The story behind Outkast’s ‘West Savannah’
Outkast are a quintessentially Atlanta group, forming in Georgia’s capital city in 1992. Its 16-year-old members, boys who would later come to be known as Big Boi and André 3000, met in a shopping mall there.
Both Big Boi and Dré went to high school in Atlanta, but only one of them had actually spent their entire childhoods there. André was Atlanta through and through, born and raised there, but Big Boi had arrived late.
His early childhood had actually been spent in Savannah, another Georgia city near the South Carolina border.
Having been born in Savannah, Big Boi even started attending high school there before he upped sticks. His aunt Renee took him to Atlanta, which is where he began to take his love of music more seriously. He wanted to become a musician, and he was in the right place at the right time for it. He and his new friend André 3000 would soon become legends.
Outkast announced themselves as teenage stars with the release of their debut album Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, released in 1994. The record largely dealt with African-American life down South, with its two young rappers dealing with the hands they were dealt in life.
The success of Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik made Outkast stars, and it afforded Big Boi and André 3000 a greater degree of control over their subsequent works. By their third album Aquemini, released in 1998, the pair were really making the music that they wanted to.
As they were putting together Aquemini, the Outkast duo decided to dig up a solo track that Big Boi had recorded during the sessions for Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik. This was ‘West Savannah,’ his ode to his old childhood home. It reminded listeners of how far the group had come, while insisting upon the importance of their roots.
As Big Boi once told the story to the Creative Loafing platform, it had been André’s idea to dig up ‘West Savannah’ and to include it on Aquemini as “a bonus in there for the listeners.” It was “something that’s nostalgic.”
Big Boi was convinced. “So I was like, ‘Shit, let’s do it,’” he recalled telling Dré. “And you know that’s my hometown. I’m from Savannah, Georgia, and there’s a lot of people there that I love and my family is there, so I’m all about it.”