Consumer Guide Album

OutKast: Big Boi & Dre Present . . . OutKast [Arista, 2001]
Subtract the seven Aquemini and Stankonia tracks from this best-of and you're left with only one that could compete with them--the more-song-than-rap single "The Whole World." Everything else, including two other new tracks, streamlines the tangle-rooted funk of their must-own albums into a discernibly Southern G-funk that meditates on the constraints of life outside the law: hit-the-streets pep talk, Christmas carol, the shallow-as-its-title title track "Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik," and my favorite, the languid "Crumblin' Herb," about doing what you can while you're still alive to inhale it. More pleasurable than most gangsta hedonism, yes--and all the early OutKast most will ever need. B+