OutKast - Idlewild

Music makes the world go round, where it goes, you just don't know..., but it rarely goes the way of stadium-chasing skinny Scotsmen producing jazz-funk stank like this, as Sara Cox recently announced on Radio 1. Get it right now – the album is called 'Idlewild' and the band is called OutKast.

As if they weren't internationally famous enough as established hip-hop envelope pushers and bona fide pop superstars, Big Boi and Andre 3000 bitch-slapped their bosses into making them a movie to star in – and here is the soundtrack, or part of it, at least. With the film of the same name due in the UK early September, the US release has confirmed that the album represents no more than an approximate representation of some of the soundtrack, with added unfeatured tracks. 'Kast just playin' wit' y'all, see?

It adds to the slight confusion of an album that doesn't quite match its predecessors - perhaps the film release will explain, for example, the baffling musical skit Makes No Sense At All, a track so appropriately-named that it renders all other analysis redundant. 'Purple Rain' never had this problem - it stood as a great record in its own right. If the album then feels almost like an ambitious side-project from a pair of enterprising actors, it's still often very impressive. As the self-conscious Intro explains, the background of a musician or actor shouldn't be as important as the end product he creates. In that respect 'Idlewild' can only be considered a disappointment in the context of OutKast's previous stellar achievements.

At 78 minutes it's a fair trek - Prince's masterpiece soundtrack was just 44 minutes – and you can't help wishing Antoine and Andre had the focus to lop 20 minutes off and improve the killer/filler ratio. Packed with ideas and flourishes, horns, hooks and harmonies, 'Idlewild' confirms OutKast's drift away from pure hip-hop into what can only be described as Funkadelica – the crooning chorus of Hollywood Divorce seems like a bitter modern reprise to Clinton's 1979 ballad Holly Wants To Go To California, whilst apocalyptic closer A Bad Note is directly descended from Maggot Brain. Album highlight Morris Brown incorporates the effervescent racket of a real marching band; Call The Law features an extraodinary cabaret-diva performance from Janelle Monae as spurned and muderous vamp Zora (surely with a line of dancing girls in fishnet stockings kicking around behind her); and PJ & Rooster is rambunctious and funky with swinging horns and playful piano frills.

The Train and A Bad Note provide contradictory possible film endings to speculate on – there's a guitar weeping for someone in the impossibly morbid latter, whilst the life-affirming former could soundtrack the rolling credits to any happy ending. Is this a happy ending for 'Kast themselves? If indeed they do split, as rumours persistently claim, 'Idlewild' will represent a valiant effort to scale previously unparalleled heights – "an impossible feat, and I repeat", as Dre raps on Mighty-O. In other words, 'Idlewild' may finish with 'A Bad Note', but OutKast certainly won't have.