12. “Shadowed” Lessons of Outkast's

JOYCELYN A. WILSON AND CHARLIE BRAXTON 12. “SHADOWED” LESSONS OF OUTKAST’S SOUTHERNPLAYALISTICADILLACMUZIK A Critical Duoethnography Outkast Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik (1994) (herein referred to as Southernplayalistic) is the first album from Andre “3000” Benjamin and Antwan “Big Boi” Patton. Known to the world as the uber-successful Atlanta rap duo Outkast, at first glance their album cover art appears simple. Understated. Reminiscent of the illuminating effects included in the cover art of Roberta Flack’s Blue Lights in the Basement (1977). It is a metaphorical sankofa of the 1970s musical aesthetic: soul-searching lyrics accompanied by the live instrumentation of Organized Noize Productions (ONP). Southernplayalistic evokes a Dungeonesque vibe representative of their affiliations with the Dungeon Family,1 and uses a similar color palette of Blue Lights…where hues of orange, black, blue, and white create subtle beams of light that accent faint vignettes of the duo standing in the cover’s background. Patton and Benjamin fade in from their shadows to spotlighted headshots. Patton wears cornrows and Benjamin dons a fedora. Benjamin’s head leans to the side like he is peeking around the back of his rap partner. The two are close but do not appear to be right next to one another. Youth beams through their complexions yet neither smiles. In the left margin of the J. Austin (Ed.), Spinning Popular Culture as Public Pedagogy, 127–138. © 2017 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved. J. A. Wilson & C. Braxton cover is the OUTKAST crown – a re-interpretation of the metal Cadillac emblem, and just across the footer is the album title – a portmanteau combining the words “southern”, “player”, “realistic”, “Cadillac”, and “music” – all lowercase. In our use of a critical duoethnographic approach, we explore the shadow/ light motif to articulate four observations revealed in the visual and textual art of Southernplayalistic’s album cover. One might look at the cover art and think it is a low-budget illustration of what was then a new southern Hip Hop group. Perhaps. However, the dark shadows sprinkled with consistent beams of light provide an alternative perspective. The illuminations indicate the duo is confidently stepping into the spotlight to introduce Atlanta (i.e. ATL) as a geo-cultural force of the Southern Hip Hop aesthetic representative of other rap duos such as 8Ball & MJG, UGK, The Geto Boys, and others. Translating to the lyrical content, the art reveals an epistemological stance that has come to represent the consciousness of Hip Hop culture, including its model for teaching and learning, commitments to innovation, and ideals of authenticity. Our findings are therefore based on advancing strategies for integrating pedagogies of Hip Hop with critical approaches that develop the authentic leadership and social justice capacities of youth and youth influencers at the secondary and post-secondary level (Wilson, 2011, 2013). “WHO RAISED YO BLOCK? THE ONE AND ONLY OUTKAST”: CRITICAL DUOETHNOGRAPHY AND THE OUTKAST IMAGINATION Critical Duoethnography A duoethnography is a strand of interpretive autoethnography (Denzin, 2013) with focus on the collaboration of two or more researchers who engage in a call-and- response interrogation of cultural artifacts, stories, memories, texts, constructs, visual art, and critical incidents. The dialogic is a dynamic way to “excavate the temporal, social, cultural and geographical cartography of their lives, making explicit their assumptions and perspectives” (Sawyer & Norris, 2009, p. 127). Duoethnography is a way for researcher/participants to “collect their autobiographical materials and to analyze and interpret their data collectively to gain a meaningful understanding of sociocultural phenomena reflected in their autobiographical data” (Chang, Ngunjiri, & Hernandez, p. 24). The researchers are participants who work in community with one another to fuse their narratives into one “personal curriculum” to “tell their stories to expose the curriculum of the past in the hope that it can positively change the curriculum of the present and the future” (Sawyer & Norris, 2004, p. 140). As an ethnographer and Hip Hop educational researcher from Atlanta, Georgia, I (Joycelyn) enter into a critical duoethnographic conversation with Charlie Braxton, a music historian from Jackson, Mississippi. We both have personal and professional experiences with Southernplayalistic, and question, reflect, and highlight implicit meanings of race, social status, and geography given to the album cover art. I was 128.

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