Ten years ago these three dudes threw down verses in a studio and set to spinning vinyl the sweltering acidic boom-bap of “Skew it on the Bar-B,” from the I’m-not-going-to-talk-about-it-because-I-will-for-too-long Aquemini (1998). At the time they were three of the artistic vanguards of the culture—(fuck-I’m-gonna-do-it) OutKast were busy exploding the definition of hip-hop—but now they are eclipsed by…um, T-Pain? Lil’ Boosie? I’m kinda off the radio these days.

But fuck ten years: Castlevania is the best game on my 360 and “Royal Flush” is one of the best rap tracks since, well, the last thing that leaked from camp OutKast. Like so many other rap entities the Kast permanently seem to have like ninety things in the hopper—done with rap, singing now, moving to Hollywood, back to rap?—but in their strange ability to make real their wild ambitions these seeds of ideas are not the stoned mid-interview day-dreams of their peers. So “Royal Flush” proves that Big Boi’s upcoming solo kinda-debut Sir Luscious Left Foot is actually upcoming, that the beats sound (yes) Speakerboxxx-y (2005) but who’s going to complain, that Raekwon’s career-resuscitating turn on 8 Diagrams (2007) may’ve been no fluke, and that the thing that some of us have been watching Andre do in the past year continues in 2008.

My friend the computerless theorist Chet Betz documented in article form last year the wildfire phoenix-rise of Andre3000, Best Rapper On The Planet. The article says it more comprehensively than I will now, but in short: this onetime lyrical dynamo has reemerged from a fruitless foray into Prince pop weirdness in the best way possible, blasting out of mixtapes and guest spots with some of the most incendiary mic work around. If anything, Betz undersells “Da Art of Storytelling Pt. 4,” on which Andre drops what is in my esteem one of the very best raps committed to tape, and “Royal Flush” is the first work we’ve heard from him since that benchmark. So yes: here we have a burbling beat, the popping bass line acting as percussion, and the clattering percussion dropping in and out as ambience. It’s nice. We have Big Boi, ever the gentleman, bleating mean rhymes but quitting quick like he knows Andre’s going to need half the track for himself. We have Raekwon-as-Raekwon, all lingo and raspy monotone so assured it seems to subdue the beat.

It’s nice—it’s exciting. But then, ninety seconds into a 3:30 track, we are transferred to Andre’s care. There are moments of color to pick up on, to flip out on, like the early rebuke, “Hey I’m talking young man / As if chalk in my hand,” or the lament that “All the other kids are fresh and they got new Nintedo / Wiis,” or that line at the end about the Hokey Pokey that’s almost as good as the instant-legend “Brett Favreing” rap-ender of last year. But these lines are all much better in their larger context, and a closer reading shows this verse to be a full, breathing expansion upon the body of work nigh-miraculously emerging from this emcee of late. The themes of all these verses cohere: oneness with the ghetto; acceptance of age, morality and responsibility; romantic commitment and lust; and most importantly a blunt grasp of the ability and role of hip-hop as an art (underline that) to address these issues.

This is all getting very academic—I’m turning to term paper mode—and that’s not the point. The point is that you listen to this track and pay attention to what’s been happening here. This late-career reemergence is a definitively hip-hop narrative, playing with but recasting some very old hip-hop modes. His mic work, for example, demands respect—a classic trope—but it is respect cast through the prism of age, something that (say) Snoop in his early-2000s Neptune-aided comeback could never manage. He’s hit maturity with the grace of Guru or GZA but with an artistry that outclasses everyone currently spitting save Weezy, if you buy into him, and no one if you don’t. Andre’s making waves via Rich Boy and Drama and Nahright, which is all very 2008, but his concerns (though modernized) are the high-minded stuff of the mid-90s, by which I mean his verses make cohesive points and are not strings of hot lines. Most intangibly, the rhymes seem to use the actual musicality of the beat as a point of inspiration; thus the uppercut angst of “Storytelling,” the loping gait here, the florid swoon of “International Players Anthem,” and so on.

What I am saying is this: get hype for Sir Luscious Left Foot. It could be the great straight-rap record of ‘08. But Andre’s story is bigger and written in sound and waiting to be read by those who care. I have absolutely nothing to put in print about my expectations for 10 The Hard Way.

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