Depending on the age of who you ask, Andre 3000 can be one of the three: the avant garde, forward-thinking fashion icon; the experimental, genre-blending Atlanta legend whose musical legacy redefined a genre within a region; or the transcendental flute-playing myth who floats around the world with his overalls. I went into this interview expecting an amalgamation of an enigma that I’ve carried in my mind through the threadline of music ingrained into my psyche. How do you encounter someone who is hard to find? Especially when you aren’t looking for them. He’s everywhere yet nowhere at once. He’s an ever-present time traveler who is dedicated to living life in the way we’d all dream about.
Our introduction to our first version of Andre began in 1994. The man who considers John Coltrane to be his hero, began his career as one half of Outkast — unquestionably one of the greatest rap acts of all time. His ability to use his voice as an instrument to play along the early Organized Noize productions of their albums; he creates his own pockets within the production (“Jazzy Belle” as an example) enveloped with his complex lyricism and storytelling that followed in the steps of A Tribe Called Quest. The barefaced legacy of Outkast is a definitive example of the South having something to say.
Yet, that “something” Andre had to say was more than just a call to action for the South to claim their rightful place in rap music. It became his redefining motto as he evolved musically and aesthetically. Pinpoint any era of his career and its direct influence can be traced — Young Thug, Tyler The Creator, Kanye West, and Anderson. Paak to name a few. Metro Boomin donned a replica of Andre’s iconic 2014 custom Black jumpsuit recently, Doechii’s “Boiled Peanuts” is a direct homage to Outkast and Organized Noize, and Kendrick Lamar name-dropped him in his “Like That” verse. Whether it has been music, fashion or his mere aura, Andre has never been of the time, just always moving on his own.
“I didn’t necessarily plan to even be back out doing music again,” he said when asked about the response to returning to music and touring. “I mean, it was kind of like a part of my life that had been behind me. Like I’m always kind of tinkering with music, but I never thought it would be in a serious way again. So this whole run was a surprise to me.”
The whole run he’s referencing is the virtual resurgence in Andre 3000 imagery and conversation through his newest album New Blue Sun. The announcement of new music from 3 Stacks caused debates over whether his core fans even wanted to hear an instrumental Jazz/New Age album for a lauded rap icon. This sense of abandonment from hip-hop lovers emerged but for Andre, the need to grow has always been more important than the need to constantly be what the world requests of him. His cultural imprint from a time that he no longer indulges in has been recycled and copied so much that it’s become an aesthetic. After years of redefining our artistic approach in hip-hop, he’s taken the last couple years to focus on finding expressive ways to just connect and disconnect.
With his band led by Carlos Nino, Andre has allowed rage to simmer into acceptance. It’s not the first time he’s had to and it’s a position he’s comfortable in. Opting for venues as diverse as The Blue Note in Tokyo, Tyler The Creator’s Camp Flog Gnaw and now Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival. “Next Wave is a platform for boundary-breaking artists experimenting and pushing the envelope in unexpected ways,” explains Gina Duncan, President of the Brooklyn Academy of Music. “New Blue Sun is a bold new direction from a musical legend and we are thrilled André 3000 is opening the program this year.” From Jazz lovers and avant garde spaces to an alternative mostly Gen-Z music fest helmed by the newest leader of the alt-hip-hop school Andre has helped build, even he’s surprised that folks still want to hear what he has to say.
“We’re always willing to go and play and share the experience for people. I’m just happy to be a part of anybody that wants us to come play. And I’ve been surprised by promoters…Like we’ve done over 140 shows at this point. So any festival, anybody that brings us, you know, we’re ready to play.”
The truth is, Andre’s normal has never changed. He’s used to the world not “getting it.” And that’s okay. Our culture has warped around his stubborn urge to never stay content with not knowing, trying and searching.
However, I wasn’t searching for Andre, he landed in my lap. Our afternoon chat ended with a clearer understanding of 49 year old Andre Benjamin who has shared his sonically spacious journey with us for 30 years as Andre 3000. There’s always more to a name and we may never know the depths to the person holding such a name. For Essence Magazine, I spoke with Andre 3000 about New Blue Sun, spirituality, legacy, mythology, coming back to New York for BAM’s New Wave Festival, and more.
