Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik was here’s who we are; ATLiens was here’s our revolution — and then, for album #3, came here’s what the revolution can get us. Like a camera on a satellite, Aquemini flies in the rarefied outer orbit of Southern hip-hop’s future-funk ambition but zooms in with pinpoint detail to prosaic real-world POVs. If the first singles promised victory laps — the stylin’-on-you mastery of “Skew It on the Bar-B”; the anti-stagnant resilience of “Rosa Parks” — it’s the deeper cuts that build out and cultivate Big Boi and Andre 3000’s tendencies to explore their own empathy and perspective around their peers and community. The two-part “Da Art of Storytellin’” alone feels like a stunning culmination — a reckoning with casual rap-star sex and their relations to the women involved in it, followed by a direct stare into the eyes of the apocalypse’s ultimate Fucked Vibe. But their perception stays roving, whether it’s the scenes-from-a-nightclub character study multi-perspective monologue “SpottieOttieDopaliscious” (“Now who else wanna fuck with Hollywood Court?!”) or their almost prayerful meditation on spiritual autonomy “Liberation.” While Organized Noize take a reduced role in OutKast’s increasingly in-house beats, the organic-yet-futurist sound they’ve cultivated shines through their own work (orchestral-Moroder epic on “Return of the ‘G’”; refined-traditional with deep diamondinthebacksunrooftop soul on “West Savannah”), and that inspiration’s powerfully reflected in production unit Earthtone III’s free-flowing omnifunk. When the only argument against an album’s immaculate greatness is “eh, the hook to ‘Mamacita’ is kind of repetitive,” it’s easy to see why conventional wisdom places Aquemini as the greatest OutKast album — this, in a discography where even the ones that miss the podium are worldbeaters.