Let Me Put U On: Why ‘ATLiens’ is my favorite — and the most important — Outkast album

This month, I’m celebrating a birthday and it ain’t mine.

For those of us keeping count, on Aug. 27, “ATLiens,” the sophomore album from Outkast will be 30 years old.

It’s a double-platinum classic that sits atop my personal rankings of Outkast’s Hall of Fame discography. It’s just over 57 minutes of music that gave us a peek into the group’s creative and career trajectory.

This is not an argument that “ATLiens” is their best album. I’m sure the “Aquemini” and “Stankonia” contingents will argue that those are fully formed, bona fide Outkast records. Y’all ain’t wrong.

I’m just an Atlanta kid explaining why it’s my personal favorite and, to me, their most important album.

In Outkast and Southern hip-hop lore, folks love to dwell on André 3000’s famous “the South’s got something to say” boast at the 1995 Source Awards.

I’m of the mind that we talk a lot about what he said, but don’t spend nearly enough time appreciating what happened next: André 3000 and Big Boi followed up with “ATLiens.”

If what André 3000 said put hip-hop on notice, “ATLiens” was its corresponding proof. Hip-hop prudes rejected the group’s twang, and Andre’s turbans, so this felt like their lyrical middle finger to rap’s then-status quo.

At the time, they were a pair of artists whose debut, “Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik,” brought attention, but not universal respect. They were angry, ambitious, still figuring out themselves, the industry and adulthood.

The party boys from the Dungeon grew up fast. Big Boi had his first kid. Andre put the booze and weed down.

When it dropped in 1996, I was a seventh grader at Shamrock Middle School in North DeKalb by of the Minority to Majority — M to M — Program

It’s probably not surprising that I wasn’t very cool. Awkward at best. I had friends, but had always felt like an outsider inside the cliques.

I was often called out for “perpetrat’n” (middle school speak for wearing opposing brands, aka tween fashion faux pas). My musical tastes ran the gamut from Skee-Lo to Smashing Pumpkins. I was often met with quips of, “Gavin weird,” or “You different.”

Enter “ATLiens.”

My intro to the album came via the Black Rabbeye. If you went to a middle school dance, bar or bat mitzvah in Atlanta in the 1990s there’s a good chance he was its DJ.

I remember he’d fade his mixer into the title track “ATLiens,” and when that spaceship sound effect dropped, nothing else mattered. We would grind. He’d run it back. We’d do it again.

When André 3000 says on the album’s penultimate track, “13th Floor/Growing Old,” that “I grew up on booty shake, we did not know no better thang” — guilty.

The duo told stories that felt right at home with aspirations for exploring and imagining worlds bigger than our own. The name alone implied that this wasn’t just an inflection point for rap, but for Atlanta in general.

It was an album that zigged where its predecessor zagged. Lyrical content took more introspective turns exploring themes of aging, music industry politics, self-doubt and being outsiders.

They also set out on their own as producers, handling five songs: the aforementioned title track, “Wheelz of Steel,” “Elevators (Me & You),” “Ova Da Wudz,” and “E.T. (Extraterrestrial).”

And let’s not forget the comic — led by then LaFace Records creative director D.L. Warfield — included in its album packaging. Outkast serving as heroes protecting Atlantis from an evil entity wanting to control the mythical city’s musical output.