Alone together

OutKast’s Big Boi pats his trouser pockets anxiously as he walks with friends into Giorgio Armani’s on Rodeo Drive. “Where’s my credit card?”

There’s a good laugh all around.

The Italian fashion designer asked OutKast’s two members to be guest DJs at a civic celebration honoring him that evening. And by the way, he told the acclaimed hip-hop duo, stop by the store and pick up anything you want.

OutKast -- Big Boi and Andre 3000 -- is that rare recording team that can sell millions of albums and yet maintain a daring, underground creative spirit. It’s the contemporary link with the great American funk music tradition. If James Brown, Sly Stone and George Clinton were teenagers today, they’d be grooving on OutKast and dreaming about being like it.

So it’s a coup to have OutKast at the party, and the Armani store staff greets Andre and Big Boi with open arms. There are so many employees and executives on hand (including Armani’s East Coast and West Coast “entertainment industry public relations directors”) that the pair is a little overwhelmed.

Wearing a white Nolan Ryan baseball jersey, jogging pants and Air Jordans, Big Boi looks as if he’s dressed for the gym or the rap stage.

Andre’s outfit suggests he came straight from a psychedelic video shoot -- an improbable mix of blue and white checked gingham shirt, blue denim knickers, brown suspenders, newsboy cap and mini-boots. He designed the pants himself and, against all odds, he looks terrific in the combination. He certainly stands out amid the rows of high-style Armani suits.

The two prowl the aisles of the showroom tentatively, not knowing quite how much they should take. But with the staff urging them on, Big Boi and Andre eventually get into the spirit of the day.

Just as Armani himself sweeps into the room with an interpreter, Big Boi is eyeing a pinstriped suit while Andre has fallen in love with a brown and white herringbone jacket.

Armani thanks them for coming and says he’s looking forward to seeing them at the party. He then kisses each on the cheek.

Before they have a chance to catch their breath, a fitter arrives. They end up with suits, jackets, ties, shoes, shirts and designer sunglasses. They look as delighted as kids with Halloween loot.

After millions of albums sold and a string of Grammy nominations, you’d think they’d be used to this treatment by now.

“Nah,” Andre says sheepishly. “The only other thing we’ve ever got is a shopping bag with some Nikes in it.”

Impressive credentials

OutKast may be a neophyte in taking advantage of its celebrity status, but the men’s credentials as hip-hop artists couldn’t be any more impressive.

They haven’t succumbed to the superficialities of show business, from gathering freebies to becoming obsessed with award shows and industry galas. Nor have Andre and Big Boi tried to take short cuts to the top.

Rather than stick within the safe, commercial boundaries of hip-hop, the pair draws from funk, R&B;, pop and rock influences to inject fresh, surprising textures. Much like the funk masters, OutKast loves sensory overload.

Its new, two-disc album, “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below,” won’t be in stores until Tuesday, but the advance buzz is so strong that some industry observers are calling it the front-runner for the album of the year Grammy.

That’s because OutKast’s last album, a masterpiece of sonic imagination titled “Stankonia,” was nominated for best album in the 2001 Grammys, and the first two singles from the new album are phenomenal. HBO has already signed it to star in a movie based on the new album.

Illustrating OutKast’s range and craft, each single is already a hit on competing radio formats. Big Boi’s “I Like the Way You Move,” with a chorus as sweet and smooth as a stylish Marvin Gaye ballad, is being played by stations with urban/R&B;/hip-hop formats.

Andre’s “Hey Ya!,” seasoned with a raw burst of rock ‘n’ roll energy as delightful as the Beatles’ “I Saw Her Standing There,” is brightening the airwaves on tastemaker rock stations such as KROQ-FM in Los Angeles.

The new package, with more than two hours of music, consists of two solo albums. Big Boi’s “Speakerboxxx” mixes dynamic, horn-driven funk ‘n’ rap exercises and commentary (including one wary look at the nation’s involvement in Iraq).

Andre’s “The Love Below” is a concept work of sorts that examines his own difficulties in maintaining relationships with women -- from moments of outright lust to disarming self-reflection. The tracks offer more singing than rapping, drawing as much from rock, jazz, R&B; and pop as hip-hop.

Like so many great pop teams, Andre and Big Boi bring separate strengths to their work. In “Speakerboxxx,” you feel Boi’s street savvy in the music and the themes -- a reflection of what it’s like to feel young, optimistic and concerned.

Andre’s music adds introspection, anxiety and artistic search.

“Speakerboxxx” is pretty much a continuation of “Stankonia.” “The Love Below” is less bold sonically, but it gives us something totally unexpected and fresh -- OutKast moving to an even higher level.

As soon as word of two solo albums spread, fans began asking if this wasn’t really the end of OutKast, and it’s easy to understand the thinking. Andre (Andre Benjamin) and Big Boi (Antwon Patton) are both so filled with energy and ideas that they could likely survive on their own.

