#63, “B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad),” Outkast (2000)

150 Favorite Songs: #63, “B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad),” Outkast (2000)

I wish I could explain what hearing “B.O.B.” for the first time in a world that hadn’t had it before felt like. There was really nothing like it. Outkast had done great work before—the horns in “SpottieOttieDopaliscious” are unimpeachable; “Rosa Parks” is still thrilling to listen to decades later—but “B.O.B.” is something else entirely. It sounded like you could beam it into outer space, and maybe aliens would hear it and be convinced that Earth was ready to join their intergalactic civilization. It didn’t just sound like it came from the future, it sounded like it came from another planet all together. I wanted to move there immediately.

Everything happening on the track is so deliberate. The shimmering notes that start the song, the way Andre 3000 whispers the countdown before it actually pops off, the way both Andre and Big Boi (who I don’t think ever rapped better than he does on this song) go double-time over a beat that’s already frenetic, the choice to underscore the verses with electric guitar, the grittiness of the bass in the chorus, the intermingling of personal and political and pop culture references into a stew that still somehow manages to sound cohesive—no part of “B.O.B.” sounds like it was a placeholder that got left in, or like they made the easy choice. It all sounds like it was crafted in a lab to sound like something we’d never heard before.

I think that there’s important context to “B.O.B.” that gets lost now that the song is a classic. All of these old things were once new, you know? If you’ve somehow managed to go your whole life without hearing this song, stop reading right away and go listen to it for the first time, because you’ll see it: Each moment in the song is a surprise, an unexpected twist you couldn’t see coming. Do you expect the processed keys at the beginning and Andre’s whisper to give way to one of the hardest verses that the best rapper to ever pick up a microphone ever delivered, at breakneck pace, with drums that match his energy? Do you expect a gospel choir to show up in the chorus? The skittering synths in Big Boi’s verse? Do you expect them to be finished rapping just two minutes into the song, yielding the rest of the song to the choir and a face-melting guitar solo and the words “bob your head, rag-top” in Andre’s voice as a percussion instrument? Do you expect a full minute of psychedelic freakout that slowly fades away while the choir rises, singing the words “power music, electric revival” until you’re transported to outer space?

No, you do not. You couldn’t possibly, because until “B.O.B.” there was no way to know it was possible to put all of those things together. And all of this was coming amid an absolutely dismal time for radio music. Stations were consolidating as part of the 1998 Communications Decency Act, which allowed them all to fold into mega-conglomerates. MTV was at the height of its relevance but the nadir of its taste. The biggest songs of the year were either by aging legacy acts (Bon Jovi, Madonna, Santana, and U2 made up half of the top ten singles of the year; Madonna claimed two of them, with both “Music” and her execrable cover of “American Pie”) or teen pop (Britney Spears, N’Sync, and the Backstreet Boys, plus Christina Aguilera, 98 Degrees, LFO, S Club 7, just real rough stuff). Rock and roll was so dominated by Creed and 3 Doors Down and Limp Bizkit that when Coldplay showed up with “Yellow” it felt like a breath of fresh air. No wonder I got so into Eminem! It was a grim time.

And within that backdrop, Outkast put out a song that sounded not just like nothing on the radio, but like nothing anyone had ever really tried before. There had been rap songs that used rock elements, of course, but you’d be hard-pressed to find one that leaned as hard on psych rock as “B.O.B.,” or that instinctively knew that somehow the precise overlap in the Venn diagram of what would bring the two genres together was a gospel choir. Even Kool Keith hadn’t thought of that yet. And to do it at 155 beats per minute? Good lord.

There aren’t really other songs that sound like “B.O.B.,” but it’s not because it wasn’t influential. Honestly, I think a lot of the genre deconstruction in the decade that followed are a result of what Outkast proved possible here. There was a time when genres were much more intentionally segmented, and attempts to mix them were often ham-fisted and self-conscious. “B.O.B.” made the idea that you wouldn’t have a Hendrix-style guitar solo alongside a gospel choir alongside drum ’n bass seem silly. It made doing everything all at once seem cool. It’s hard to imagine what music would sound like today without it.