im sure this has already been posted somewhere, but on the quick fly i couldnt find it...but idlewild really is not a great piece of work imo...

even the song with macy gray sucks.

anyone else feeling this weak album? they have so much more potential than this!

Hi vi!! Haven't heard the new Outkast yet, so I have no comment for it. Guess I'm not missing much.

It's not bad, but it's certainly way too long, therefore containing too many fillers. Some songs are good or very good, overall it's way overrated, IMO.

I'm a big Outkast fan and I love it. It is actually too good for radio! I hope they do more of this stuff in the future. I mean they have so much money they can just sit back and not worry so much about making the next big hit.

Lova!! What do you mean, Idlwild is the shit!! You are the shit girl, but ya gotta give it another chance babe.

Andre the man goddamnit.

It's a solid one, in my book! But the two things that surprises me about the Idlewild soundtrack is that this time around, I was feeling more of the Big Boi material than Dre 3000's experimental shindig and much of the album isn't mainstream product. Overall, I liked the album, even though there were some stinkers like Macy Gray's awful Greatest Show On Earth.

2freaky4church1 said:

yes andre is the man babe....but this album, (and im a huge outkast fan too) i just am not feeling it.

theres no funk or soul in it....AND i really dont like some of the lyrical content towards girls...kinda doggish coming from the gents....



maybe it will grow...im trying...

Its creative.. but creative shit.



Notice the emphasis on shit

i love it.

sallysassalot said:

Me too.

This is the first album of theirs I haven't bought. I'm sure I'll get around to it someday, but I haven't felt compelled yet.

i keep trying...and im just not feeling it.

im selling it.

calldapplwondery83 said:

agree

maybe this LA Times article will sum it up..

'Idlewild'
The movie "Idlewild" and the music of OutKast can learn from each other. The film plays it straight, but the album takes risks.
By Ann Powers, Times Staff Writer
August 23, 2006

The air around OutKast's "Idlewild" is humid and thick as gravy, and I'm not talking about the summer haze enveloping the fictional Southern town where the film takes place. The movie starring hip-hop's top duo and the sort-of soundtrack sharing its name — both out this week — are being greeted with a grim earnestness that seems quite overblown, given that pop stars are always making entertainingly flawed cinematic forays and off-kilter soundtracks to go with them.

Internet tastemakers are declaring "Idlewild" "the end of 'Kast." More positive reviews still say the record's awfully weird. Even the deluge of flattery in glossy magazines, expected for a $27-million HBO-sponsored release, hangs heavy with awkward questions about whether André "Andre 3000" Benjamin and Antwan "Big Boi" Patton are even speaking and which Prince movie will finally provide "Idlewild's" best analogy: the miraculously successful "Purple Rain" or the embarrassing "Under the Cherry Moon."

It's not a condemnation to note that "Idlewild" has a lot in common with Prince's first film flop. Both projects followed a breakthrough moment for a forward-thinking act who'd made it deeper into the mainstream than anyone expected: the legendary "Purple Rain" for Prince and the diamond-certified double-disc "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below" for OutKast. Both films tell the classic story of artist as outlaw, sacrificing conventional happiness in favor of sensuality and creative inspiration; Prince's Christopher Tracy is a gigolo shot down while on the run with his forbidden love, while Benjamin and Patton's Percival and Rooster are two small-town showmen who escape drudgery nightly at a joint paradoxically named Church, only to court death pursuing their Cotton Club dreams. Both films draw nostalgic connections between contemporary black culture and the golden age of speak-easy piano-tinkling — Prince went vintage by sporting a pencil mustache and bolero hat; Benjamin and Patton opt for zoot suits and breeches. And both film "soundtracks" (Prince's was called "Parade") touch lightly upon prewar musical styles to further the musical experiments their makers had already begun.

For Prince, that meant mixing funk and psychedelia with a jazz-inspired sense of harmony and rhythm. For OutKast, it means borrowing from Prince — and his own borrowings from disco-era speak-easy revivalists August Darnell, Chic and the Pointer Sisters — to connect hip-hop not just to jazz, but to the stream of backtalk and risk-taking that carried African American artists from blackface to black pride. This reach for the long view lends "Idlewild" the film its best qualities — though certain opportunities remain unrealized — and makes "Idlewild" the album hard to grasp.

