André 3000 has received his flowers from legendary producer Buckwild over the success of his new album New Blue Sun.
On Monday (November 27), the Bronx native took to Instagram where he showed 3 Stacks some love after his debut solo project raked in over 24,000 in first-week album sales, outperforming recent releases from fellow rap greats like Nas and Lil Wayne.
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“Rappers Andre 3000 out sold w/his flute album (24k),” Buckwild wrote in his post, which listed a dozen artists the OutKast MC/flautist has eclipsed in terms of first-week figures.
In addition to Nas’ Magic 2 (17,000) and Lil Wayne’s Tha Fix Before Tha VI (19,000), the list also included Kodak Black‘s Pistolz & Pearlz (23,000), French Montana‘s Coke Boys 6 (21,000) and Ice Spice‘s Like..? (15,000), among others.
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“Outselling mainstream rappers with an ambient flute album is such an Andre 3000 thing to do,” Buckwild added.
Check out the post below.
According to HITS Daily Double, New Blue Sun debuted at No. 30 on this week’s Billboard 200 after opening with 24,244 album equivalent units. It’s important to note, however, that Billboard has yet to confirm these numbers as the chart has yet to be updated in full.
Meanwhile, Drake‘s For All the Dogs returned to No. 1 thanks to its Scary Hours 3 deluxe edition, which racked up 145,000 units over the last week.
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The album previously debuted atop the Billboard 200 last month and has now surpassed 1 million units in the U.S., making it eligible for platinum certification.
A couple of weeks ago, André 3000 surprised the music world by announcing his debut album with just a few days’ notice, then shocked it further by revealing the project was entirely instrumental and based around his playing of the flute.
In the press release for the album, 3 Stacks divulged why he would not be rapping on the album, which marks his first full-length release since Outkast’s Idlewild in 2006.
“There’s this misconception that I just won’t do it. I think people feel like I’m sitting around on rap albums, or sitting around and I’m just not putting them out in that way. And no it’s not like that,” he said.
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“In my mind, I really would like to make a rap album. So maybe that happens one day, but I got to find a way to say what I want to say in an interesting way that’s appealing to me at this age.”
Despite being met with mixed review by fans, the project has received an outpouring of praise from the likes of Questlove, who hailed it as “medicine” for the soul, and Pete Rock, who called it “amazing.”
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Lupe Fiasco went one step further last week by rapping over the intro song — drawing criticism from Joe Budden in the process.
