Speakerboxxx/The Love Below - Composition

Composition

Big Boi's Speakerboxxx drops cutting-edge hip-hop that's at turns freaky and socially aware. Andre 3000's The Love Below eschews hip-hop almost entirely with a set of jazzy pop funk steeped in the eclectic influence of Prince.

“ ” — Roni Sarig, Rolling Stone

Most critics were also particularly more interested in André's half of the album than in Big Boi's solo venture, due to the experimentation with several music genres on The Love Below. The intro of the album was already a trip on classical music, "Love Hater" has purely jazz influences, and the rest was a combination of soul, funk, R&B, and hip-hop. Will Hermes from Entertainment Weekly pointed that André's album "is as strange and rich a trip as pop offers nowadays, a song cycle about love's battle against fear and (self-) deception that's frequently profound, hilarious, and very, very sexy." Prince's influences are very notable on André 3000, as it is particularly noted on the track "She Lives in My Lap" (very reminiscent to Prince's "She's Always in My Hair"), a funky piece where André's voice is accompanied by a female voice in a style similar to the one of Prince's bandmates Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman. The Love Below also found André singing more than rapping (a fact that found criticism on many fans familiarized with OutKast previous style). Hermes noted: "Dre sings more than raps here, which could be a problem, as his nasal drawl isn't the greatest instrument. But hip-hop, like punk, is about making magic with limited means through the sheer force of creative will, and whether he's cooing baby noises on the Goth-soul cha-cha Pink & Blue or scatting with multiplatinum siren Norah Jones on the interlude Take Off Your Cool, Dre's limitations read here like strengths."

The Love Below is substantially longer than Big Boi's Speakerboxxx, clocking in at almost 78 minutes, compared to 56 minutes for Speakerboxxx. Featured guests on Speakerboxxx include Sleepy Brown, Jazze Pha, Jay-Z, Cee-Lo Green, Killer Mike, Goodie Mob, Lil' Jon and Ludacris. Guests on The Love Below include Rosario Dawson, Norah Jones, Kelis, and Fonzworth Bentley. Songs that were to be featured on The Love Below included "Millionaire" featuring Kelis and "Long Way to Go" featuring Gwen Stefani. Those two were scrapped, and instead included in the collaborators' own albums—Tasty and Love. Angel. Music. Baby., respectively. Big Boi included André 3000 in producing and co-writing on four tracks from Speakerboxxx, while on The Love Below, the only song featuring a verse by Big Boi is "Roses".

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