While their five-times-platinum 2003 Arista set, “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below,” continues to yield hit singles, the members of acclaimed hip-hop duo OutKast have an ambitious slate of projects on tap for 2005. Andre 3000 and Big Boi have just finished filming their first movie, which will air on HBO, and are simultaneously working on two albums.
The pair has also signed a distribution deal with Virgin for its Purple Label imprint, which will house longtime collaborator Sleepy Brown and rapper Bubba Sparxxx (formerly of Interscope).
“We just finished the OutKast movie, which will be out next year,” Big Boi said on the red carpet at the Billboard Music Awards, where OutKast took home five trophies. “We don’t know what it will be called yet. The next album probably will be the soundtrack to the movie. But we’re also working on another album called ‘The Hard 10,’ which is top secret.”
Big Boi added that the new music features he and Andre 3000 working together, as opposed to “Speakerboxx/The Love Below,” which comprised one disc of material from each artist. As for the film, it is set in the Prohibition-era South and features Ving Rhames, Terrence Howard and Paula Jai Parker, in addition to Big Boi and Andre.
OutKast manager Kenneth “Blue” Williams told Billboard.com scheduling is still up in the air for the film and album projects. “If the movie comes out in the spring, the next album will be the soundtrack to that,” he said. “If we push the movie until fall, we may drop ‘The Hard 10’ in the spring, to hold fans over. But creatively, with Dre and Big, they may just say, ‘No, we’ll wait,’ and the next album will be the soundtrack to the movie.”
Asked to describe the sound of the new tunes thus far, Williams enthused, “You’re going to be surprised, because you’ll be like, ‘How did they do it again, musically?’ I can’t really describe it, but whenever I go into one of their new projects and hear the music, I find myself going, ‘Wow, it’s different, but it’s still a hit.'”
Source billboard.com.
