OutKast

Two kids from Atlanta who turned Southern rap into something nobody had a box for. André 3000 and Big Boi met as teenagers, started OutKast in 1991, and spent the next fifteen years refusing to repeat themselves. They came up when the South was an afterthought in hip-hop and left it the center of gravity, pulling funk, soul, gospel, electro and live-band psychedelia into records that kept getting stranger and more ambitious as they got bigger. Big Boi held the groove and the swagger; André drifted further out with every album, until the two were almost making different music on the same sleeve. At their peak they could top the charts and unsettle the form in the same song. Start with the one everybody danced to, then notice how little of it is what it seems.