Last night, at the annual Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Cleveland, Ohio, OutKast were inducted by Donald Glover. Both André 3000 and Big Boi were in attendance to accept the honor; however, only Big Boi participated in a tribute performance that also featured JID, Doja Cat, Tyler, the Creator, Janelle Monáe, and Killer Mike performing OutKast classics. Watch it all go down below.
“OutKast was able to distill the polarizing nature of being not just from the south, not just being Black, but being a human in a very polarizing and contradicting world,” Glover said in his introduction. “If I had to describe what I thought a 13-times-platinum, highest-selling rap album in the world would be in 2003,” he continued, referencing 2003’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, “it probably wouldn’t’ve been that, because that sounds insane until it isn’t, until you see it, and feel it, and know it. A lot of Black music deals with what was and what is, making sense of a reality we were placed in. OutKast seems to endlessly explore what could be. They made every experiment sound like a destiny.”
Big Boi and André 3000 then took the stage accompanied by members of the Atlanta rap collective Dungeon Family. The duo played three rounds of rock-paper-scissors to decide who would speak first. Big Boi won and, after thanking his family and shouting out Savannah and Atlanta, Georgia, addressed André directly: “I wanna say, especially, to my brother right here—thank you for making me be the best I can be, and going toe to toe on the records. Iron-sharpen-iron just to be the best.”
For his portion of the speech, André 3000 began, “When I heard that we were being inducted, I was like, ‘Man, this is great, because we’ll be able to be in the same company with a lot of people we grew up with, a lot of bands that influenced us, whole lineage of people.’” He also got choked up as he referenced a remark made earlier in the evening by fellow inductee Jack White: “He said something about little rooms, and we started in a little…Great things start in little rooms.”
Big Boi and J.I.D. kicked off the OutKast medley with “ATLiens.” Doja Cat performed “Ms. Jackson,” Tyler, the Creator did “B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad),” and Janelle Monáe—a protégé of Big Boi—busted out an acoustic guitar for “Hey Ya.” Big Boi then returned to the stage, this time accompanied by Sleepy Brown, for their 2003 collaboration “The Way You Move,” and brought out Killer Mike, as well as the rest of the performers, to close things out with “The Whole World,” from OutKast’s 2001 compilation Big Boi and Dre Present… OutKast.
