Track Review: Big Boi - Feel Me (Intro)

I never thought that I would feel compelled to review a hip-hop intro track, but 'Feel Me (Intro)', the opening salvo of Big Boi's opus Sir Lucious Left Foot, The Son Of Chico Dusty, is a track that refuses to be ignored, from the plaintive whistling and Law & Orderesque piano line to the porn-funk guitar riff and trunk-rattling bass. Big Boi's baritone climbs over the top with hummable platitudes about his longevity, leading to the goup de grace where Big Boi shoves a fist in the ass of auto-tune and goes straight robot, letting a mechanical voice cry out the most human of sentiments: "Feel Me!" Coming from a machine, it's more of a demand than a plea, and it points a straight line into the bionic future. In that way, 'Feel Me (Intro)' is as prescient in 2010 as 'Bombs Over Baghdad' was in 2000, foreshadowing the next generation of not just hip-hop, but of popular culture-- all in less than a minute and a half. Sir Luscious Left Foot himself sums it up perfectly as the music trails off into what you already know will be a killer album: "Damn, that wasn't nothing but the intro!"