Big Boi has sliced off a delicious piece of hip-hop.

The song is called “Royal Flush,” and it features guest verses from Raekwon and (OutKast reunion alert!) Andre 3000. Before we talk about why this song is great, go ahead and treat yourself to the following three minutes and eighteen seconds…

Saucy analysis awaits you after the jump… 

I’ll admit… this one snuck up on me. I downloaded it because I’ve always liked OutKast and the people on iTunes were giving it all kinds of stars, but after listening to the song once, I shrugged, coughed, and went  about my day. (I have a cold. That’s why I coughed.)

A few hours later, though, I really listened, and I realized three things:

(1) The song is not about a nightclub. 

(2) The lyrics are fascinating.

(3) The music and the flow are surprising.

Regarding number one: Is anyone else bored by popular hip-hop songs? So many of them are about clubs, licking lollipops in clubs, buying dranks in clubs, wearing apple-bottom jeans in clubs… Good Lord! Everyone loves a party record, but is there nothing else to discuss? Couldn’t Soulja Boy and Flo Rida collaborate on a thesis about Kanye West’s ego? 

Which leads me the lyrics of “Royal Flush.”  

Some of them baffle me. What does Raekwon means when he says, “Next stop, Bowling Green. Blink flashing, glow my ass off?” Because… um… why are we in Bowling Green?

But on the whole, the lyrics make sense: Big Boi is anxious about how President Bush is leading the country, and he thinks North Korea is going to nuke L.A. because of it. Andre 3000 is stressed about a hip-hop culture that values bling, but resents people who are lucky enough to be born into comfort. 

What’s more, he’s worried about poor people who encourage the artists in their community to go out and prove that the neighborhood produces more than drug dealers. Inspiring, right? Like “Good Will Hunting” or “Finding Forrester?” But Andre has learned that those “morals that you think you got go out the window” when you see your kids starving. Next thing you know, you’re forced to choose between “honest living and a crooked killing.” 

I know this isn’t the first rap song to question the president or bemoan the difficulty of living righteously in a crime-ridden community, but putting both ideas together creates a larger conversation about moral hypocrisy. From the president on down, the song says, we’re saying one thing and doing another. Maybe we need a Royal Flush…. a dismissal of all the power structures that are keeping us this way.

And let’s not forget how the song sounds. Dark and slinky, the beat thumps along at an ominous clip, built on bluesy guitar strums and turntable scratches. It encourages head-bobbing, but it’s too aloof for out-and-out dancing.

And then between each verse, there’s a distorted, slowed-down loop of a woman singing, like the song almost gave us a standard-issue chorus, but couldn’t. Things just got too heavy. 

None of this is instantly hooky, but the rhythm sticks with you if you give it a chance.

Plus, Andre 3000’s messed-up enunciations of words like “dangerous” (“dange-AIR-uhs”) and Big Boi’s nasal, clipped delivery are like lessons in how rappers can alter their flow to fit the personality of a track. (Compare the jittery paranoia of their work here to their saucy confidence on “So Fresh, So Clean.”  )

I hope the rest of Big Boi’s solo album is this interesting. I’m really hungry for a great hip-hop record.