For both commercial and creative motives, hip-hop and indie rock artists have attempted to navigate the tricky intersection between their audiences. Until recently these projects have been mostly limited to singles and remixes.
“Big Grams”, the collaborative EP by Outkast’s Big Boi and indie-electronic rock duo Phantogram, continues the collaboration that started with Big Boi’s 2012 release, “Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumors.”
For his part, Big Boi has yet to truly emerge from the shadow of Outkast. Further complicating a successfully solo career for Big Boi, was last year’s Outkast reunion tour, which turned out to be an uninspired money-grab
The good news is that this collaboration is so non-intuitive that it can only have creative reasons behind it.
“Big Grams” at its best is two great styles melding together well, but the fact that it cannot sustain throughout the entirety of a mere seven-track EP makes you glad they didn’t attempt to create a longer record.
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The first single on the record, “Fell in the Sun”, is the strongest track. Spartan beats provide a backdrop for Big Boi’s verses, countered by Carter’s and Barthel’s lush keys, and this is how “Big Grams” works the best, when both artists bring an equal amount of influence to the table.
On tracks like “Fell in the Sun” and “Goldmine Junkie”, both groups take chances and go outside their comfort zones. Big Boi tries some singing and Barthel stretches her vocal boundaries with a rap.
Where “Big Grams” fails is when it attempts to be a canvas for Big Boi’s rhymes. Take away the swoosh of the Phantogram sound, Carter’s beats become indistinguishable from any number of producers, and Antwan’s lyrics are simply not engaging enough to make up for it, especially when indulging in misogynistic fantasy.
A little bit of this goes a long way. When Big Boi busts with the “vitamin D” joke on the otherwise indie-friendly “Fell in the Sun”, it’s almost refreshing in a laugh-out-loud kind of way,
It could be that Big Boi’s post-Outkast career would serve him best as a producer, coordinating talent to distract from his own artistic limitations. His former band member Andre Benjamin said that he hasn’t returned to the rap game because he doesn’t feel he has anything to say, and that he simply doesn’t have the fire that it takes to contribute anything meaningful, or even interesting. As Big Boi attempts to make his mark as a solo artist, maybe this would be good advice to heed.
