Description
ATLiens is the second studio album by American hip hop duo Outkast. It was released on August 27, 1996, by LaFace Records. From 1995 to 1996, OutKast recorded ATLiens in sessions at several Atlanta studios—Bosstown Recording Studios, Doppler Recording Studios, PatchWerk Recording Studio, Purple Dragon Studios, and Studio LaCoCo—as well as Chung King Recording Studio and Sound On Sound Recording in New York City.
The record features outer space-inspired production sounds, with OutKast and producers Organized Noize incorporating elements of dub, psychedelic rock, and gospel into the compositions. Several songs feature the duo’s first attempts at producing music by themselves. Lyrically, the group discusses a wide range of topics including urban life as hustlers, existential introspection, and extraterrestrial life. The album’s title is a portmanteau of “ATL” (an abbreviation of Atlanta, Georgia) and “aliens”, which has been interpreted by critics as a commentary about the feeling of being isolated from American culture.
