When we talked a few weeks before the album's release, he was equally transparent and tangible, whether laughing about Tyler, the Creator's funny response to his new music, detailing the wild ayahuasca trip that had him purring like a panther in Hawaii or sharing the reason why he gets so many requests to play flute at funerals now.
The man may not owe us anything, but he's finally ready to share. One thing it is not, however, is a rap record: No bars, no beats, no sub-bass. André doesn't sing on this joint, either. What he does do is play flute, and plenty of it — contrabass flute, Mayan flutes, bamboo flutes — along with other digital wind instruments. In place of lyrics, he offers eight provocative song titles, the first of which almost reads like a lowkey apology, with a wink of irony: "I swear, I Really Wanted To Make A 'Rap' Album But This Is Literally The Way The Wind Blew Me This Time."
“I don’t want to troll people. I don’t want people to think, Oh, this André 3000 album is coming! And you play it and like, ‘Oh man, no verses,’ André 3000 said in an interview with NPR. “So even actually on the packaging, you’ll see it says, ‘Warning: no bars.’ It’s letting you know what it is off the top.”
The painstaking standard André 3000 set may have made it harder to entertain himself in the years post-OutKast, but so has the thought of chasing his tail. Even without a solo rap album in his catalog, he's consistently ranked among the greatest of all time. Like Coltrane reaching for new heights, he mastered rap's rigidity, pushed it past its limits and eventually reconfigured the entire landscape alongside Big Boi. He granted a lineage of ATLiens permission to run amok with melodic, sing-songy rhyme styles that would earn them the same early derision and eventual mass following he'd gained.
“I love rap music because it was a part of my youth. So I would love to be out here with everybody rapping, because it’s almost like fun and being on the playground. I would love to be out here playing with everybody, but it’s just not happening for me,” he continued. “This is the realest thing that’s coming right now. Not to say that I would never do it again, but those are not the things that are coming right now. And I have to present what’s given to me at the time.”
Aging gracefully is not a luxury afforded most rappers. Even 50 years in, hip-hop is still no country for old men. But what of the rapper who comes to see rap itself as old hat? How should we, as fans, react when the poet laureate of our collective psyche trades in his pen for a woodwind?
A departure album in the classic sense, New Blue Sun also feels like André has arrived. Its making came about organically, once he relocated from New York to L.A.. Instead of the OutKast origin story that started at Headland and Delowe, where Big Boi and Dre met their future Dungeon Family producers Organized Noize back in the day, this remix began with an unassuming trip to Erewhon — the chic L.A. health food chain where André bumped into percussionist and experimental jazz heavy, Carlos Niño.
Up until now, André 3000 has never released a solo album; the closest he had come was The Love Below from OutKast’s 2003 double LP Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. Since the duo’s final studio album, 2006’s Idlewild, his musical output has been limited to sporadic guest verses as he instead focused mostly on acting.
In recent years, however, André 3000 gravitated towards the flute and was seen playing the instrument in public.
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