
High Times’ man of the millenium Big Boi and jodhpur-wearing thespian Andre 3000 have to bridge aesthetic galaxies just to make small talk, so it’s no surprise that their musical partnership, which started in high school, yielded an integrative masterpiece. The fluid rhymes (“Speeches only reaches those who already know about it/This is how we go about it”) ground Stankonia in rap, but it’s the soul singing in the chorus that makes Ms. Jackson so tender and the jagged guitar riff that makes “Gasoline Dreams” so hard. Then there’s “B.O.B. (Bombs over Baghdad),” which fuses funk, punk, techno, disco, Atari sound effects and a gospel choir into a millenial dance party.