When you mention staples in Atlanta hip-hop, you can’t forget Outkast and what they did for the music scene in the early 2000s. According to Big Gipp, the group could’ve been much more successful financially if they did some things differently.
In an interview with Vlad TV, the Goodie Mob rapper spoke about Andre 3000 and why he’s been so low-key in his career, and how that affected the group during their big run.
“What people don’t understand is when he did ‘Hey Ya,’ it put him into the stratosphere next to an artist like Lenny Kravitz,” Gipp said. “Now, you’re in that rock and roll hierarchy. People are looking at you like ‘Wow, you just went and d— near did some s— like The Beatles and put some rap s— on it.’
“The industry was like ‘Boy, if you give us 10 more of these, whew,'” Gipp said. “It was almost like coming from just being a famous rapper to now you in them Lenny Kravitz boots. It was like ‘Oh, s—. This is a whole other thing.'”
Gipp says that many artists can’t say they’ve reached the success that Outkast did, as well as producing and writing their own songs.
“All of the press that came along with him being able to turn into this artist, and having to take on the workload of having to be an artist at this stage made him be like ‘d—,'” Gipp said. “That’s why it took him so long to go on stage and perform the album because it was so big at the time. They probably turned down $100 million just on shows.”
