Pitchfork

At some point this holiday season, whilst slouched in a multiplex straining in vain to block out the preview for Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, a faint query may have passed through your gray matter: Whatever happened to that Outkast movie? Wasn't it supposed to come out 'round now? Didn't Pitchfork tell me so?

Indeed we did. The film, Idlewild, was originally set to arrive last week at a theater near you, and its corresponding Outkast-centric soundtrack was supposed to be in stores over a month ago. Yet all you got in your stocking was coal and that fake Biggie record. So why no Outkast?

In a recent interview with MTV.com, Outkast manager Blue Williams revealed the reason for the hold-up: "You gotta let creative be creative, that's what it is. It ain't always when I want it...even when I'm ready to hit people with the wham-wham, the guys gotta be ready. I might be sitting there with the ill marketing...[but] if they ain't ready, they ain't ready."

So the wham-wham is in limbo for another week or so as Big Boi and Andre 3000 attempt to woo their muses and put the finishing touches on the film's soundtrack, now slated for February 14 release. Expect ill marketing to swell between the album's Valentine's Day release and March 10, when Idlewild the motion picture lands at last in theaters everywhere.

Prior to all this, Outkast plan to release the album's first single, "The Train"--not "Idlewild Blues", as once believed--and shoot a video. "The Train" is apparently a Big Boi solo cut, although Idlewild the record will not be a two-disc diametric affair a la Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. So there.

As previously reported, Idlewild is being directed by video auteur Bryan Barber. It takes place in a 1930s speakeasy and stars Terrence Howard, Macy Gray, Ving Rhames, and Patti LaBelle, in addition to Big Boi and Andre 3000. (We've got an office pool going on how many years it will be before that same list of people becomes the cast of "The Surreal Life".)

And the soundtrack? "It matches the movie," Big Boi told MTV.com. "The movie's set in the 1930s, so there's a lot of piano playing, a lot of ragtime, Cab Calloway, Jelly Roll [Morton]. A lot of different stuff on the album. It's a very mature album, it's rapping and everything else. You've got to expect what you always expect from Outkast, and that's the unexpected."

The Idlewild trailer, as well as stills from the film, are available here. Turns out Bruce Bruce is in it too!

In other news from everyone's favorite pseudo-pariahs, MTV.com reports that Outkast have designs on putting together a tribute to the civil rights activist Rosa Parks. Parks, who passed away last October, actually sued the hip-hop duo a few years ago for using her name as the title of its 1998 hit "Rosa Parks", but apparently there are no hard feelings. In the works are an album paying homage to Parks as well as a television special, but at the rate Outkast is going, nothing will be released until 2010. Said Williams, "I thought it would be a great way to show we always had good intentions." Wham-wham, kids.

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