For clarity, the interview has been condensed.
Kia: Hey Andre, how’s your day been going so far? Your week’s been so far?
Andre: All is well, all is well. I mean, the tour, you know, it’s been going good. It’s tour life.
Kia: What is tour life like for you now?
Andre: Very similar and very dissimilar to what I’ve done before. You have all kinds of logistic in and outs and being on a tour bus and being in a different city every night. But for what we’re doing now, the type of music that we’re performing is completely different. So, it’s basically exploring every night and not knowing what’s going to happen every night. Pretty adventurous.
Kia: How important is that relationship with you and the band? I read in one of your interviews, you really don’t consider yourself the band leader. You would consider Carlos Nino as more of the band leader. But how important is that relationship on stage with musicians when words really aren’t being spoken?
Andre: It is everything it’s the only thing we have to lean on. It’s pure trusting of each other. Everything is in the moment. So it’s pure being alive and playing, paying attention to what’s happening. I’m feeding off of what everybody else is doing and vice versa.
Kia: Speaking of feeding off energy, I wonder about this sense of having a spiritual connection to music. When you’re attached to music, you build up this idea in your head of the artist. I’ve learned to release that, but sometimes it can be really hard when someone has a mythical aura, that you become connected to that music. Do you view music or this relationship with artists in a similar way?
Andre: You can call it in a spiritual way, but I never liked to kind of get too esoteric and, you know, too heady about it. It’s just kind of like a feeling that I like. That I’ve discovered from a kid, like your very first early times of listening to a song that you really love or, you know, something that you’re really into and you move by it. And I just kind of wanted to be a part of that. So once I got into doing music, I mean, there’ll be many times where, when I’m making music and I feel like higher or something, I feel that there’s some type of higher power working. And I kind of like to go to that place. So I’m sure other people feel the same way.
As far as mythology with artists, I’ve been in [music] for like 30 years at this point, maybe even more, but sometimes I’m nervous when I meet other artists. It’s kind of like, because they are myths to me. I don’t be hanging out and partying and going to all the, you know, the shindigs and all that kind of stuff. So when I meet artists on the street, you know, they’re myths to me. I’m kind of like tripping sometimes. And I have to just always realize, we’re just people. Because sometimes even fans, they’ll come up, they’re really nervous and they’re shaking…they can’t even hold a phone and take a picture. And I know it looks different, but I mean, we all kind of in it in the same way. There’s a lot of power in it. I mean, just like in religion too. People feel a certain way about preachers, because they’re on the stage and they’re speaking this thing and they’re moving people.
People have this heightened relationship with spiritual leaders, gurus and even cult leaders have it sometimes. I think anytime you build up a thing, the brain likes to make its own ideas around it. So I think it makes it a myth too, in a way.
Kia: Knowing how people feel about you or perceive you, do you still experience fear when it comes to artistic experimentation?
Andre: When you’re exploring and trying stuff, there’s no fear in that. To make New Blue Sun, it wasn’t nervousness or [feeling] like, “Oh man, I’m doing something different and I’m scared to do it now.” You’re doing what you’re into. I mean, even The Love Below when I was doing more melodic stuff and singing, it was just stuff that I was into, so it wasn’t fear. The fear comes when you have to present it to other people. Because at that point it’s out of your hands.
And at that point. There’s this kind of veil or gate that’s open and you got to let it go. But exploring is the fun part. It’s almost like cooking. You in the kitchen, throwing down, doing what you’re doing, the anxiety comes when you sit in front of someone and they take them first bites.
You hoping that they like it.
Kia: That was an on-point analogy, by the way.
Andre: Yeah, I mean, that’s really what it is. You’re tasting it like a chef or a baker, you know, dipping your finger in it or tasting it along the way, and you’re hoping that somebody else’s taste buds are similar to yours.
Kia: What’s your relationship like with time and memory? I find that as I get older, things that once felt close to me, I feel like they’re escaping.
