André 3000 hasn’t released any rap music because he hasn’t found anything “inspiring enough” to rap about.
The Outkast star — whose real name is André Benjamin — returned last month with his debut solo album, the instrumental wind collection New Blue Sun, after a 17-year hiatus.
The musician has explained that the reason he stepped away from his traditional hip-hop sound was because nothing got his creative juices flowing enough to want to spit over it.
“I write down ideas and lyrics all the time,” he told correspondent Anthony Mason on”CBS Mornings.” “And maybe I haven’t found the music that’s inspiring enough for me to want to write raps to, or maybe I got to find a new way to rap. If I don’t feel like I’m doing something, it just … it don’t matter to me.”
The opening tune on the new album, New Blue Sun, is called “I Really Wanted To Make A Rap Album, But This Is Literally The Way The Wind Blew Me This Time.”
And he wishes he could be “out here with everybody rapping.”
“I don’t want to troll people,” André 3000 said in a recent interview with NPR. “I don’t want people to think, ‘Oh, this André 3000 album is coming, and you play it and [you’re] like, ‘Oh man, no verses.’ So, even actually on the packaging, you’ll see it says, ‘Warning: no bars.’ It’s letting you know what it is, off the top. But also, I love rap music because it was a part of my youth. So, I would love to be out here with everybody rapping because it’s almost like fun and being on the playground.”
