By the beginning of the new millennium, pop music had cemented itself into fixed, immutable genres. Predictability, staleness and a refusal to cross-pollinate were the defining features most music. If you randomly scanned through radio stations, you’d find your ears subjected to predictable playlists of unsurprising hip-hop, stale corporate rock, formulaic country and synthetic R&B. Which begs the question—do people even listen to the radio anymore? Maybe they would if more artists topping the Billboard charts were like OutKast

With so many artists splintering further into their niche-genres, OutKast blazed a fearless trail in modern music. They threw all of pop’s generic odds and ends into a teeming pot and boiled the mix down to a delicious, spicy stew that married the best flavors of pop’s divergent branches. They evolved into a postmodern pop chameleon, effortlessly fusing genres that superficially seemed at odds. Listen to songs like “Roses,” “B.O.B.” or “Rosa Parks” and just try to pin down what genre OutKast trades in. Hip-hop always glued their wide-ranging sound together, but by the time they released Stankonia in 2000, they were creating an unprecedented, potent mixture culled from pop’s vast collective consciousness.

Structurally, the duo feeds off its contrasting members: the straight-faced, no-nonsense Big Boi and the adventurous, eccentric Andre 3000.

Their video for “Rosa Parks” opens with Big Boi telling Andre that the video should be “pimping” and filled with Impalas. Andre says he’s down with that but they should add some “space, futuristic type things” to change it up. The video kicks in and Big Boi rolls up in a vintage Cadillac while Andre 3000, donning some football shoulder pads, fuzzy rainbow pants and an army helmet, dances in front of a stoned-out psychedelic backdrop. When the music drops, a whole other layer of oddity is added. The song unites funky acoustic guitar strumming, sub-bass beats, old school scratching and bluesy harmonica solos in a danceable, catchy tune with an unforgettably tongue-in-cheek refrain (“Everybody move to the back of the bus”… I guess when Rosa Parks sued them over the song, she didn’t quite appreciate the irony).

The strange thing about “Rosa Parks” was that it worked—which gets right at the heart of why OutKast is great. They’re mind-bendingly weird without losing the plot or seeming disjointed.

You can deconstruct literally any OutKast song and find some amazing, unexpected nuggets of genius. One of my favorite songs OutKast songs– strike that—my favorite OutKast song—actually, this is probably just my favorite song of the decade, period—is “Hey Ya!”

When it came out, it went straight to the top of the charts, it stayed there for weeks, and it spawned more quotes than Shakespeare. “If they say nothing lasts forever, then what makes love the exception,” “Thank God for mom and dad for sticking together, cause we don’t know how,” “What’s cooler than being cool … ice cold,” “Lend me some sugar, I am your neighbor,” and of course, “Shake it like a Polaroid picture.” Who could forget those?

But the great thing about this song is its sinister duality. At first glance, it’s an upbeat Beatles style pop song with funky bass, bright synth lines and a persistent hip-hop inflected beat. But beyond that facade lies a tangle of complication.

Probably only music majors and math rockers notice this, but the song isn’t in straight 4/4 timing. It mimics an 11 beat pattern by sequencing three measures of 4/4, one measure of 2/4 and two more measures of 4/4. If that’s too complicated or lingo intensive for you, just know that that means “Hey Ya!”, with its unique six-measure loop, has one of the weirdest forms of any number one hit of any time.

And then there’s the lyrical subject material. “Hey Ya!” is not as effervescent as it sounds. It’s really a meditation on doubt, the transience of love, the meaning of marriage as an institution and the pointlessness of trying to understand others. One of the most profound things Andre 3000 says in the song comes right before the second chorus when he bemoans in a tossed-off aside, “y’all don’t wanna hear me, you just wanna dance.” Another thing that can easily go unnoticed is that in the song’s iconic video, the band of Andre clones are all performing in front of an open coffin. Sorry to break it to you, but “Hey Ya!” is actually pretty depressing.

Therein lies the genius of OutKast. They’re not really hip-hop—they’re pop in the fullest sense of the word. And they embrace all the silliness and throwaway kitsch of what “pop” means. But under all the immediacy, catchiness, and instant gratification lies a really dense, complicated organism that resists the kind of easy classification that made so much of this decade’s pop music so predictable.

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