Both men agree they have grown apart in some ways since they met as teen-agers at a mall in Atlanta. Big Boi, 28, lives in Georgia with the mother of two of his three children, and he has lots of side interests, including breeding pit bulls and English bulldogs.

Andre spends much of his time in Los Angeles, where he is studying acting. He has been talking to the Hughes brothers, the directors best known for such gritty, urban fare as “Menace II Society,” about playing the lead in a biography of Jimi Hendrix.

But the two downplay any permanent split.

“There is some distance, but it’s just like if you have been living with your brother all your life and you finally move into your own apartment,” says Andre, also 28. “We may venture out and do other things, but we always give each other blessings. We will always be OutKast.”

Enthusiasm and self-doubt

Big BOI and Andre are both immensely likable but as different as their solo albums.

Nickname aside, Big Boi is the shorter one who tends to look a bit menacing in photos, though he is a puppy dog away from the camera -- quick to smile and so enthusiastic when talking about music or his children or the dogs that his eyes sparkle. He seems relaxed 24/7, partly because he is so blessedly prolific -- with enough recordings already in the can back home in Atlanta for another OutKast album or two.

No one would call Andre carefree. Like many artists, he battles self-doubt, wondering if he’ll ever be able to make another good piece of music.

“Sometimes I feel everything is chance,” Andre says as he sits in corner of the Raffles L’Ermitage hotel lobby on the morning of the Armani store visit, waiting for Big Boi to come downstairs.

“I feel like I’ve just been lucky,” continues the high school dropout, who is unusually thoughtful and mature for someone his age. “I don’t know if I’m a real producer at all. People like Dr. Dre and the Neptunes, they are producers. They make this music real quickly. It’s like they know what they are doing.

“With me, I just sit down and tinker with sounds and beats until I hit on something I like. There’s always the fear you may sit down and nothing falls into place anymore. It’s taxing because we get all these accolades, which makes people expect more and more all the time.”

That same sense of self-doubt spills into his private life, which explains the underlying pessimism of “The Love Below.” Andre’s two-year relationship with Erykah Badu produced a son, and he is still on good terms with the singer, but he doesn’t seem to believe in love ever after.

“That’s what ‘Hey Ya!’ is about, the state of relationships today and why they don’t seem to last,” he says. “Maybe it’s because we don’t have the glue because of our parents. My parents were never together, and that’s true of lots of people I know. So maybe it’s just not normal anymore to settle down.”

He thinks his own problem is further complicated by his celebrity status. “Being an entertainer, you have a lot of women coming to you, but you don’t end up with anything other than flings,” Andre says. “In the album, the character is always wondering if the next woman is the right one, but he’s not optimistic.”

Hip-hop and the South

Antonio “L.A.” REID, who replaced Clive Davis as head of Arista Records in 2001, has worked closely with OutKast since his days a decade ago at LaFace, an Atlanta-based, Arista-distributed label he owned with Kenny (Babyface) Edmonds. At that time, most commercial hip-hop was coming from either New York or Los Angeles, and Reid saw the potential for a Southern group.

“With all the musical tradition in the South, I just felt the time was right for someone to bring that tradition to hip-hop,” Reid said recently. “And that’s what Dre and Big Boi did.”

Working at first with the production team Organized Noize, OutKast got off to a lightning start with “Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik,” a 1994 debut album that was as funky and experimental as its title. The collection, which reached No. 20 on the national chart, mixed party and street life images with commentary and always avoided the cliches of rap’s “thug life” stars. The music had a freshness and sonic invention that seemed to taunt, rather than copy, the numbingly repetitious hip-hop music on the radio.

To further distance themselves from the rap herd, Andre and Big Boi wore some of the most outlandish clothes -- including boas and fur pants -- that pop music has seen since the days of George Clinton and his Parliament-Funkadelic crew.

“George Clinton used to freak me out,” Big Boi says, reminiscing as he sits in the back seat of an SUV on the way to LAX to drop off a friend after the Armani visit. “I loved the way he always come up with something new, but I also loved Bob Marley and Curtis Mayfield because of their messages and N.W.A because of its rage. We’re also huge rock fans -- AC/DC, U2, Aerosmith, the White Stripes, Kate Bush.”

Big Boi suddenly leans forward and taps the driver on the shoulder. “Pull in here,” he says, pointing to a Boston Market outlet. “I love these places.”

He leaps from the SUV and goes inside to order two chicken dinners to go, handing the clerk a $100 bill.

Waiting for the food, he speaks with pride about all that OutKast has accomplished and with warmth about his partnership with Andre.

“Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if we had never met at the mall,” he says. “We were both just window-shopping because we didn’t have any money to buy anything. We never dreamed we’d be this successful.

“We were thrilled just being able to make music. That’s why we didn’t set out to copy what was on the radio. We wanted people to someday copy us.”

With the food, he returns to the SUV and heads for the hotel. With luck, the Armani clothes will be waiting.

Robert Hilburn, The Times’ pop music critic, can be reached at robert.hilburn@latimes.com.