My name is Quentin, I'm 14, I live in Georgia, and OutKast is the best group in hip hop. Not one of the best. THE best. This page is my proof, and by the time you get to the bottom you're going to agree with me or you're going to be wrong.

I wore my tape of Aquemini out so bad it started sounding like it was underwater, and I had to buy it again with my own money. My cousin Duane says that counts as supporting the artist twice. I also keep a notebook of rhymes I write myself. There's one at the bottom of this page, if you make it that far.

Shout out to B-Line, who has a page called B-LINE'S RHYME BOOK and who sent people over here to read my side. He says The Roots are better. The Roots are good. Real band, real drums, and they're from Philly, and I respect it. But respect is not the same thing as being right. Read his page, read mine, then go listen to Aquemini start to finish and tell me I'm wrong. You can't.

OutKast is two people: Dre (André Benjamin) and Big Boi (Antwan Patton). They met in high school in East Point, which is right by Atlanta. Big Boi was born in Savannah and moved up as a teenager. They signed with LaFace Records, which is out of Atlanta and was started by L.A. Reid and Babyface, and their very first record was "Player's Ball" in 1993, which was on a LaFace Christmas album, if you can believe that.

Dre is the one with the wild clothes. Turbans, wigs, the craziest pants you ever saw, and nobody else could get away with it. He thinks deep and he writes like nobody else. Big Boi is smoother, more laid back, but don't let that fool you, because his rhymes are tight every single time. They're totally different, and that's the whole point. One without the other wouldn't work.

This was the hardest part of the whole page. Putting any OutKast album in third place is like picking which arm to keep.

#1  AQUEMINI (came out September 29, 1998. It's one year old next week. Happy birthday.)
The best album ever made in the South and maybe anywhere. The Source gave it five mics, which almost never happens. "Rosa Parks" has a harmonica breakdown in the middle that makes the whole lunchroom go crazy. "SpottieOttieDopaliscious" is slow with big horns and it's more like a movie than a song. "Da Art of Storytellin' (Pt. 1)" is just what it says. And on "Skew It on the Bar-B" they've got Raekwon from Wu-Tang, which proves New York and Atlanta can get along fine when they want to. They use real instruments on a lot of it, too. (B-Line, take note.)

#2  ATLiens (1996)
This is where they went to outer space. ATLiens like Atlanta plus aliens, get it? The booklet is a comic book. "Elevators (Me & You)" is the song that got me, about where they came from and where they're at now, and it's got this echo on it like it's coming from really far away. "Jazzy Belle" too. If you only know Aquemini, go back and get this one.

#3  SOUTHERNPLAYALISTIC­ADILLACMUZIK (1994)
Yes, that's the whole name, and yes, I can spell it without looking. The first one, produced by Organized Noize, and it went platinum. "Player's Ball," "Git Up, Git Out" with Goodie Mob, and the title song. It sounds like summer in Georgia with the windows down. It's only third because they got even better after it, which is the best thing you can say about a group.

OutKast didn't come out of nowhere. They came out of the Dungeon, which was a basement studio at Rico Wade's mom's house, and everybody who made music down there is called the Dungeon Family. Here's the tree:

Sleepy Brown sings a lot of the hooks on OutKast songs. If you hear a smooth voice singing on the chorus, that's probably him. And Goodie Mob is on OutKast albums and OutKast is on Goodie Mob albums. It really is a family.

For a long time if you weren't from New York or L.A., people didn't take you serious. They said Southern rap was country, all bass and no brains. Here's what I say back.

1. The Source Awards, 1995. OutKast won Best New Rap Group at the Source Awards in New York, and the crowd booed them, for being from the South. I was ten so I didn't see it, Duane told me about it. Dre went up there anyway and stood up for the South in front of all of them. That's the day this whole thing started, as far as I'm concerned.

2. We've been here. The Geto Boys in Houston. UGK in Port Arthur, Texas. Eightball & MJG in Memphis. Master P sold millions of records out of New Orleans on his own label with nobody's help. Juvenile is all over the radio right now. The South isn't new. People just weren't listening.

3. We tell stories. Southern people talk. My grandma can take an hour to tell you about going to the store. OutKast and Goodie Mob write like that, about real places and real people, and you can see it.

4. Nobody down here wants a war. Tupac and Biggie are both gone. All that East Coast against West Coast stuff and look what it got everybody. The South just kept making music. That's the respect right there.

5. Aquemini. See above. I rest my case.

OK. This is mine. I wrote it, nobody else, in my notebook in July. No cussing in it, because my mom reads this page, and because Dre and Big Boi can say everything without it when they want to, so I can too. If you take it I'll know.

Tell me what you think. Be real but don't be mean.