Excellent news first: after many years within the musical wilderness, OutKast‘s André 3000 is releasing his first solo album, New Blue Solar, this Friday (Nov. 17). The eagerly anticipated assortment from the reclusive rapper — whose final full album was the 2003 OutKast double LP, Speakerboxxx/The Love Under — nonetheless, options “no bars” based on the 48-year-old MC who, other than the occasional function, has been largely off the rap radar for almost 20 years.
In an interview with NPR’s Rodney Carmichael, André confessed that his obsession with the principle instrument on the instrumental jazz album, the flute, has lengthy brought about some concern amongst his associates in Atlanta. “I chortle at it as a result of my homies in Atlanta, we’ll speak and so they’ll be like, ‘Man, you recognize n—as assume you loopy to f–ok round with this flute,” he stated, confessing to being “in on the joke” about his curious musical tendencies.
The album, described as a “beautiful 87-minute mind-bender, minimalist and experimental, tribal and transcendent,” will seemingly confuse many followers of such iconic hits as André’s “Hey Ya!” and Grammy-winning OutKast’s “Ms. Jackson,” “Roses,” So Recent, So Clear” and “Participant’s Ball,” which have been cooked up with 3000’s former rap associate, Large Boi.
In an announcement in regards to the album, André assured annoyed followers wishing to listen to his one-of-a-kind vocals that, sorry, there is no such thing as a Prince-like vault of unheard music ready to be launched. “There’s this false impression that I simply gained’t do it,” André stated of releasing a rap report. “I believe folks really feel like I’m sitting round on rap albums, or sitting round and I’m simply not placing them out in that manner. And no it’s not like that… In my thoughts, I actually want to make a rap album. So possibly that occurs someday, however I received to discover a option to say what I wish to say in an attention-grabbing manner that’s interesting to me at this age.”
New Blue Solar, then, options none of André’s intricate, river-flowing rhymes, or as NPR put it, “no bars, no beats, no sub-bass.” In truth, 3000 doesn’t sing on the report in any respect, however he does tear it up on his trusty flutes. In truth, he performs a lot of flutes in addition to digital wind devices, and as an alternative of his signature motor-mouthed poetry the album’s first observe form of apologizes for the shortage of language with the me culpa title, “I swear, I Actually Needed To Make A ‘Rap’ Album However This Is Actually The Method The Wind Blew Me This Time.”
The origin story of the album begins with André bumping into experimental jazz nice Carlos Niño on the hip L.A. grocery retailer Erewhon, adopted by the rapper displaying up at Niño’s place with is flute and jamming within the basement. The jam periods launched 3000 to the group of performers who seem on the album, together with keyboardist Surya Botofasina and guitarist Nate Mercereau, in addition to musicians Deantoni Parks, Diego Gaeta, Matthewdavid, V.C.R, Diego Gaeta, Jesse Peterson, and Mia Doi Todd.
Not planning to make an album, they began the periods a yr in the past, with all of the songs improvised in actual time, and although it isn’t what followers anticipated in any case this time, the mission is described as an album that “exposes his unrefined soul — and the fragile nature of his inventive course of — in methods the Gemini wordsmith’s fine-tuned verses have a tendency to hide.”
“Even in our top of what folks know of what I’ve executed earlier than, I used to be at all times like a sluggish author. I’m not a freestyler. I don’t be freestyling. I simply wasn’t blessed with that,” André stated. “Even through the earlier occasions, Large Boi, he simply form of received down, like, he’s so quick and environment friendly with what he does. And it’ll take me a minute to throw them down. So I’ve at all times form of been analyzing it or determining how I needed to strategy it.”
For some motive at the moment writing these form of verses are simply tougher for André and there’s simply nothing he’s written that he feels snug sharing. “That’s why New Blue Solar was one thing that I noticed, whoa, I actually need folks to listen to it,” stated 3000, who estimates that he owns 30-40 flutes. “I actually wish to share it. That’s my solely gauge. I’ve to love it as an individual, as an artist myself, as a result of if I don’t prefer it I can’t count on no one else to love it.”
For those who’ve been paying consideration over the previous decade, you most likely noticed André in random Instagram movies wandering by the world together with his trusty flue, which become a form of The place’s Waldo? sport for his followers. “I didn’t like that as a result of they simply saved getting little nicks of me, simply form of messing round, you recognize,” he stated of the surreptitious movies. “So I simply felt like I’d actually prefer to play nevertheless it was actually for me. I’d simply stroll for hours and I’m a walker. I like to stroll. So I’d simply stroll and play for hours. I did that for years and it received to some extent the place, okay, I wish to share. And so going into New Blue Solar, it was form of like attempting to determine, properly, how do I share it?”
He did, nonetheless, run the brand new tracks by a few of his youthful contemporaries, with Tyler, the Creator and Frank Ocean getting an early take heed to the album, with Tyler opining about one tune, “It sounds such as you’re chasing a butterfly by a backyard and I figured it out. It helped me to determine how to do that,” in reference to the Odd Future founder’s assortment of journey suitcases he couldn’t determine easy methods to correctly show on a wall in his dwelling till listening to André’s new music.
And to be clear, André didn’t know this was the place his life would take him, both. So if his followers look sideways on the album — whose tune titles embrace references to the whole lot from the Dalai Lama, John Wayne Gace, Beyoncé and that point 3000 become a panther in Hawaii whereas on an ayahusaca journey — he will get it.
“If I used to be on the surface, I’d really feel the identical manner. So, for me, I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he stated of the album that may have a “no bars” warning on the packaging, which impressed the previous MC to go lengthy on the tune titles as a way to give “as a lot data” as doable to the instrumentals. “However that’s the cool and scary factor about it. And I believe as an artist, you form of received to place your self on the market to be ready to reply. I’m a responding particular person. That’s what I’m. I’m responding to what’s given to me. It’s responding to my contemporaries. It’s responding to what I like. It’s responding to what I don’t like. It’s responding to all of that.”
Take a look at the New Blue Solar tracklist under:
- “I swear, I Actually Needed To Make A “Rap” Album However This Is Actually The Method The Wind Blew Me This Time”
- “The Slang Phrase P(*)ssy Rolls Off The Tongue With Far Higher Ease Than The Correct Phrase Vagina . Do You Agree?”
- “That Night time In Hawaii After I Turned Into A Panther And Began Making These Low Register Purring Tones That I Couldn’t Management … Sh¥t Was Wild”
- “BuyPoloDisorder’s Daughter Wears A 3000™ Button Down Embroidered”
- “Ninety Three ‘Til Infinity And Beyoncé”
- “Ghandi, Dalai Lama, Your Lord & Savior J.C. / Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, And John Wayne Gacy”
- “Ants To You, Gods To Who ?”
- “Goals As soon as Buried Beneath The Dungeon Ground Slowly Sprout Into Timeless Gardens”
