Sleepy Brown Says André 3000 Didn’t Initially Want To Be On “So Fresh, So Clean”

It’s hard to imagine “So Fresh, So Clean” without André 3000 — but it turns out that was almost the case.

In a recent interview with Spin, Sleepy Brown shared that the OutKast rapper didn’t initially want to be on one of the duo’s most beloved and biggest songs.

“The funny thing is André didn’t really like it at first. André didn’t like that record. It wasn’t like he didn’t think it was good — it just wasn’t matching where he was,” Brown recalled. “We really just did it for Big. We knew André was moving to something else, but we knew on that album it needed that hood theme. When Big heard it, he loved it. We thought ‘Dre was going to be happy with it at first, but he really wasn’t.”

Brown, a frequent collaborator of OutKast’s, then revealed what led to 3 Stacks joining the track: Preston Crump, an Atlanta bassist who has done work for Goodie Mob, TLC, Destiny’s Child, and, of course, OutKast.

“[‘Dre] was cool, but he didn’t really like it until Preston, our bass player, played a cold line on that song,” Brown said. “When Dre heard that, he got excited and came up with ‘the coolest motherfunkers on the planet’ part. He was following that line he heard. Thanks to Preston, that’s the reason why Dre even got on that record.”

Released as part of the duo’s fourth album, 2000’s Stankonia, “So Fresh, So Clean” went on to be certified platinum in 2020 and certified double platinum last year by the Recording Industry Association of America.

In related news, André was recently asked about the prospects of new OutKast music and his mindset toward it now.

“I’ll say maybe 10, 15 years ago, in my mind, I thought an OutKast album would happen,” the New Blue Sun artist said in an interview with Rolling Stone last month. “I don’t know the future, but I can say that we’re further away from it than we’ve ever been. I think it’s a chemistry thing. We have to be wanting to do it. It’s hard for me to make a rap, period, you know? And sometimes I’m in the belief of, “Let things be.”

“It was a great time in life, and our chemistry was at a certain place that was undeniable. And I think the audience sometimes believes that something has to last forever, and I don’t think that,” he continued. “Any kind of art form, I think that’s probably the opposite. It probably should not last forever. It’s not like a product. In the end, we did give a product, but what made that product was a certain time in both of our lives.”