OutKast

Now that it’s safe to say “Shake it like a Polaroid picture” without getting slapped upside the head, we thought we’d connect every last dot in the daunting career of OutKast, the Dirty South’s freakiest, funkiest act this side of Goodie Mob. Speaking of Cee-Lo’s old group, they pop up on “Git Up, Git Out,” a classic posse cut that sets our scene perfectly alongside the guitar-laced grooves of “Rosa Parks,” the richly layered loops of “Ms. Jackson,” and the collar-poppin’ keys of “So Fresh, So Clean.”

Which says nothing of the catalog-skimming cuts in our Next Steps . . .

As if the nocturnal Prince nods of “She Lives In My Lap” and the trunk-thumpin’ funk of “Roses” weren’t enough of a reminder that OutKast’s more than just a rap group, the duo’s sixth full-length disc doubled as the genre-jumping soundtrack to a film that also happens to star Big Boi and Andre 3000. Got all that? Lucky for us, the songs are as challenging and catchy as the rest of OutKast’s discography, from the marching-band backing of “Morris Brown” to the major guest stars (Snoop Dogg, Lil Wayne) and steam-pressed drum machines of “Hollywood Divorce.”

A couple soundtrack selections also line our Deep Cuts, paying tribute to the blues, jazz, and R&B in the space between some fan favorites and solo standouts.

Between Big Boi’s ghetto-fab getups and Andre 3000’s blinding collection of pastels and plaids, OutKast look like the unlikeliest power couple in the history of hip-hop. They sound like it on their best-selling double album, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, too. And yet that’s the reason why they’re walking icons — because they mix things up without worrying about how a song might sound. They jump right off the deep end instead, whether that means building a flawless pop tune on top of a crystalline Casio (“Hey Ya!”), keeping a cut going for seven minutes alongside hazy horns and steady-handed drums (“SpottieOttieDopaliscious”), or tackling the rave-on rhythms of techno (“B.O.B.”). All you’ve gotta do is keep an open mind . . . although it’s about to get cracked wide open either way.

Now that it's safe to say, "Shake it like a Polaroid picture" again, we thought we'd re-examine the Dirty South's freakiest, funkiest act this side of Goodie Mob. Speaking of Cee-Lo's pre-Gnarls Barkley group, they're also featured here on three collaborative slices of melancholic ("Dirty South," "Black Ice") and massive ("Get Rich to This") hip-hop. As for the 'Kast, the scope of tracks here is mind-boggling, pillaging and plundering from every genre known to man, except for maybe country and classical. So while a beat remains at the gooey center of every track, Andre 3000 and Big Boi treat every studio session like a sparring match between their influences — a crowded lot that changes by the day from rap to rock, techno to traditional jazz, and neo-soul to suitably stanky funk.