We haven't been able to take payment
You must update your payment details via My Account or by clicking update payment details to keep your subscription.
Update payment details
Act now to keep your subscription
We've tried to contact you several times as we haven't been able to take payment. You must update your payment details via My Account or by clicking update payment details to keep your subscription.
Update payment details
Your subscription is due to terminate
We've tried to contact you several times as we haven't been able to take payment. You must update your payment details via My Account, otherwise your subscription will terminate.
Update payment details

Accessibility Links

Skip to content
The Times & The Sunday Times
The Times & The Sunday Times
  • Subscribe
Subscribe

Outkast

The Times
The Times

Idlewild

(La Face/RCA)

Evidently Andre 3000, the flamboyant half of Atlanta’s OutKast, does not tire of being compared with Prince.

After transforming his hip-hop into psychedelic pop on 2003’s Speakerboxxx/ The Love Below, Andre’s model this time seems to be Prince’s 1986 movie Under the Cherry Moon. Hence Idlewild, OutKast’s sixth album, finds Andre — a romantic misfit — fusing contemporary R&B with Cotton Club showstoppers. Often, on this messy and occasionally brilliant album, he seems preoccupied with this schtick, so much so that his tracks try frantically hard to impress. It is left to Big Boi, ostensibly OutKast’s more conventional half, to provide the highlights — wonderfully flighty Southern funk tunes such as Peaches and The Train.

Advertisement

JOHN MULVEY