Skip to content
Premieres

Big Boi Teams With Kelly Rowland on Slinky ‘Mama Told Me’

Big Boi kelly rowland mama told me

Big Boi’s Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumors is due out on November 13, and already some of what we thought we knew about the album is proving viciously untrue. During a listening party in New York over the summer, the OutKast half revealed the follow-up to 2010’s Sir Lucious Left Foot would feature a guest vocal from Little Dragon’s Yukimi Nagano on a track called “Mama Told Me.” Then he made an unannounced appearance to perform the track with the smooth Swedish electro-R&B act at show a couple of months ago in Austin.

Now Big Boi has unveiled the finished version of the track, and instead of up-and-comer Nagano there’s an already-established chart presence on guest vocals: Kelly Rowland, formerly of Destiny’s Child and more recently of “Motivation” fame. She’s an equally strong fit for the sunny, limber synth-funk track, which remains excellent and a standout next to previous Boi tracks “She Said OK” and “Gossip.” The rapper’s casual lyricism is easier to parse in this studio version, as he compares his own art, not wrongly, to the works of Beethoven, Van Gogh, and Mozart. A nod to vintage Bobby Brown hints at the track’s ’80s musical inspirations.