A brand new period has dawned for André 3000, who launched his debut solo album, New Blue Solar, on Friday (Nov. 17) — and it has completely zero rapping on it.
Regardless of doling out standout verses on songs resembling Kanye West‘s “Lifetime of the Get together” from the deluxe model of Donda to Killer Mike’s “Scientists & Engineers” — which lately earned him two Grammy nominations for finest rap music and finest rap efficiency — Three Stacks is hanging up the mic and sticking to his flute. Earlier this week, NPR‘s Rodney Carmichael described New Blue Solar as “a shocking 87-minute mind-bender, minimalist and experimental, tribal and transcendent.”
André (actual identify André Lauren Benjamin) later informed GQ within the journal’s first-ever video cowl story why he determined to not rap on his first solo musical providing. “I’ve labored with a few of the latest, freshest, youngest and old-school producers. I get beats on a regular basis. I attempt to write on a regular basis. Even now folks suppose, ‘Oh, man, he’s simply sitting on raps, or he’s simply holding these raps hostage.’ I ain’t obtained no raps like that. It truly feels … typically it feels inauthentic for me to rap as a result of I don’t have something to speak about in that approach,” he mentioned. “I’m 48 years outdated. And to not say that age is a factor that dictates what you rap about, however in a approach it does. And issues that occur in my life, like, what are you speaking about? ‘I obtained to go get a colonoscopy.’ What are you rapping about? ‘My eyesight goes dangerous.’ Yow will discover cool methods to say it, however …”
Throughout his tenure in Outkast, he and Large Boi launched six studio albums between 1994 and 2006, with their final being Idlewild. Exterior of Outkast’s 1994 debut album Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, 5 albums — 1996’s ATLiens, 1998’s Aquemini, 2000’s Stankonia, 2003’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Under and 2006’s Idlewild — reached both No. 1 or No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and Prime R&B/Hip-Hop Albums.
Take heed to New Blue Solar beneath.
