#365songs (100 / 365)

Follow-up to yesterday's post about a song from Big Boi's first post-Outkast album; like in another recent post, the relatively lesser-known album from someone in the defunct more-famous act got me to go back and see what I'd missed.

Of course, I hadn't entirely missed Outkast. What I remember them most for was "Ms. Jackson," which the team captain would play in his car when he drove to math team meets. (And I must have known "Hey Ya," because how could I not have.) But I definitely only remembered the chorus, not the verses. "Ms. Jackson" definitely fits the stereotype/popular conception of André as the sensitive dreamer and Big Boi as brash traditionalist. Big Boi's verses are fine, but they're kind of aggressive; André's tender, mature, regretful verse, on the other hand, impressed me as one of his finest even though I'd listened to all of Aquemini before I came back around to Stankonia.

Aquemini is the better album, I maintain. But "Ms. Jackson" fully earned its status as world-conquering single that managed to penetrate even my blinkered high school white boy awareness. When I returned to it as a somewhat more mature adult, well... sometimes I fancy myself the kind of person who likes deep cuts, but this song was and is undeniable. Also André is wearing a dress on the cover of the single. Icon. Legend.