Album Of The Week: Big Boi Vicious Lies And Dangerous Rumors

After Speakerboxxx, after Big Boi Presents Got Purp?, after Sir Lucious Left Foot, it's now possible to say that Big Boi, the solo artist, has his very own aesthetic -- one pretty far removed from the ruminative Dungeon Family gutbucket soul-funk that animated the first three OutKast albums. Big Boi's sound builds on the anarchic plastic funk of Stankonia, pushing it further, weirding it up. On Big Boi's own records, sound veer in all directions, squirming and veering and switching up mid-bar. Producers pile on the guitar-squiggles and horn-stabs and synth-noodles until the tracks seems like they're about to fly apart. It's a sound that mirrors Big Boi's precise, tourettic, ADD delivery. In the context of all that, Big Boi's longtime, much-remarked-upon Kate Bush fandom makes a lot more sense; of course he'd love listening to another virtuosic and idiosyncratic vocalist, another artist who pushes her voice in every unexpected direction at once and who encourages her collaborators to do the same. That aesthetic is a tough one to pull off, and the enduring strength of both Speakerboxxx and Sir Lucious Left Foot is even more impressive in hindsight. Vicious Lies And Dangerous Rumors, Big Boi's new one, isn't quite as inventive and skillful as those two ones, but it's still an end-to-end rewarding experience, another missive from a craftsman unafraid to risk complete embarrassment in the pursuit of fleet-footed funk euphoria.