Big Boi's Back Up Plan

Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty was three years in the making and had a few false starts. What got in the way?

Just label red tape – politricks – you know. Trying to get the label to understand the music, but we came to an agreement and they let me go to Def Jam, back with [chairman and CEO] L.A. Reid, and now everything is everything. I’ve been on track, even with all that stuff going on, I still stayed recording – and that’s what it’s about. You’ve got to stay recording, keep putting your ideas down.

Has character rapping, and the fantasy that aliases like this one brings, played a big part in your development as an MC?

Oh yeah, most definitely, man. It’s a new personality – it’s like when Luke Skywalker became a Jedi. Dead serious; I’m fiercely into my craft, I love making music – this is what I was put on this earth to do. Sir Lucious Leftfoot is your knight in rhyming armour, a crusader of funk as such – and I’m not to be messed with.

Has the subject matter of what you write about changed much, from OutKast's debut in '94 to date? 

Nah, it hasn’t changed. You’ve got to talk about your life. Albums are time capsules and what you’re doing, basically, is letting the consumer know what’s been happening in your life since the last time they heard you. Whether it’s relationships, politics, to just having fun sometimes. As long as the listener can feel where you’re coming from, that’s all it’s about – making the listener feel you. 

Your music has always been convincingly eclectic and futuristic. Are those qualities that you've always consciously looked for in the studio?

The whole basis of me and Dré [AKA OutKast’s André 3000] making music, from the start, was that we wanted to be separate from the norm. We always wanted to be on the outskirts, never wanted to follow trends – we wanted to set them. To do so you have to be experimental, and man, I’m a funk scientist.

Where do you find inspiration, in-between albums?

It definitely comes from within; you just really have to know what you’re here for. Music makes me happy, when you create that ultimate groove or you write that bomb-ass verse, and you do it at the hours of three or four in the morning. You wake up around noon or so, you push play and it’s still jamming. That is something you can’t replace.

You produced the highest selling hip-hop album of all time with Speakerboxxx/The Love Below –  a huge achievement in the new millennium, particularly for a double LP. Has that been a lot to live up to ?

Nah man, there’s no expiration date on thought. You can do this as long as you want to, as long as your heart’s in it and you’re making music that’s true to you, you’ve got to do it. One thing about me and Dré is we never look back; once we do something we don’t look back and say ‘how do we make it bigger than that?’ The name of the game is not to make it bigger than the last thing you do, but to get in a certain space where you can still make the listener feel you.

What does the future hold for OutKast?

After we both put out these solo albums there’s an OutKast project that we've been working towards getting to, we’ll keep you posted.

Can you tell us anything about it?

Top secret, I can’t say nothin’. It probably won’t be out this year. 

You’ve bred pit bulls and moved into composing music for ballet in the last few years, while at the same time you branched out into film and TV acting. What’s left on the bucket list? You said once that you might run for Mayor of Atlanta one day – was there any seriousness to that?

That was just me joking around with my mom one day. She was like ‘you can run for mayor’. But I’m real big on community service, so I have my Big Kidz Foundation, with that I can do everything I want to, as far as social services go. It’s about preparing kids for the future – teaching them public speaking – so I have my way of giving back, and I’m big on giving back. It’s better to mould a young mind than it is to repair a broken man, you understand. You’ve got to start out when they’re young.

If you were given the authority or magic wand to do so, what key thing would you change about the music industry today?

The level of creativity; there’s a lack of creativity in music where there’s just a lot of biting going on. Biting is whack – people need to stop that. Be your own self and stop trying to be like everybody else.