A Simple Reminder That "Player's Ball", One of Outkast's Best Tracks Ever, Is A Christmas Song
No this isn't clickbait.
This is somehow, someway, a very true story.
It's even harder to believe when you consider that this song is the debut record from the legendary duo.
It was actually first released on the LaFace Family Christmas album.
The song was produced by Organized Noize and ended up being the lead single off Outkast's 1994 debut album Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik.
Big Boi and André 3000 had appeared on TLC’s remix to “What About Your Friends” as teenagers in 1992. Like that opportunity, “Player’s Ball” was birthed out of LaFace Records trying to cross-promote its fledgling Rap duo.
For the 1993 holiday, A LaFace Family Christmas would be one of many label compilations marketed to fans. TLC, Toni Braxton, and Usher were centerpieces on the 10 tracks, and rightfully so. On the cover with those three acts, as well as A Few Good Men, was Outkast, barely showing their faces under the big wreath graphic from Antonio “L.A.” Reid and Babyface’s imprint.
Complex - That’s when they got the call from LaFace. In 2012, Wade told Complex‘s Linda Hobbs, “[The] thing is, we don’t really fck with Christmas like that. That’s where we were at the time, we were on some, ‘Christmas is not one day out the year, it’s every day.’ For us, it was just about being realistic. People get caught up in the excitement of, ‘I got to buy this, I got to do this and that” and they lose they mind.” The hitmaker added, “I told OutKast, ‘We gotta do a Christmas, song but we’ll just talk about what we don’t do on Christmas, or what it means to us.'” He would later pinch a beat that partner Ray Murray had been work-shopping for a group called The Drip Drop to bring what Dre and Big wrote to life.
Wade says, “I thought, ‘How the fck are we gonna do a Christmas song? We’re a Rap group! How are we gonna get any respect?’” They did, simply by refusing to compromise.
The song was originally titled “Socks & Drawz” and eventually morphed into what became “Player’s Ball.”
By the time the group's album dropped, the song had been altered to omit the "decking the halls" and the "ho ho hos". The hook was also rerecorded.
If you listen to the first version after the Christmas version you can notice the difference. For starters, there's sleighbells clinging and clanging in the background.
The Christmas/LaFace version is also full of classic seasonal lines like
"Shut up that nonsense about some 'Slient Night'/ I gots it crunk/ If it ain't real, ain't right.
"Gots no snowy weather,"
"You thought I'd break my neck, to help y'all deck, "Ain't no chimneys in the ghetto so I won't be hanging my socks,"
"Getting tipsy off the nog'gen,"
The music video for the album version, which depicts Andre 3000 and Big Boi driving around their hometown of Atlanta, stopping by the barber shop and other various spots was actually directed by Puff Daddy.
Blast from the past indeed.
Merry Christmas from the player's ball, all day every day.