André 3000 is keenly aware that fans have been desperate for an album from him since Outkast’s 2006 disbanding. The iconic rapper has addressed it several times, including in December 2019, when he told Rick Rubin that an album was “just not coming” because ” my focus is not there; my confidence is not there.” Really, André 3000 has appeared perhaps his most publicly confident when playing his flute to strangers, so it should come as no surprise that his long-awaited, newly announced solo album, New Blue Sun, is purely instrumental.
In a newly published GQ cover profile, André 3000 explained why New Blue Sun is not a rap album.
“I’ve worked with some of the newest, freshest, youngest, and old-school producers,” he told writer Zach Baron. “I get beats all the time. I try to write all the time. […] Even now people think, Oh, man, he’s just sitting on raps, or he’s just holding these raps hostage. I ain’t got no raps like that.”
He continued, “It actually feels…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….”
Not-so-coincidentally, the opening track on New Blue Sun is titled “I Swear, I Really Wanted To Make A ‘Rap’ Album But This Is Literally The Way The Wind Blew Me This Time.”
See the cover artwork and full tracklist below.
1. “I Swear, I Really Wanted To Make A ‘Rap’ Album But This Is Literally The Way The Wind Blew Me This Time”
2. “The Slang Word P(*)ssy Rolls Off The Tongue With Far Better Ease Than The Proper Word Vagina. Do You Agree?”
3. “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”
4. “BuyPoloDisorder’s Daughter Wears A 3000
Button Down Embroidered”
5. “Ninety Three ‘Til Infinity And Beyoncé”
6. “Ghandi, Dalai Lama, Your Lord & Savior J.C. / Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, And John Wayne Gacy”
7. “Ants To You, Gods To Who?”
8. “Dreams Once Buried Beneath The Dungeon Floor Slowly Sprout Into Undying Gardens”
New Blue Sun is out 11/17 via Epic Records. Find more information here.