Big Boi and Catherine O’Hara

Episode notes

 

Photo: Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty ImagesHip Hop Icon Big Boi: Getting Familiar with Uncharted TerritoryThe rapper and producer Big Boi has sold over 50 million records as a solo artist and as half of the platinum-selling hip hop duo OutKast. The innovative Atlanta-based group broke out in the mid-1990s with “Rosa Parks” and “Elevators”, then followed up with crossover pop hits like “The Way You Move” and “Bombs Over Baghdad”.

OutKast found huge commercial success with an experimental brand of hip hop, eschewing old-school samples in favor of new sounds. Big Boi has been the more musically prolific member of the group. He’s gone on to produce several solo albums and collaborate with artists across the music spectrum, from fellow ATL-based rapper Ludacris to funk-master George Clinton to the indie rock band Wavves. His most recent release is called Vicious Lies & Dangerous Rumors.

Big Boi joins us to talk about the early days recording in an clay-walled basement, coming to terms with fame, and where to go musically when you’ve hit monumental commercial success.

This interview originally aired in April 2013.

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All-Time Favorites with Boing Boing’s Mark FrauenfelderBoing Boing’s Mark Frauenfelder joins us this week to share some all-time favorites: a great dungeon crawler for iOS called The Sword of Fargoal and Chandler Burr’s The Emperor of Scent: A True Story of Perfume and Obsession, a fascinating book exploring the science of scent.

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Canonball: A Tour of Led Zeppelin’s III with Brad TolinskiFor our segment Canonball, we take a flying leap into the canon of popular music and find albums that deserve a closer look.

This week, we’re joined by Brad Tolinski, editor-in-chief of Guitar World and author of the new book Light and Shade: Conversations with Jimmy Page.

He’ll tell us about Led Zeppelin III. With that album, Led Zeppelin moved away from the 60s obsession with authenticity and deep ideas — and into a whole new sound.

This segment originally aired in January 2013.

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Photo: Getty Images for Hollywood Pantages/Getty ImagesCatherine O’Hara on Being Slightly, Perfectly OddCatherine O’Hara’s work embodies a particularly special brand of comic absurdity. She helped launch SCTV alongside other burgeoning comedy greats like John Candy and Eugene Levy, quit the show, but still moved on to star in blockbuster comedies. She became spiritually possessed in Beetlejuice, played a memorable, anxiety-ridden mother to Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone, and became a critical part of Christopher Guest’s ensemble mockumentaries, like Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show.

Most recently, she’s starred in the sitcom Schitt’s Creek with Chris Elliott and O’Hara’s longtime collaborator Eugene Levy.

O’Hara talks to us about the difficulties of being a woman in the SCTV writers’ room, creating memorable characters with her longtime friend and collaborator Eugene Levy, and her own secret comedic formula.

Oh, and in this outtake, hear about the best boyfriend ever: Dan Akroyd.

This interview originally aired in April 2013.

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The Outshot: The Throne Of The Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millenium General AssemblyIn this week’s Outshot, Jesse tells the story of a man who secretly spent the last fifteen years of his life building something amazing in a rented garage.

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