Andre: Time changes us. They have that term, like you’ll listen to an old album, “That didn’t age well.” And it happens in everything. I’m not a biologist, but I’ve heard that our cells change every seven years. Like we become somebody new, damn near a whole new person every seven years. Then memory changes too, because our memories are not perfect either. So sometimes we’re embellishing what we thought we remember or making it better than what it was too.
As I get older too, like I’m 49 now, I’m at this age where I’m just looking back on all of this stuff…I don’t sit around and listen to our old albums. Like, I hear it sometimes out in the street or I hear, you know, people playing it. And that’s kind of when I hear it again. But when I do hear it, it’s like, “Whoa!” Like I’m listening to or looking at a high school photo or a middle school photo or elementary school photo.
Kia: Music essentially is a time stamp for us. You were one of those artists where I saw you the first time I heard you. So I think that also plays into how people view you. How do you feel about this idea of legacy? Are you concerned with legacy?
Andre: I’m not concerned with legacy at all. I’m concerned with what I’m doing now and I hope that my legacy is inspiring and can live on through other people in that way. Like people can discover something in it, but we have no control of what the legacy will be. You can’t. Even when some albums that have come out now and they’re like, “Oh man, this is classic. It’s a classic album.” No, you almost got to wait 20, 30 years before you can really call something a classic.
Because it has to stand the test of time. Yeah, you can say it’s classic because it may have attributes of what other classic songs or classic albums had, but that doesn’t necessarily make it classic. It almost has to earn this classic. You can’t stamp a classic quickly, you know?
Kia: I’m glad you brought that up because I do think words like classic and iconic, they’ve kind of become overused. Especially on social media. Those were always things that growing up for me, it took time to acquire that status. Which I think is just something with my generation — this idea of rushing or being impatient. Is that something you feel like you’re witnessing as well? Or do you feel like, no, it’s just a change of the times.
Andre: I think their world is moving faster. So, time is kind of squashed. So they see people, in real time, every day. Like when we grew up, just like you were saying [earlier], your mom said, she didn’t see Teena Marie until later, so she had built up a whole thing [around the music]. Now, Stevie Wonder would have an Instagram. Well, maybe not Stevie Wonder, but somebody else might have an Instagram like you’re watching them the whole time. I think the youth may see people get successful faster so they want it faster. Everything seems, now, now, now, now, now delivery, you can get stuff in a day.
You’re trained to want stuff faster. I’m very interested right now in things that will grow. Like lately I was kind of getting into seeing these people take care of these bonsai trees. And I always saw bonsai trees all my life, you know, I just know, okay, there’s these little Japanese trees and people nip at them, you know, but I never knew that a lot of these trees we’re seeing are thousands of years old. They outlive the people that started them and they are passed down through generations. So if I have a bonsai tree now, my kids, kids, kids will take care of that tree. I thought it was just, you know, just some plants.
Even when we were making New Blue Sun, a lot of the songs are longer and they fade in or fade out. And we just don’t make music in that way anymore. Everything is really instant. So it comes on really fast and it just shuts off. That’s how a song happens. When I grew up, songs faded out and it gave you the illusion that they went on forever when they faded out. There was kind of like patience and waiting for it to fade out or waiting, sometimes for songs to start. And you wouldn’t hear lyrics until a minute or two into the song.
But now because of algorithms, for you to get credit for someone playing your song, they have to play it for at least 15 to 30 seconds. So producers and artists are squashing everything upfront. You don’t have time to build up anything. Even the way we listen to music affects how the music is made. So I think, generationally, we’re kind of forced to be in a “do it, do it, do it” tempo.
Kia: When you talk about the new structure of music making, New Blue Sun feels like the exact opposite. Like jam sessions?
Andre: Yeah, that’s exactly what it is. That’s how the shows are too. But not necessarily, I understand what you mean by jam sessions, but it’s not kind of like. Like a funk thing where we’re playing this pocket.
