André 3000 has explained his love of the flute during an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
Giving a rare interview with the talk show host, the OutKast legend detailed why he made the instrument the focus of his debut solo album New Blue Sun.
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While holding one of his many flutes, 3 Stacks said: “I discovered flute and I started playing it over and over again for years, and I felt like it would be great to share it so it kinda came in a natural way.
“It’s the closest thing to singing. Like, vibrato is basically a human kinda thing. You’re actually hearing a human’s wind.”
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The Atlanta native also revealed he has around 40 flutes in his extensive collection.
Later in the show, André performed a rendition of his song “That Night in Hawaii When I Turned into a Panther and Started Making These Low Register Purring Tones That I Couldn’t Control … Sh¥t Was Wild.”
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The 10-minute performance saw him joined by a live band and a traffic cone on stage.
Watch his interview and performance on Colbert below.
André 3000 spoke about the making of “That Night in Hawaii When I Turned into a Panther…” in an interview with NPR last year, revealing it was inspired by actual events.
“I was actually in Hawaii and it was my second night of the first time I’d ever taken ayahuasca,” he explained. “We did it like a three-night kind of phase. The first night was inviting and beautiful and the most powerful love and connection with all things I’ve ever felt in my life.
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“The second night was different and everybody knows that aya will do you that way. The second night my stomach was hurting, my mouth contorted like a panther and I actually turned into a panther. And I was doing like GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR — like, that kind of thing.”
He added: “I actually turned into a panther. It was doing this thing called toning. Toning is another way of purging. And toning is where you make these vibrational noises that you can’t control.
“It started playing me like an instrument. I started as a panther and then it would make me do these long kind of tones and started changing the notes.”
André 3000 recently announced that he will be performing New Blue Sun across the United States in what will be his first-ever solo tour.
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The New Blue Sun Live Tour begins on Monday (January 29) in Brooklyn, New York followed by a three-night residency at the legendary Blue Note Jazz Club in Manhattan, where he will perform two shows per night.
3 Stacks and his band will then make stops in Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta and San Francisco before finishing with a five-night stint in Los Angeles in early March.
Tickets go on sale Wednesday (January 24) at 10 a.m. local time and can be purchased here.
