Aquemini by Outkast

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Janet Jackson

One of the most successful and enduring artist-producer collaborations in pop history.

By 1986, the 19-year-old baby of the Jackson family juggernaut had released two albums but had yet to become a superstar in her own right. All that changed when she bossed up and fired her own father, Joe Jackson, as her manager and went to Minneapolis to work with producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis on what would be her true debut. The pairing of streetwise Prince protégés with sheltered music royalty was an odd coupling that worked, putting a nasty spin on Minneapolis funk that was all Miss Jackson. The result was one of the most successful and enduring artist-producer collaborations in pop history.

There is a militant assault in the fierce funk of “What Have You Done for Me Lately”—but there is also a giddiness to “When I Think of You,” Jackson’s first chart-topper, and a slow-jam sexiness to the album’s finale “Funny How Time Flies (When You’re Having Fun).” When Jackson commanded “Gimme a beat!” at the beginning of “Nasty,” she was leading a new music movement for Black women’s empowerment.

“We wanted her to have creative input on it so that the record was hers. That was a revelation to her.”

Jimmy Jam

producer

Aquemini

Outkast

The leap forward that turned André 3000 and Big Boi into leaders of the hip-hop avant-garde.

Aquemini is the connective tissue between Outkast’s beginnings as local heroes in Atlanta and the duo’s full-fledged pop stardom. While their first two LPs featured no shortage of André 3000 and Big Boi’s tongue-twisting rhymes and the Dungeon Family collective’s off-kilter beats, Aquemini was the creative leap forward that turned an already critically acclaimed group into thought leaders of the hip-hop avant-garde.

Aquemini’s sound is a mix of the distinctly Southern and the distinctly alien—nowhere more so than on the single “Rosa Parks,” built on hollow snares and punishing bass but beaming with earthy acoustic guitars and a harmonica solo courtesy of André’s stepfather, Pastor Robert Hodo. It’s an album that prophesied the future of Atlanta—a misunderstood scene that was once dismissed as “regional” but eventually became the center of the rap universe itself. Aquemini drew the map.

Apple Music 100 Best Albums

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Aquemini