Just for the record, I totally nailed OutKast’s “B.O.B.” as song of the decade a month ago. I wrote:
OutKast’s B.O.B. is the best because it says YES to everything we are and compresses it to pure energy. It’s our Good Vibrations, our Layla.
Robin (who clean-sweeps his tweets) had a nice addition:
Jeez now I’m listening to it again, and like Harold Bloom’s Hamlet, it’s a Total Work. EVERYTHING is in here.
Here’s Pitchfork’s Stuart Berman with a more expansive explanation:
“B.O.B.” is not just the song of the decade– it is the decade. Appropriately, the contemporary hip-hop act most in tune with the Afro-Futurist philosophies of Sun Ra, George Clinton, and Afrika Bambaataa, wound up effectively crafting a fast-forwarded highlight-reel prophecy of what the next 10 years held in store. The title– aka “Bombs Over Baghdad”, a phrase that sounded oddly anachronistic in 2000, sadly ubiquitous two and a half years later– is only the start of it. In “B.O.B”‘s booty-bass blitzkrieg, we hear an obliteration of the boundaries separating hip-hop, metal, and electro, setting the stage for a decade of dance/rock crossovers. We hear a bloodthirsty gospel choir inaugurating a presidential administration of warmongering evangelicals. We hear Andr