André 3000 has said in a new interview that OutKast are “further away” from new music “than we’ve ever been”.
Speaking to Rolling Stone in a feature published on Thursday (December 12), the rapper and flautist – who showcased his skills in the latter with 2023’s ‘New Blue Sun’ – admitted that a reunion with his former collaborator Big Boi is down to a “chemistry thing” and both “have to be wanting to do it.”
“I’ll say maybe 10, 15 years ago, in my mind, I thought an OutKast album would happen,” André 3000 admitted. “I don’t know the future, but I can say that we’re further away from it than we’ve ever been.”
“It’s hard for me to make a rap, period, you know? And sometimes I’m in the belief of, ‘Let things be’”, he told Rolling Stone.
He continued: “[OutKast] was a great time in life, and our chemistry was at a certain place that was undeniable,” he said, brushing against the notion that “something has to last forever”.
“It probably should not last forever,” he added. “It’s not like a product. In the end, we did give a product, but what made that product was a certain time in both of our lives.”
“It’s not like we’re Coca-Cola, where it’s this formula that you can always press a button and it’ll happen. I think the audience feels that way. But the audience never knows what it takes to make what they’re getting. I can’t blame them for that.”
He acknowledged that the current direction in his music career may not appeal to all OutKast fans, and that he doesn’t “blame the fan for wanting what they’ve known.”
“If a person hasn’t given you a solo album in 17 years, do you really think that was going to happen? I don’t know, maybe I just think differently. I know I wouldn’t be sitting around waiting,” he stated.
Last month, he released two new tracks: a new song ‘Moving Day’, and a previously unreleased ‘New Blue Sun’ cut ‘Tunnels Of Egypt’. He has also teased “something new” with his 2006 animated television show Class of 3000, which lasted for two seasons from 2006 to 2008.
He also teased new music would be coming over the next year, saying: “I don’t wanna pinpoint what it is, but I just want to express more … put it like that.”
This month, ‘New Blue Sun’ was nominated for Album Of The Year and Best Alternative Jazz Album at the Grammys, and its opening track, ‘I Swear, I Really Wanted To Make A Rap Album But This Is Literally The Way The Wind Blew Me This Time,’ picked up a Best Instrumental Composition nomination too.
Discussing the nominations with the New York Times, he admitted: “We were trying to be nominated in some type of way for alternative jazz or ambient, possibly. But I was totally surprised by this. So yeah, it was super, super, super duper cool.”
Last year, Benjamin said that he thought he’d “aged out” of rap, telling GQ: “Sometimes it feels inauthentic for me to rap because I don’t have anything to talk about in that way. I’m 48 years old. And not to say that age is a thing that dictates what you rap about, but in a way it does.
“And things that happen in my life, like, what are you talking about? ‘I got to go get a colonoscopy’. What are you rapping about? ‘My eyesight is going bad’. You can find cool ways to say it, but….”