A little over two years ago, André 3000—one half of the legendary southern hip-hop group Outkast—did something that caught the entire music industry off-guard. Instead of dropping the long-awaited solo rap album that many hip-hop fans had hyped up to be an event with potential similar—if not superior to the second coming of Christ, he released New Blue Sun—an instrumental ambient record composed mostly of flute-based free improvisation on top of droning electronic synths. The album’s announcement was prefaced with a warning straight from 3-Stacks himself: there was to be no rapping on this project. There was even a sticker on the cover art that read: Warning, no bars. It’s not like he was trying to trick anyone.
Regardless, people went wild. Most people were supportive, mind you, but there was also a fairly sizable degree of backlash to this record. Fans called it “a slap in the face to hip-hop,” LL Cool J went on an explosive rant on an episode of The Shop about how he “didn’t want to hear the fucking flute” from one of the greatest rappers alive, and Christian rapper Andy Mineo released a high-concept music video in which he faces a series of puppets modeled after several of André’s most iconic looks over the years and raps about his desires to see André return to hip-hop. Sort of like if Jim Henson was the creative director for the music video to Eminem’s “Stan.” Now, keep in mind, these were only some of the more notable shots fired in the midst of the hellstorm. More people were offended by a man’s quest for inner peace than you may imagine.
Below are just a few comments I found from the initial thread on the Reddit forum /r/HipHopHeads announcing that the album had been released. Which may show you how a lot of people were acting at the time.
- “Andre releasing a solo album but it is instrumental only is hip hop’s 9/11.”
- “The glazing is insane. Y’all act like this is good cause Andre name on it. A bum could’ve released this and you’d think it’s bad. Don’t let reputation influence the truth.”
- “He should’ve kept it for himself. This was a slap in everyone’s faces. Fuck his flute and his holier-than-thou attitude he portrays.”
- “Andre is entitled to do whatever he wants. He doesn’t owe us anything… but this. This is a cruel joke. Fucking guy knows how bad fans want a solo project from him. Hell, any project. So he gave us this. I got in my car to go to work, put this album on and for a good 5 minutes I am just disgusted. A fucking flute album and he isn’t even good at playing the flute. This should have been released on April 1st.”
Hip-hop’s 9/11, indeed. Very dramatic stuff here. Last time I checked, the flute never killed anybody.
The last guy had a point for a second but he lost the plot pretty quickly. He’s right about just one thing, after all; André is entitled to do whatever he wants. So why do so many people feel the nerve to demand that he does otherwise? Now, I don’t normally consider myself someone who rushes to the defense of celebrities. In fact, I usually find that kind of behavior pretty pathetic. After all, those kinds of people are more than rich enough to afford round-the-clock PR teams and armies of Twitter bots to do that for them if they really needed it. But to me, this whole debacle represents something deeper about the public’s very weird, parasocial and entitled relationship with the artists they claim to love. People never let their favorite artists grow or change. It’s almost as if they don’t see these artists as real people, but rather little court jesters that they can make sing and dance on command. Puppets. And when they pull back against the strings, the fans don’t take kindly to it.
If you actually go and watch the videos and interviews that André did throughout the rollout for New Blue Sun, you’ll hear him be faced again and again with that central burning question that everyone seems to have for him: why aren’t you rapping anymore?
His answer—despite how hard these stupid reporters push him to give them an opportunity to make clickbait headlines about a potential Outkast reunion—is always the same. His heart’s just not in it like it used to be. Rapping doesn’t feel like a natural thing to him anymore. And being the deeply self-critical perfectionist that he is, he doesn’t want to force himself to put out something he knows he didn’t put his all into. So why should he? There are so many rappers who are way past their prime that never stop putting out records, no matter how old they get and how much passion they’ve lost. And that’s how we get incredibly washed up rappers like Eminem, Snoop Dogg and Kanye West pushing out terrible albums just for the sake of it when they’re all long past the point of releasing anything with any real substance anymore. Maybe they should take a page from André’s book, stop running through the motions and explore what really inspires them.
The flute is what feels truly authentic to him right now, so that’s what he’s doing. It’s as simple as that. Why bother getting pissed about it? Because you miss his rapping? Sure, he’s one of the best to ever pick up a microphone—that’s certainly undeniable once you listen to ATLiens for the first time—but his rapping hasn’t gone anywhere. There are six entire studio albums worth of his incredible lyrical ability on display as a member of Outkast alone, and that’s not even factoring in the dozens and dozens of incredible features he’s done for other R&B and hip-hop acts since his career began in the early ‘90s. There are plenty of his raps out there to satisfy you. Plenty of unreleased ones too, if you dig hard enough.
I find it deeply disappointing that this stupid controversy overshadowed the album’s actual release this much. As someone who’s a deeply passionate fan of both hip-hop and ambient music, New Blue Sun was like worlds colliding for me. One of my favorite MCs to ever live was doing a complete 180° in the form of picking up a flute and taking his audience for a journey through an auditory enchanted forest, lush with greenery and overflowing with beautifully transcendent and meditative synthesizers, woodwind instruments and soothing tribal percussion. It’s textured, it’s expansive, it’s psychedelic as hell, and it’s by far my favorite album that came out in 2023. Everything about it feels so genuine, so healing, so unpretentious. So authentic. Which isn’t exactly something that he could deliver if he was forcing himself to slog through a rap album right now!
Again, if you listen to any of his interviews that he was kinda-sorta forced to do on the press tour for this album, he explains this in detail. He’d love to make a rap album, but it just isn’t happening for him. So why should he force himself to churn out something subpar and inauthentic? For us? What right do we have to his labor? Or anyone’s labor, for that matter? None at all. Artists aren’t our servants. They are artists. And they can create whatever kinds of art they want, whenever they want. Who are we to tell them any different?
André 3000 doesn’t owe you a damn thing, and if you were a real fan of his, you’d understand that. Get over yourself already and go listen to that flute album. You might actually enjoy it.