André 3000 has announced his long-anticipated debut solo album New Blue Sun and has revealed some of the reactions to it from fellow rappers.
Speaking to NPR about making the project, which will be his first full-length offering in nearly 20 years, the OutKast lyricist said he reached out to the likes of and Frank Ocean and Tyler, The Creator about his new album.
AD LOADING...
Speaking about going to Tyler’s house to play him new material, 3 Stacks said: “So we’re sitting there and Frank [Ocean] just happened to drop by. So it’s us three sitting there listening to these three songs and I just kind of wanted to get an opinion. And it was just good for me to hear with somebody else.
“Because sometimes you can be in your own thing and think it’s a certain thing and you just want to have some outside… not that it really matters, because once you believe in it enough — I mean, I take criticism all the time, but it’s not like, ‘Hey, do you like it or not?’ It’s ‘How can we help it?'”
AD LOADING...
He added: “So at that point, I felt like we had something because we had a nice day just enjoying it in a way. And I started just playing it for friends and playing it for artists and playing it for people I respect or people who I felt would get it.”
Talking about their reactions to the material, André said: “Tyler was staring at this thing that he has in his house. Like, he’s a fan of travel suitcases and so he has a wall of like travel suitcases. And he was like, ‘Man, I’ve been trying to figure out how to configure these like Louis [Vuitton] suitcases.’
AD LOADING...
“And he was listening to one of the songs and he was like, ‘It sounds like you’re chasing a butterfly through a garden and I figured it out. It helped me to figure out how to do this.’ And I think Frank pointed out one of his favorite tracks out of the three.”
“I was just happy to hear that, ’cause I respect them as musicians,” he continued. “Like new energy; they’re going for it, man. So I really respect their opinions. I play it for my homies. I play it for friends, play it for artists, directors — just to see their reaction more than anything. So I was just happy with what I was getting.”
New Blue Sun will be released this Friday (November 17) and will feature eight tracks. The album features no rapping or singing, but instead showcases André 3000’s flute playing alongside contributions from a core of jazz musicians.
In a statement about the album, André said: “New Blue Sun, for me, was like, I guess in a sci-fi way, the next world or the next beings will be under a bluer, cooler burning sun. It will burn cooler, but it will be larger.
AD LOADING...
“So when you look up at the sky in these times, there’ll be this larger globe of bluish, still bright but bluish because it’s cooler. It’s kind of like this whole album and this whole direction is a new world for me. New Blue Sun is like a new direction.”
