Goodie Mob – “No Cigar” (Feat. André 3000) & “Prey 4 Da Sheep” (Feat. Big Boi)
The Dungeon Family lives on. The legendary Atlanta rap collective included OutKast, Goodie Mob, and the Organized Noize production team, and it was responsible for a whole lot of the best music the ’90s and early ’00s. In the time since their heyday, the members of the DF have scattered to the four winds. (André 3000, for instance, has been the subject of a whole lot of eyewitness stories that often involve playing flutes in parks, and he’s also acted on Jason Segel’s AMC series Dispatches From Elsewhere.) But on a new album, the members of the Dungeon Family, André included, have reassembled.
Today, the Goodie Mob have released the new album Survival Kit, their follow-up to the 2013 reunion effort Age Against The Machine. Organized Noize produced the entire LP, and both members of OutKast show up, though they’re sadly not on the same song. Instead, the two of them make back-to-back appearances. André has a loose loopy verse at the end of “No Cigar,” and Big Boi gets stentorian and apocalyptic on “Prey 4 Da Sheep,” the song that immediately follows “No Cigar.”
The whole player-and-the-poet dynamic of OutKast was always a bit of a false binary, but it’s still pretty funny that André raps about having sex immediately after Big Boi raps about the society-crumbling effects of inequality. Sadly, the entire Dungeon Family does not reunite on Survival Kit, even though they were all onstage together in Atlanta four years ago. On Survival Kit, Cool Breeze and Witchdoctor and Backbone are all absent. (Future, the onetime Dungeon Fam affiliate who once recorded as Meathead, has his own new project out today.) But inspirational figure Chuck D does show up to do some booming hypeman stuff on opening track “Are You Ready.” Here’s “No Cigar,” the track with André:
Here’s “Prey 4 Da Sheep,” the one with Big Boi:
While you’re at it, here’s the full album: