaining turns from Killer Mike and Curren$y, and as I wrote above, Adam Levine’s hook on “Mic Jack” really isn’t bad at all, if you’re open to that sort of thing. I found myself wishing that Antwan had continued down the alternative indie-rock path that his previous full-length hinted at – I imagine the dude would sound fucking fantastic on a Gorillaz album, and I can get behind following one’s muse. What I can’t abide, however, is paint-by-numbers hip hop created by checking boxes on a list provided by an A&R. This Boomiverse is a bust.

-Max

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Missed a review for one of Big Boi’s solo projects, or just want to read up on OutKast? Catch up by clicking the links.