Take Off Your Cool — OutKast feat. Norah Jones

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUQHFqO6HvY

This is a very brave song, a jazz song on a big hip-hop album; a song about one thing and one thing only; a song about being brave and letting down your guard; a bold stylistic and lyrical choice, to bring a brilliant vocalist, but a female jazz vocalist, onto a testosterone-heavy hip-hop album, and it pays off: it's easily the most memorable song on the album, short and sweet and to the point and even a little romantic, musically proficient and just generally incredible. It has this sense of timelessness. Hiding behind a persona, as an actor, a musician, even just a person — this is common, it's always been common, it'll always be common. And begging someone to let that down and show their true self for even a moment, to stop pretending to be cool, that's touching. Hip-hop and especially OutKast-style hip-hop, about being sexy and rich and talented, it so built up on itself, a balancing act that says this guy is great because he's rich because he's talented because he doesn't try because he's great, this is promotional. There are no people like Kanye West. It's braggadocio. But this is not a song that pretends to be honest. This is a song that is honest.

Roses — Outkast

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9lkxq7tGuY

Roses — the actual song of which starts at about 1:00 in, in the video above — is magnificent. OutKast at the height of their ambition, half Prince/Michael Jackson, half hip-hop; a West Side Story parody, a hate-song (instead of a love-song); call-and-response, full of visual puns, set as a high school, funny and dramatic and an incredible song to boot. I don't know much about Andre 3000 and Big Boi, but I know that Roses was from Andre's half of their dueling double album, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. And that jazz intro!

Moreover, the song is addictive; it hits a certain timbre in my ear that can't get enough of it. The tone of Andre's voice, the organ and steady, slow drum beat; the call and response from Big Boi; the micro-repetitive patterns and subtleties to the lyrics and melodies; the variations on a theme; it's all perfect.