Outkast Big Boi on Bombs Over Baghdad
Outkast Big Boi on Bombs Over Baghdad
April 12, 2003
U.S. troops reportedly sang the song while going into battle.
Excerpt from Los Angeles Times: Outkast Big Boi: Bombs over Baghdad is Anti-war
"To most people outside rap circles, all of it made perfect sense.
On top of one of the most deliciously dynamic hip-hop beats since Dr. Dre's teaming a decade ago with Tupac Shakur on "California Love," the chorus sounds like an Iraq battle cry: "Bombs over Baghdad / Don't even bang unless you plan to hit something / Bombs over Baghdad."
The problem is Big Boi was strongly opposed to the U.S. invading Iraq without United Nations support and he never intended the song as a pro-war exercise.
At a time when some country music fans are protesting Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks for making derogatory remarks about President Bush, Big Boi was in the unusual position of being an artist who could have objected to pro-war forces using the song improperly.
But the veteran rapper (real name: Antwan Patton) has long understood that artists can't control how the public responds to their work.
"We make a record and then it is up to people to take what they want from it," he said by phone this week from his home base in Atlanta. "We explain a song when people ask, but we can't control how they feel about it.
"In our case, fans know where we stand pretty much. I talk to them in the street all the time. I really think Bush should have gone through the United Nations before going over there. But once the fighting starts, everything changes.
"You have guys over there with families here, and you have to support the troops and pray for them. So, if the song helps them keep their spirits up, I don't have a problem with that."
Big Boi, who is joined in OutKast by Andre 3000 (Andre Benjamin), saw what he felt was half-hearted U.S. bombing raids on Iraq in the 1990s as an analogy for a lack of dedication among many artists in the music business.
"There were lots of people making music, but there was nothing real about it," he says. "We were like saying, make music that has something to say or just get out of the way."
The song first appeared in 2000 on the duo's "Stankonia" album, which won a Grammy nomination for best album (losing to "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"). It was a sensation in hip-hop circles but didn't reach a mainstream audience until now.
That's when the public took ownership of it and turned it into a 2003 battle cry. You can feel movie producers getting in line to license the song -- which was co-written by OutKast and David Sheats -- for war-related films and soundtracks.
Although songwriters may feel uneasy when their songs take on new meanings, many of the most evocative songs leave room for exactly this type of multiple interpretations. What Dylan fan hasn't scratched his head over such lines as "There's no success like failure and failure's no success at all" from 1965's marvelous "Love Minus Zero/No Limit"
Along with many superior artists, U2's Bono says he is attracted to music, like much of Dylan's, that leaves a lot of room for the listener to fill in the blanks. "I didn't grow up in the tradition of pop songwriters who feel it is essential to make everything clear to the listener," he once said. "All of us in the band were always interested in abstraction ... letting things be out of focus."
[end of excerpt]""