This isn't what we need from OutKast. With hits like "Hey Ya!" and "Rosa Parks," the duo has come closer to confronting the troubling hyperboles of black American culture — the legacies of blackface and coon song — than virtually any other hip-hop-era artist. OutKast's seriously comic take on black eccentricity speaks volumes about the historical weight of notions like "freakiness." Their film needs more of that freakiness, instead of the three-hankie sentimentality that dominates. In its best moments "Idlewild" connects with OutKast's weirdness, which is an act of resistance: an acknowledgment of how black American expression has been poisoned by stereotypes and an attempt to disrupt those caricatures and make them human again. At its worst, the film trades in the very clichés about romance, redemption and music that listeners run to OutKast to avoid.

Strangely, "Idlewild" the album suffers from almost the opposite problem. It's so sonically challenging and lyrically wide-ranging that it could almost use some clichés. Twenty-five tracks offer outstanding material for contemplation and booty-shaking, including the memoiristic soulfulness of Patton's "Train" and the cosmic reach of Benjamin's "Mutron Angel," which might have been written by dance-rock guru Moby. Yet "Idlewild" leaves the ears longing for something. Coherence, basically. There's no sustaining mood, no clear message, only Benjamin and Patton's efforts to outdo whatever they came up with last. As the music veers from summer jams to fusion excursions, lyrics flitting in and out of focus as the duo contemplates its own inner tensions, the annoyances of the mating game, the threat of hurricanes and the fear of clocks, overload sets in.

Individual tracks shine: Patton's never written a verse as touching as his dissection of a failing marriage in "Peaches," and though Benjamin's a merely adequate crooner on the Cole Porter-ish "When I Look in Your Eyes," he's effervescent sampling a marching band on "Morris Brown" or twisting his tongue on "PJ & Rooster." Even "Bad Note," Benjamin's lengthy descent into stoner rock, offers some pleasures.

Collaborators contribute much — vocalist-consigliere Sleepy Brown gives several Big Boi tracks the smoothest ride in town, female guests Gray, Janelle Monae and Whild Peach expand the group's vocabulary, and even the macho rapper Killer Mike adds some useful intonation. And on "Hollywood Divorce," a strange little number that strives to connect goth rock to Compton-style gangsta rap, New Orleans superstar Lil Wayne steals the show with a rhyme so effortless, it's indelible. Plus, it boasts the indefatigable Snoop, reciting wedding vows as if they're a sentence of 15 to life.

Snoop and Lil Wayne, dropping it easy, make their moments on "Idlewild" enjoyable. Elsewhere, effort is what keeps it from being a truly satisfying listening experience. Haunted by accusations of their partnership's demise (as if their relationship wasn't already rocky three years ago, when they released those two solo albums as an ersatz set), Patton and Benjamin seem panicked, unable to put on the brakes to enjoy what talent and success have granted them. They're taking chances, but not for the right reasons.

The aura surrounding a release can't help but affect the way one hears it, and in a year or two, "Idlewild's" reckless gamble could sound different. The millions who will surely buy this album would be wise to keep it on the shelf for a while, and to play around with ways of listening — program your player to hear only half the cuts, for example, or create your own sequence. A great album could still emerge from its confusion. After all, "Under the Cherry Moon" flopped two decades ago, but it seems quite charming today.

i must admit its not their best imo. but i still like it. the macy gray and 'morris brown', and the idlewild blue track art the best imo. i kinda like 'badnote', i guess cause it kinda has a 'maggot brain' flow.

brownsugar said:

yup

I dig em.

brownsugar said:

I agree with what you said about it not being their best and I will also like to ask, do you all think it was worth the freaking wait because to me it definitely wasn't. This was recorded in a rush...

silverchild said:

i think they should've taken more time with it. some of the tracks could've easily been reworked or trashed altogether. they should've taken more time with the movie too eventhough it had taken so long already.

it was so so-ish. i think it woulda been a better soundtrack if they hadent done a period peice movie and that. surely they got something else coming up.