10 Underrated Albums By Huge Bands

It’s worth acknowledging up front that this is, by some distance, Outkast’s worst album. It’s overly long for the amount of ideas it contains, and struggles to reach the heights that they’ve hit previously. This is Outkast, though, so an incredibly high bar to clear; and even when they don’t clear it, there’s still plenty of interesting stuff.

Idlewild is a companion piece/soundtrack to the film of the same name, but no knowledge of the movie is needed. The album continues the Speakerboxxx/Love Below trend of seeing Big Boi and Andre 3000 increasingly isolated from one another, off doing their own thing.

In Andre’s case, that’s getting increasingly spacey and weird on the charming "Chronomentrophobia", or showing off his pipes on "When I Look in Your Eyes". Big Boi, meanwhile, hones his tight songcraft, collaborating with Janelle Monae on album standout "Call the Law".

The pair do rap together like old times in stretches, but it was clear to fans that Outkast was basically over at this point. It’s an idiosyncratic, ideas-laden note on which to end things, which is totally appropriate.