Songoftheday 3/13/23 - See this is the way that we walk on a sunny day, when it's rainin' inside and you're all alone all alone...
"The Whole World" - Outkast featuring Killer Mike & Joi
from the album Big Boi and Dre Present...Outkast (2001)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #19 (three weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 15
Today's song comes from the hip-hop duo Outkast, whose fourth album Stankonia in 2000 had been their third to go to #2 on the Billboard 200 sales tally and spun off a #1 pop hit with "Ms. Jackson" and a top-40 follow-up with "So Fresh, So Clean". In 2001, their original label LaFace was severing its connection with Arista Records, with the pair remaining on the latter label. But before that, LaFace released a "greatest hits" collection that included songs from their four albums plus three unreleased tracks. One of those, "The Whole World", was released as a single in the late autumn of that year. The song was written by Andre "3000" Benjamin and Antwan "Big Boi" Patton along with producer David "Earthtone III" Sheats and the featured rapper on the track, Michael "Killer Mike" Render. Killer Mike was an up and coming local rapper in Atlanta who was discovered by Big Boi when he was in college, this single was his first big feature. As I took it, especially as illustrated in the music video, the song is a sardonic look on the hip-hop industry, and the throngs of suburbanite melanin-deficient kids that are fans of the genre (and their music in particular). The circus theme is apt, as if they love living vicariously through the rough and tumble world of rap without the risk or the responsibility to change anything. The bouncy old-style melody belies the dark message in this, dressing it up as the ditty they are railing against. Nevertheless, they were on a high, and the pair plus Killer Mike, as well as Joi Gilliam, who sang on the chorus, found themselves into the top-40...
"The Whole World" became Outkast's sixth top-40 hit on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 (and first for Killer Mike and Joi) in February of 2002, while reaching #8 on their R&B Songs chart. On the radio, the song rose to #23 on the Mainstream Top-40 Airplay chart, #8 on the R&B Airplay list, and #6 on the dance-oriented Rhythmic format. Internationally, the single made the top-40 in New Zealand (#4), the United Kingdom (#19), Ireland (#24), Sweden (#26), Germany (#30), and the Netherlands (#39). The Big Boi & Dre Present... album, released in November of 2001, peaked at #18 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and #4 on the R&B Albums list, going on to sell over a million copies. At the Grammy Awards in 2003, "The Whole World" won for Best Duo/Group Rap Performance.
Joi would go on to appear on others' records, and was in a later version of the R&B supergroup Lucy Pearl, and released a couple records independently. Killer Mike will be back to the series as a featured artist again, as well as Outkast of course.
(6/10)
Here's Outkast and Killer Mike appearing on SNL...
and lastly, in concert in 2016...
Up tomorrow: This crazy rapper is elastic.
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