written by Andrew Lunny
Whenever conversation arises about the future of hip-hop, two extremes are brought up: that obscure avant-garde artists will expand the boundaries for all concerned, or that repetitive crass commercialism will beat the music like a dead horse. The truth is that most of the future hip-hop won’t sound like the sonic experiments of Reaching Quiet or the recycled Puffy redundancy; it will be determined by successful, creative artists. More specifically, the future of hip-hop is Outkast. As universally respected figureheads of the Southern rap renaissance, Big Boi and Andre 3000 are probably hip-hop’s most important group, and ‘Stankonia’ is a fine follow-up in their tradition of diverse and brilliant albums.