It’s more like a spatial presentation of something, you know? There’s only like maybe one or two songs on the album that someone could actually rap to. So a lot of times it’s not a jam. It’s kind of like spreading sounds around or filling it out and creating almost like a collage of moments or collage of emotive spots more than anything.
Kia: I love that. Emotive spots. But I get those moments from songs like “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone.” It has a whole five minute intro. And those strings with the horns…
Andre: We don’t have time for that now. There are artists here taking chances to do those types of things because that’s kind of what moves them.
Now because I’m in this place, a lot of writers that interviewed me like 25 years ago, they’re bringing up those interviews. Like when I meet them again, they’re like, “Oh man, I remember you said…” And they would actually play a clip of it. [Me saying] I’m probably going to be in some club playing this instrument because I know I didn’t want to do the rap thing when I’m at a certain age.
My last girlfriend, I remember we were talking and I was still rapping at the time, but I remember I told her, I just want to throw sheets of emotion at people musically. So when we talk about these emotive moments, it’s kind of what’s happening now. Almost like a precursor to what we’re doing, you know? So the idea was always around, the idea was there.
It was just kind of, I guess, took time to do it, you know?
Kia: In a world that is very fast, how do you find the time to slow down? What do you do to slow yourself down?
Andre: I have the kind of blessing of being almost oblivious to things. Even though my name is Andre 3000, because back in the nineties, I was really concerned about the future. But I’m kind of not with everything. I’ve never posted anything. I don’t even know how to post. I’ve never gotten a DM. I’ve never had a MySpace or a Facebook. All of those things don’t push me in the same way. Like even fashion, I’ve gotten into a place where I kind of wear the same thing over and over and over again. I have like 30 of the same shirts or like five overalls. I’m almost like outside of the loop in a way.
That could be looked at as kind of corny, you know? And I understand that from the outside, but for me, the pace is good. Like I’m cool, you know, not being in it. I don’t care about a lot of things in the same way that everybody else may care about them. I don’t think I’m pushed. Like my tempo is just different.
Kia: Would you say there’s anything about who you are, whether that was earlier in your career or now that you can see in this generation of artists?
Andre: I can see. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s such a beautiful thing. I get emotional about it because I’m like, man, I’m actually old enough to see the influence. And the cool thing about artists now is they’ll come and tell you.
Like I’ve sat and had conversations with many artists that’ll ask me advice on things. And then they’ll go out and put it into their world. And it’s like a new, awesome, cool thing. It just feels good to be in a lineage; to know that you’re in a timeline of something happening and those artists now they are on top or doing these amazing things that the kids are listening to or like to fan out about. There’s young kids watching them now. It’s important for us to talk about who we’re into or talk about what we’re influenced by, or artists that we grew up on because it gives the other generation time to go back. I like Prince, but Prince liked Sly Stone, you know?
So it’s kind of like, when I go down that line, I see all of me in all of that going forward. It’s a trip to still be around to see it.
Kia: That’s a beautiful thing. I know you’re on tour, so it’s probably a little bit harder, but do you still go for outings with your flute? I know that used to be a thing on social media. But I realize so many people, like, just randomly running into you when you’re out. Are you still able to do that or is it a little bit intrusive now?
Andre: That’s the kind of bad part about any kind of recognition for something. Before people would just blow it off but now it’s a little different cause people want to film you like they think you’re performing. It’s not a solemn kind of solitary. I still walk, like I try to walk every day. But I may not carry my flute now cause it attracts a different type of attention.
Kia: Whether you’re building something with a group of friends or a group of peers — and you definitely have worked in collective spaces — what would you say you’ve learned from working in collectives to make art? What’s the biggest lesson or something that you’ve learned that you still carry with you?
Andre: The more you do it, the more comfortable you feel doing it. The practice of the repetition of doing anything builds up a kind of snowball effect.
Kia: Thank you so much, Andre, for taking the time out to speak to me. I really do appreciate it. And you made my day.
Andre: Nah, no problem. Thank you for even, like, considering this. Thank you.
Kia: Are you kidding? You’re Andre 3000.
Andre: Ah, it’s just a name. Just a name.