Felt the cold mud in my vans as I excused my way through the masses to make it up to our blanket behind a candy covered man with a “DRINK MORE WATER” sign on the right and a group of Afrocentric females on my left. The anticipation for the curtain that covered the stage to drop was building as more people moved closer to the main stage in hopes to catch a better look. I plopped down on our damp blanket and joined my friends and before I could even find a comfortable spot… “Bombs Over Baghdad” drops and I rose to my feet to see the ripple of the rising crowd before me and the yells of everyone around me.
There they were, in all their glory. Big Boi and Mr. Andre 3000 himself… bombard the stage with 100 watts of energy and the crowd rages closer to them in their excitement. I wanted to move closer too. Instinct made me want to be in the midst of the candy kids and the hipsters right in front of the stage where the legends were, but I was too beat from the day’s activities to fight my way through the crowd. So I stayed and took off my mud covered sneakers and hopped on our blanket to the sounds of Outkast’s homecoming.
That’s exactly what it felt like, a homecoming. Although this was a crowd of ravers and hipsters… and there was also a huge crowd that came out that day solely to catch Outkast’s first performance in GA in 10 years. This was definitely NOT Coachella’s crowd! The cool kids in Georgia knew every word of every song. From the group of white kids that almost trampled my friend that was lying down on the blanket just to get a closer look at the stage… to the group of multi-cultural older gentlemen with their shirtless guts of glory, singing along to every word of every song as they raged a few blankets away. This was GEORGIA welcoming them back… reminding them how much we loved them.
They felt the energy too. The two fed off of it. “Are you still here with us,” Andre screamed several times throughout the performance as the crowd yelled louder and louder to remind them that we were still here… still in the moment with them. As one we jumped and rapped along to the sounds of classics off of “Da Art of Storytellin’ (Part 1)” and “Hootie Hoo”.
Even their solo moments were better… Big Boi popped it off with the party anthem of “Kryptonite” and Janelle Monae joined Andre on stage for “Hey Ya.” You could see the excitement in their movement. Although they had that dreaded confining box in the middle of the stage, similar to that of the Coachella performance, their energy wouldn’t allow them to enter it. Instead they moved back and forth on the massive stage with smiles on their faces. We knew 3 Stacks would not turn his back on this crowd. He was too happy to see us.
The psychedelic images on the monitor on stage were more so for the Counterpoint crowd that loves their trippy visuals, but I wish I could have gotten more. I was craving more production to compliment the energy… but hey, the performance stood alone.
By the time that Killer Mike jumped on stage and the fireworks went off to the sounds of “The Whole World”… I was barefoot on the cold ground grooving with the masses. I was waiting for the “ATL HOE!” chant that I heard earlier that day during Killer Mike’s Run The Jewels set, but it never quite happened. It was okay though. There were no complaints. Outkast was in the Dirty Dirty amongst the cold, wet, crunk Southern crowd that welcomed them with open arms. It was the homecoming that we hoped for and were craving for 10 years.
– YAAAAMZ
