Outkast, "So Fresh, So Clean"

I doubt “So Fresh, So Clean” would be nearly as memorable if its construction wasn’t so immaculate. And for me, it’s partly nostalgic. Long ago, in school days forgotten, I learned the proper order of music. Something like Fa La So, or Ri Do Le. I’ve since lost this knowledge; perhaps I didn’t deserve it. Yet when the glorious intonation of “Ain’t nobody dope as me” leaps from a speaker, I fake it. It’s the least I can do. Stomping up, gliding down, this song embodies the push and pull of Outkast’s duo at their most revelrous.

Effortlessness is the essence of cool, of “dope,” so when this song skips from the Apollo to Teddy Pendergrass to Freddie Jackson without reprieve, we are meant not to contemplate - or, at least, not for long. Perhaps we don’t deserve to - I know I have not earned it. And I’ll admit that there remain a few car references which I still can’t grasp. Where’s the beauty in a Monte Carlo, or the intimidation in a “canary yellow seven-nine Seville”? But I didn’t drop the temperature, after all. For that, I thank Andre 3,000 and Big Boi, renegades so ice cold, they’re “sipping milkshakes in a snowstorm.” Oh, to be frolic in the frosty joy of Outkast.

Burdens of sexual performance, perhaps predictably, do not plague them - particularly when they’re at their freshest. They’ve got “6 million” answers, and a willingness to take their bravado, their drive, anywhere. Even, perhaps, too far (it involves an “attic” and “Anne Frank”). Whether sober or “slizzered,” Outkast burst as a house party of the mind, a bacchanal for your axons and dendrites. Don’t be alarmed by the “tingle in your spine.” There will be countless more to come.

And when you’re as “dope” as Outkast, you make even a decidedly clinical escort out of a track seem smooth. It is always a pleasure to spend some time in the presence of the “coolest motherfunkers on the planet.”