André 3000 teases new music for 2025: “I don’t wanna pinpoint what it is, but I just want to express more”
André released his debut solo album ‘New Blue Sun’ last year
by Adam England · NMEAndré 3000 has new music in the pipeline, the singer-songwriter and rapper has revealed.
The former OutKast star, real name André Benjamin, released his debut solo album ‘New Blue Sun’ in November last year – if ‘The Love Below’ from OutKast’s 2003 double LP ‘Speakerboxxx/The Love Below’ is discounted – and it surprised some fans by consisting of instrumental flute tracks rather than the funk and jazz-influenced rap of his previous output.
In an interview with Amazon Music, Benjamin was asked what an “André 3000 vision board” looks like as we enter 2025.
Not commenting on whether or not he’d be returning to rap, he replied: “New music for sure, new ways to distribute and express … I don’t wanna pinpoint what it is, but I just want to express more … put it like that.”
Check out the interview here:
Over the weekend, Benjamin performed ‘New Blue Sun’ in a set at Tyler, The Creator’s Camp Flog Gnaw festival, and spent the autumn on a US tour, taking in cities including San Diego, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Salt Lake City. Earlier in the year, he played a few shows in the UK and Europe, including at London’s Jazz Cafe, and supported Loyle Carner at his All Points East show in August.
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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….”
He did say that he’d tried to create new rap material as a soloist, however, explaining: “I’ve worked with some of the newest, freshest, youngest, and old-school producers. 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.”