Speakerboxxx/The Love Below

Released on September 23, 2003 through LaFace Records, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below is OutKast's fifth studio album, and the one that split the duo in two. Rather than making a joint record, Big Boi and André 3000 each built a solo disc under the OutKast name: Big Boi's Speakerboxxx stayed rooted in the funk-driven Southern hip-hop the group had spent a decade refining, while André's The Love Below drifted into psychedelic soul, jazz, and pop, barely resembling rap at all in places.

The Love Below reportedly began as a standalone André 3000 solo album before Arista Records and the group's management pushed for a joint release, prompting Big Boi to assemble Speakerboxxx as a companion disc. The resulting double album became a commercial and critical phenomenon, selling more than 11 million copies in the United States, spinning off the chart-topping singles "Hey Ya!" and "The Way You Move," and winning the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 2004, a rare honor for a hip-hop record at the time.

Critics have since treated the record as a high-water mark for genre-blurring ambition in mainstream hip-hop, crediting it with reviving interest in the double-album format and demonstrating that a rap group could stretch toward funk, rock, and orchestral pop without losing its audience. The split-disc structure has also been read retrospectively as a preview of the duo's eventual divergence, since OutKast has not released another studio album together since.