OutKast‘s “So Fresh, So Clean” remains one of the group’s biggest hits, but it almost sounded very different, according to Sleepy Brown.
Speaking to SPIN about the making of the Stankonia smash, the Organized Noize producer/songwriter revealed that it was originally a solo Big Boi song because André 3000 didn’t want to be on it.
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“The funny thing is André didn’t really like it at first. André didn’t like that record,” he said. “It wasn’t like he didn’t think it was good — it just wasn’t matching where he was. We really just did it for Big.
“We knew André was moving to something else, but we knew on that album it needed that hood theme. When Big heard it, he loved it. We thought Dre was going to be happy with it at first, but he really wasn’t.”
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It wasn’t until bass player Preston Crump added his touch to the song that 3 Stacks had a change of heart.
“When Dre heard that, he got excited and came up with ‘the coolest motherfunkers on the planet’ part,” Brown continued. “He was following that line he heard. Thanks to Preston, that’s the reason why Dre even got on that record.”
The Dungeon Family co-founder also explained how “So Fresh, So Clean” came about, crediting fellow Organize Noize member Rico Wade (who sadly died last year) with writing the earworm hook.
“I actually came up with the idea and went to the Dungeon, played a little piano line for Rico,” he said. “He was really slick with words and stuff, so instead of me writing it, I asked him to write it. And I was like, ‘I’m just going to put down a melody of it.’
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“Once I did that and gave it to him, he listened to it. The next morning, he told me he was in the shower listening to it and started singing the words ‘so fresh and so clean, clean.’ It sounded like a commercial, but I knew it was something special because of just him.”
Any hopes of getting another “So Fresh, So Clean”-type song (or any material, for that matter) from OutKast were dashed last month when André 3000 admitted that he and Big Boi are “further away than ever” from reuniting.
Asked about the prospect of a new OutKast album in an interview with Rolling Stone, he said: “I’ll say maybe 10, 15 years ago, in my mind, I thought an OutKast album would happen. I don’t know the future, but I can say that we’re further away from it than we’ve ever been.
“I think it’s a chemistry thing. We have to be wanting to do it. It’s hard for me to make a rap, period, you know? And sometimes I’m in the belief of ‘Let things be.'”
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He added: “It’s not like we’re Coca-Cola, where it’s this formula that you can always press a button and it’ll happen. I think the audience feels that way. But the audience never knows what it takes to make what they’re getting. I can’t blame them for that.”
