André 3000 has opened up about how grateful he was to work with an array of artists in the time since Outkast’s final album.
Three Stacks joined Questlove Supreme on Wednesday (December 13) where he alluded to the “blessing” of having the opportunity to connect with the likes of DJ Unk and Frank Ocean throughout his solo career.
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“A year after Idlewild at home and I was blessed to start getting asked to be on remixes,” he said. “And that was a blessing for me because it gave me a chance to rap.”
When he hopped on Unk’s “Walk It Out (Remix)” in 2007, the Outkast legend wasn’t even compensated monetarily for the verse.
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“When I say a blessing this is a town creating a new sound,” Dre continued. “DJ Unk that actually came through another DJ friend of mine that know Unk and Unk said, ‘Ask André if he’ll get on this beat.’ It was no big production I don’t know if I got paid for the song.
“I think the trade-off was, ‘Hey Unk, can you do a couple beats that we scratched in the background of my cartoon for Class of 3000?’ The beat was so jammin’ that you just wanted to get on it so I say the blessing because any rapper just wanna be on a good beat and in the city.”
Three Stacks connected with Frank Ocean on a pair of occasions: he joined the elusive artist for Channel Orange‘s “Pink Matter;” and in 2016 they reunited on the Blonde opener “Solo (Reprise).”
“Or even later like new artists even if a Frank Ocean says, ‘Hey, get on my song?’ Frank Ocean a new artist I don’t know him,” he stated. “When I say a blessing that introduced me to a whole other generation too.”
Dre concluded: “I say blessing because we just came off Spearboxxx/The Love Below and Idlewild which was a musical more focused melodic kind of thing so I didn’t rap a lot in those offerings. So I say a blessing because it gave me an opportunity to do what I enjoy doing.”
HipHopDX caught up with DJ Unk earlier this year on the BET Awards red carpet where he recalled hearing that Dre had rhymed on his “Walk It Out” beat, but thought it was too good to be true initially.
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“I was actually in New York,” he recalled in June. “They said they had a surprise for me, I didn’t know what it was … they were just like, ‘Listen, check this out right here.’ When they played it, I was like, ‘That is not him.'”
After hearing it back, he finally accepted that the Southern MC had indeed rapped on his track. “It’s a dream come true ’cause it’s like doing a song with Michael Jackson to me,” he added. “Huge shoutout to Big Boi, too, and Jim Jones [who is also on the remix] for blessing me.”
