NEW YORK, NY (Jive Records) - Three years since the release of 5-time Grammy Award-winner OutKast's landmark RIAA diamond-certified No 1 double-CD Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, Antwan 'Big Boi' Patton and Andre '3000'
Benjamin return in a BIG way this August with their first appearance together in a motion picture, and the most eagerly anticipated new album of their career, IDLEWILD, set for August 22nd release on LaFace/Zomba
Music Group.
"Mighty O," first single from IDLEWILD, finds Dre and Big Boi rhyming together on a track for the first time in six years, since OutKast's triple- platinum CD of 2000, Stankonia. "Mighty O" was co-written by Dre and Big Boi and produced by Organized Noize. A second single, the Big Boi solo track "Morris Brown" (featuring Scar and Sleepy Brown), co-written by Dre and Big Boi and produced by Dre for Slum Drum!, features Eddie Ellis conducting the Morris Brown College Band. Impact dates and radio formats for both tracks will be announced in the weeks ahead.
An old-school (real old school) fusion of swing, blues and hip-hop that is still in its final stages of production as of this writing, early indications are that the IDLEWILD album will also include: "The Train" (featuring Scar and Sleepy Brown), co-written by Dre and Big Boi and produced by Big Boi for Boom Boom Room Productions; "In Your Dreams" (featuring Scar and Janelle Monae, co- written by Dre, produced by Organized Noize); and "Don't Chu Worry 'Bout Me (Idlewild Blues)," written and produced by Dre). Titles are subject to change; the final album sequence will be announced in the weeks ahead.
Three days after the release of the IDLEWILD album, Universal Pictures and HBO Films will open wide with Idlewild, a Mosaic Media Group and Forensic Films Production starring Antwan Patton and Andre Benjamin in their first movie together. (They have acted separately, Big Boi in ATL, and Dre in Be Cool and Four Brothers.) Set amidst the backdrop of a 1930s rural Georgia speakeasy known as The Church, the film follows its two lead characters, lifelong friends Percival (Dre), the club's piano player, and Rooster (Big Boi), the club's lead performer and manager, through intersecting stories of love and ambition, in a story fueled by non-stop action, music and showstopping dance numbers.
Idlewild was written and directed by award-winner Bryan Barber (making his feature film debut as a director), a prolific video director over the past four years and close collaborator with OutKast on "Hey Ya," "The Way You Move," "The Whole World," and other clips. Dance sequences were choreographed by legendary three-time Tony winner Hinton Battle.
Speakerboxxx/The Love Below with more than 10 million units sold was a career-defining album that generated three Grammy Awards for the Atlanta-based duo - including Album Of the Year and Best Rap Album, the first and only time the same album has won both awards. Dre's "Hey Ya" and Big Boi's "The Way You Move" hit the No 1 and No 2 spots on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in mid-January 2004 - first group since the Beatles 40 years before. Additionally for those songs, it was the first time in Billboard history two different songs by the same group hit No 1 on two separate charts: "Hey Ya" on the Hot 100 and "The Way You Move" on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles chart.
