Atlanta studios—Bosstown Recording Studios, Doppler Recording Studios, PatchWerk Recording Studio, Purple Dragon Studios, and Studio LaCoCo—as well as Chung King Recording Studio and Sound On Sound Recording in New York City. For ATLiens, the band aimed for a consistent set of songs in which a listener would not need to skip tracks; Outkast wrote around 35 songs for the album and reduced them to fourteen. The duo's songwriting style for the album had no solid structure and was mostly spontaneous; Big Boi noted, "Stuff'll just come to you. I'll be sittin' in the truck, and I'll start rhymin'. People look at me like I'm crazy, but that's how it starts." Composition Music Two-thirds of the album is produced by Organized Noize, Outkast's primary production team. The rest is produced by Earthtone III, a production team that includes Outkast themselves and Mr. DJ. André 3000 and Big Boi produced the songs "Jazzy Belle" and "Elevators (Me & You)". It also has a notably more laid-back, spacey production sound, which they expanded upon on their follow-up album Aquemini. Although the group drew from George Clinton's outer-space inspired compositions, the band utilizes a more laid-back style as opposed to Clinton's hard funk leanings. Many tracks feature strong echo and reverb, taking influence from dub and reggae. Andrea Comer of the Hartford Courant perceives an "extraterrestrial feel" in the record's production. MTV wrote that the album's production "built giddy, chaotic hooks around throbbing bass grooves, neck-snapping drums and bits of backwoods country and psychedelic rock for good measure." Outkast also incorporated elements of gospel into the music; being from the South, the group felt obligated to "stay close to [their] slave roots". The album's introduction track "You May Die" has been described as "churchy". "Elevators (Me & You)" contains atmospheric elements including echoes, dub-influenced bass, organ riffs, and telephone tones. "13th Floor/Growing Old" contains a spoken word introduction from Big Rube, somber soul vocals from Debra Killings, and a "Prince-ish" piano riff, while "Wheelz of Steel" features "furious" turntable scratching by Mr. DJ. "Extraterrestrial" offers a break in the continuity of the record as it features no drum beat. Lyrics Lyrically, André 3000 and Big Boi abandon the "hard-partying playa characters" of their debut album in favor of more spacey, funky, and futuristic personas on ATLiens. With their lyrics, the duo hoped to reflect on maturity in the wake of the birth of Big