Buttery, lacquered-piano plays over top of a strings section. As the sound rolls out with timpani drums, we’re left with Jimi Hendrix’s psychedelic wet dream on a very electrified guitar, before a brass flourish somehow transforms it all into a smooth jazz-inflected number. Seamlessly. Andre 3000 is the method to this madness with The Love Below, his half of OutKast’s new album, serving as his vehicle.
Perhaps OutKast’s decision to divide up the duties for this double album arose from some need to rest. Their long string of successes finding some synthesis between Big Boi’s gators and Andre’s knee-length white pleather lace-up platform boots must have been tiring, right? Listening to The Love Below, it’s hard to imagine that such a union was ever fruitful, because it’s so implausibly left-field and next-level. A warning: If you’re looking for a dose of the dirty-dirty, something remotely resembling Stankonia or Aquemini, fast forward in search of “Spread” (oh, wow!) or maybe “Roses.” Better yet, you might take refuge on Speakerboxxx, Big Boi’s disk. Otherwise, strap yourself in.
Most will first encounter The Love Below in the video for the album’s first single, “Hey Ya!” Mirroring the complete control he exercised over the production of the song, on the video Andre plays every character in his own band. In the most infectious song of the fall, “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”-era Beatles meets the controlled insanity of Andre 3000’s keyboards, with a healthy dose of the honesty so lacking in those 1960s love ballads: “Don’t wanna meet your daddy, just want you in my Caddy / Don’t wanna meet your mama, just want to make you …” Umm, we’ll make this a fill-in-the-blank test. Use your imagination.
Up until that point, though, it seems that everyone’s favorite successor to Prince (pre-symbol) has fallen in love, while we’re left wondering if our ears are malfunctioning. The range and originality of the disc, though expected, are hard to imagine without listening for yourself. After the smooth jazz on “Love Hater,” you arrive somehow at “Happy Valentine’s Day,” where Andre seems to have assumed the identity of Cupid Valentino, our Sopranos-era matchmaker. Cherubs come in for the hook singing, “Ya won’t believe in me but you would fancy leprechauns or groundhogs / No thank you, Easter Bunny.” What?
After a couple of relative throwaway tracks in “Behold a Lady” and “Pink & Blue,” The Love Below is back to business. “She’s Alive” might be the emotional center of the album-even if it’s poorly placed-and finds Andre addressing his failed relationship with Erykah Badu. “Dracula’s Wedding,” on the other end of the spectrum has you back to shaking it like a Polaroid picture. Responding to Andre’s … err … Dracula’s fears, Kelis proclaims in her guest vocal, “So much at stake … oh! Bad choice of words / but I’m not the gun with silver bullets / and I can count, plus I make great peanut butter / and jelly sandwiches.” Phew.
An instrumental interpretation of The Sound of Music’s “My Favorite Things,” and a guest appearance from Norah Jones on “Take Off Your Cool” rounds out the album. But be sure to make it to the final track, “A Life in the Day of Benjamin Andre,” then listen to the album over again from a new perspective. But a quicker summary might be had on “Spread,” where Andre pretty much nails The Love Below to the wall. He instructs his new love to “tell your girlfriends you’ll send them a postcard from 3000.” Indeed.
