Background
Speakerboxxx/The Love Below represented a departure from Outkast's previous work. First of all, the album worked as two albums on a single set, with the first (Speakerboxxx) working as a Big Boi solo project and the second (The Love Below) as an André solo album. Critics pointed to this fact, and some felt what initially limits the album finally helps it succeed artistically. Stephen Thomas Erlewine compared this expanded creative freedom between each members of the group with what happened to The Beatles in 1968, saying "the effect is kind of like if the Beatles issued The White Album as one LP of Lennon tunes, the other of McCartney songs—the individual records may be more coherent, but the illusion that the group can do anything is tarnished. By isolating themselves from each other, Big Boi and Andre 3000 diminish the idea of OutKast slightly, since the focus is on the individuals, not the group. Which, of course, is part of the point of releasing solo albums under the group name—it's to prove that the two can exist under the umbrella of the OutKast aesthetic while standing as individuals."
Read more about this topic: Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
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