The Genius of André 3000 and His Post-Fame Reinvention

André 3000 is back after a long absence, but the man who reinvented hip-hop isn’t rapping; he’s playing flute.  

His bold new solo album is called New Blue Sun. André withdrew from the public, and his new album is a departure, but his return to recorded music also echoes his personal arrival. New Blue Sun, like André’s life, is a stunning journey.

Adventures in Wonderland

The Japanese percussionist and composer Midori Takada released a modern classical album in 1983 called Through the Looking Glass. Named after Lewis Carroll’s 1871 sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Takada told The New York Times her inspiration wasn’t Alice—it was how the story reversed time.

In Carroll’s book, everything in Alice’s new world is reversed, like a mirror. Through the Looking Glass wasn’t commercially successful, and Takada wouldn’t record another album under her name until 1999. But in a kind of reverse time continuum, Through the Looking Glass went viral on YouTube in 2013.

At the time, when users searched for ambient music like Brian Eno or anything electronic or Japanese, the algorithm linked to Takada’s album. By 2017, Through the Looking Glass sold more copies on Discogs than every album apart from Radiohead’s OK Computer.

André 3000’s debut solo album, New Blue Sun, shares earthy DNA with Takada’s Through the Looking Glass. But the minimalist album also sits in its time-reversal fortune.

“Hey Ya!”

When OutKast exploded out of Atlanta, they not only changed the sound of hip-hop, but the group—consisting of André Benjamin and Antwan Patton (Big Boi)—shifted culture. “Hey Ya!” is as classic as anything written by The Beatles, and the group sold 25 million albums.

Never before has an artist as famous and groundbreaking as André 3000 reinvented themselves into a new creative life of such artistic and personal freedom.

Epic Records released New Blue Sun in 2023, and the experimental new-age album centers on André’s flute. There are no raps on New Blue Sun. It consists of slow-developing instrumental meditative pieces over eight tracks for 87 minutes.

A Love Supreme

Aesthetically, the album resembles the post-bop classic A Love Supreme by John Coltrane, and Miles Davis’s modal masterpiece Kind of Blue. However, unlike those albums, André’s isn’t front and center of the transcendent New Blue Sun.

Instead, he patiently waits for the band to develop, and when he surfaces, it sounds like he’s improvising. But not in the traditional sense of jazz improv, which is real-time composition. Here, André sounds more like he’s testing the waters. He dips his toes in, sometimes remaining in the pool of musicians and other times backing away.

California percussionist/producer/composer Carlos Niño co-produced New Blue Sun with André. Niño is also the founder, DJ, and producer of the influential internet radio station Dublab. (André played flute on “Conversations” from Niño’s 2023 album (I’m just) Chillin’, on Fire.

They met unexpectedly at a trendy health food store in Los Angeles called Erewhon. The meeting mirrors how OutKast famously began at the intersection of Headland and Delowe in Atlanta.

André jammed in Niño’s basement, where he met musicians like pianist and composer Surya Botofasina—a disciple of Alice Coltrane—and guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Nate Mercereau. Through Niño, André discovered a new community of players who would contribute to and help shape New Blue Sun.

Public Flautist

André’s flute-playing entered the public in impeccably strange ways. He was spotted practicing his flute at Los Angeles International Airport and in various other public settings. He also played flute on the musical score for the Academy Award-winning Everything Everywhere All at Once, directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert.

The New York experimental band Son Lux composed the score, featuring David Byrne, Mitski, and André 3000, among others. André plays flute on the brilliantly chaotic track “My Life Without You.”

New Blue Sun and Really Long, Somewhat Curious Album Titles with a Misspelled Name

Perhaps to inoculate the album from ultra-serious new-age readings, New Blue Sun’s titles are long and cheeky. The album opener is “I Swear, I Really Wanted to Make a ‘Rap’ Album but This Is Literally the Way the Wind Blew Me This Time.”

He misspells Gandhi’s name on track 6: “Ghandi, Dalai Lama, Your Lord & Savior J.C. / Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and John Wayne Gacy.”

Saving the best for last: “The Slang Word P(*)ssy Rolls off the Tongue with Far Better Ease than the Proper Word Vagina. Do You Agree?”

Phraseology isn’t new territory for André. Remember his hook from OutKast’s “Roses”?

I know you’d like to think your s–t don’t stank, but
Lean a little bit closer, see
Roses really smell like poo-poo-ooh

His solo album might require more patience than his fans are willing to give but the exquisite track list is required reading.

He’s All Right, All Right

After co-creating OutKast, the best-selling hip-hop duo of all time, and dominating pop music, André eventually backed away from the limelight. Within a decade, he lost his parents, and while he’d occasionally show up on tracks like Frank Ocean’s “Solo (Reprise)” and Beyoncé’s “Party,” he seemed to vanish.

Then he began showing up with his flute. NPR noted how his fans became engaged in a frenzied game to spot André with his flute, like Where’s Waldo?

New Blue Sun is André’s first album in 17 years. He once pushed hip-hop past its limits and reinvented the genre. Now he’s reinvented André 3000, and he appears at peace.

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Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images