Welcome to the home of Sir Luscious Left Foot, a.k.a. the Courvoisier Lounge, or just the plain old Boom Boom Room. Big Boi's Stankonia Recording Studio is an inner sanctum/ playground where Big and his guests, including Lil Jon, E-40 and Raekwon, come to play after the work is done ... or to inspire more work.
"There's no format, really, to follow once you start recording," Big said of constructing his solo LP Sir Luscious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty. "To me, my album is like building a house. I work on all the songs at the same time. I might jump from song to song all throughout the time I'm makin' the album. I've always been like that. It just works out. Right now, we're just putting the sod in the front of the house. We almost done."
The first part of the house we heard was "Royal Flush," a hard-edged track on which both members of Outkast lyrically frolic over an instrumental with Raekwon the Chef.
"[Andre 3000] has a couple beats for me, but right now he's in Japan working on his clothing line. So when he gets back, if time permits, we'll get on that," Big said of having more contributions from his partner on the album. "But we gonna record those songs anyway. He's done more than enough that's needed right now.
"For so many years, the press just really couldn't get a hold on what they wanted to say [about Outkast]," Big continued. " 'How are these boys makin' this good-ass music, and they still together after 15 years?' So they created some hype like, 'Outkast is breaking up.' Which is not the case. Now nobody's saying that. We done 'Royal Flush,' 'Da Art of Storytellin', Pt. 4.' [If] you kinda mastered your craft and got what you wanted, you can branch off and do different things. This is like breathing to us; [it's] what we do. So all the hype and 'Outkast is breaking up' — all that is silenced right now."
It is not likely that we'll see a video for "Royal Flush," but Daddy Fat Sacks said a song with Mary J. Blige is a strong possibility to officially launch the project.
"We did a stupid duet called 'The World Is Too Big,' " he said. "It's been labeled as the recession special, basically. It just basically talks about everything that's going on in the world right now, because a lot of the music — I'd say about 90 percent of it right now — is just not factual to what's happening in the world. It's a lot of fantasy music goin' on. My thing is, like I said, to educate and entertain. If you got the forum to speak, you touch the people with something you gotta say, and you can move people's lives that way. Got that? 'The World Is Too Big,' 'Royal Flush' with Dre and Raekwon, I got a song [with] Khujo Goodie called 'Tambourine Village.' Crazy! And just a couple little tricks I'mma pull out of the bag in a minute. I just don't know where I'm gonna put certain people right now, but it's definitely action-packed. I have about 14 to 15 cuts, and I've got two more songs to finish."
Sir Luscious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty is due out later this summer.
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