What with all the great music and art and culture around nowadays, it seems a bit redundant to use the old 'this is better than that because that is bad and this is good' template for a review. It's not necessary. It's childish.

But rappers live for the who's better, who's best, don't they? It's not a continuum, it's a competition. Who are they to call me childish? Nerr so there.

Let's take, for comparison, Eminem. When Big Boi's alma mater OutKast were making their best work together, Eminem was making witty, unpredictable records. Eminem has made a new record. It's Number 1 in the LP charts. The new single has got the ubiquitous Lil Wayne, rap's biggest new star of the last few years on it. It samples Haddaway's What Is Love. Haddaway's What Is Love. Samples it clumsily and badly, for that matter. And is a pile of steaming, straining, whining effluent with all the bounce and brilliance of a burst brown beachball. Like the rest of the record.

So what has 10 years done for Big Boi? A split solo album that everyone remembers for Hey Ya and The Love Below, with Speakerboxxx (Big Boi's half of the double set) not getting quite the same attention despite being riddled with belters. Launching a record label for the tremendous but unsuccessful Sleepy Brown and Bubba Sparxxx. Dreaming up some more fantastic monikers for himself (we now have General Patton to add to Daddy Fatsacks and Lucious Left Foot). Denying that Outkast have split, having not played or recorded together for seven years (Jive Records being pricks, apparently). And now he's actually made a record. A record with a cover that looks like a cheap, thrown-together mixtape, but plays like a pulse-pounding funk-pop CLASSIC.

You probably already know Shutterbugg, instant and funky as all get-out.



And everything else on here follows that template. It's dirty too. In the first funny rap skit in, oooh, 20 years, we find out about the 'David Blaine' position. Try it. But don't think the presence of a skit means a meandering load of twaddle. These songs are all four minutes or less, get in, get down and get out. The OutKast/Dungeon Family house producers Organized Noize (who wrote TLC's Waterfalls) come with four songs, and all the guest beatmakers (Scott Storch, Andre 3000, Salaam Remi) have all brought the snap and slide you want to hear under BB's easy-jittering flow. There are no phoned-in lines. No phoned-in guest spots. Just baking hot Atlanna class throughout.

Go and listen to it on Spotify, it's on there F.O.C. And when you realise you're on your sixth listen in two days, go out and spend your hard earned on it. How else are we going to encourage rappers to keep away from mawkish moaning and clumsy Europop sampling? Reward the Dungeon Family boys for still being the best and most creative around.