We’ve seen the news, and we’ve seen the memes, but, yeah: André 3000 is releasing his forthcoming first solo project, an album “built almost entirely around woodwind instruments” with zero rapping on it.

Yes, we said the same thing you did: why?

Well, Three Stacks attempts to explain why in GQ’s first-ever Video Cover Story. “Why anything?” he says to senior staff writer Zach Baron. “Why did we record these albums before in my career? It is just kind of: Those are the things that came.” 

Saying that rapping, sometimes, “feels inauthentic for me,” he offers an interesting take on why — despite that he can clearly out-rap many of his peers, both past and present — chose not to do a rap album:

“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.” But rap is not what comes, he says. “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. 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….”

I mean, I for one would not mind him rapping about aging, because I can totally relate: my eyes suck, my back hurts, and I’ll need to a prostate cancer exam sooner than later.

Either way, you can peep his entire interview both below (video) and at GQ’s e-home (print… er… digital… errr… whatever we call it now).

André 3000 Talks New (Rap-less) Album, OutKast, & More To GQ was last modified: November 16th, 2023 by Meka