The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #185

#185: "Idlewild Blues (Don't Chu Worry 'Bout Me)" (2006) - OutKast

At first listen, this song seems to be just a tossed-off blues shuffle, a laid-back skiffle, and it is those things, but it's more, too. It's another Dre rumination (two in a row, and the third one on this chart--so far) on personal, spiritual, political, and musical freedom.

After several choruses of doo-doos; a warning to the lawmakers practicing the politics of disharmony; a shout-out to people to follow his lead in correcting society's ills; a couple of sympathetic lines to his parents that he must do his own thing; and a line to Sally (ooh, that girl) that though this mess is troubling him, he'll put on the public facade of painlessness and soldier on through for the good of the people; Dre then tells his audience/conregation (because here, for Dre, preaching and performing--the personal and the spiritual--are intertwined) that he's following their lead--leading by following the will of his constituency, the mark of a true leader (and a good politician). Dre addresses all these concerns much more succinctly than I have here, and he follows them with a statement of purpose that effectively serves as the manifesto of every musician there ever was, as well as a statement of why music exists at all: "We gon' play until you're happy/Till there ain't no more blues."

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