Big Boi is known for his voracious, omnivorous listening habits and willingness to abandon his most successful musical formulas. Since he's spent the last few years sharing festival stages with indie rock and electronic acts, it makes some sense that he might want to make a record influenced by indie rock and electronic music. So here on his second proper solo album, he's exchanged the deep, dirty funk of 2010's Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty and his half of OutKast's nearly decade-old double solo LP Speakerboxxx/The Love Below for collaborations with artists like Phantogram, Wavves, and Little Dragon.
Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumors is on the one hand a genre-busting statement of artistic restlessness but it's also a mess. You can try looking at it from a few different angles: as an outgrowth of rap's artsy ambitions, a compilation of indietronic-rap fusion tied together by one voice, or even simply as the new Big Boi record. But each approach carries its own particular set of frustrations when confronted with the 17-track whole.
Some of its weakest moments are actually the ones with the most potential. Teaming up with A$AP Rocky and Phantogram on "Lines", for instance, makes good sense on paper. Rocky's among the most successful of the current crop of upstart boundary-pushing rappers and Phantogram (who contribute to three of the album's tracks) have demonstrated an ability to infuse traditional pop structures with a sonically adventurous spirit. But the finished product refuses to cohere into the quasi-ambient electro-pop-rap gestalt the line-up promises. The rappers' verses and Sarah Barthel's breathy, multi-tracked choruses basically stand politely next to each other without interacting in any meaningful way.
Other questionable team-ups fare much worse, like the lineup of Big Boi, pop-rapper B.o.B., and snotty surf-pop savant Nathan Williams of Wavves on "Shoes for Running". The terminally schlocky B.o.B. comes at this potentially challenging collaboration with the same staunchly middle of the road approach he takes to everything, while Williams yelps his way through a hook that would be embarrassingly twee even if it wasn't presented in the context of a rap record. Imagine a weak, more self-consciously indie-fied song from the Judgement Night soundtrack and you're getting there.
The album's saving grace is Big Boi. No matter what setting you place him in, he remains one of the most dextrous, technically capable, and thoroughly entertaining figures in hip-hop. He's still unapologetically lecherous, still styling all over less-smooth fools, still repping for the Dungeon Family and OutKast. (Although the latter trait is starting to seem cruel considering how many people are still holding out hope for a proper sequel to Stankonia and how much more unlikely that possibility seems with every passing year.) He's also still apparently unable to phone in a half-assed verse no matter the circumstances, so at least the flimsiest songs on Vicious Lies still has his performance holding them up, even if there's nothing else helping out.
A few tracks do live up to their potential, and to Big Boi's ambitious vision in general. "In the A" brings him together with T.I. and Ludacris over a noisy, chaotic funk beat dripping with wah-wah guitar, siren-like synths, and stripper-pole drums that's got enough of the familiar Big Boi energy to bring its differences into compelling focus. (T.I. and Luda both living up to their habit of delivering their strongest material in cameos on other artists' tracks helps as well.) And the deeply louche "Raspberries" upholds Big Boi's reputation for making sex music that sounds like it's being beamed in from several years into the future.
He also clicks with Swedish electro-pop group Little Dragon, who appear on three tracks. "Descending" is sweetly sad and atmospheric, with Big Boi and Little Dragon vocalist Yukimi Nagano trading verses over a delicate fingerpicked guitar and a reverb-laden minimalist bit of drum programming straight out of a Prince slow jam. But on "Higher Res" and "Thom Pettie"-- maybe the best cut on the album-- the group shows a surprising facility for producing the kind of booming, nasty beats that suit Big Boi the best. Out of the lengthy list of collaborators on the disappointing Vicious Lies, they're the only ones he should hit up the next time he goes in to record.
