André 3000
New Blue Sun – Live In Concert Tour
The Hobby Center
September 25, 2024
In the opening line of OutKast’s 1998 title track Aquemini, André 3000 raps the following:
“Even the Sun goes down, heroes eventually die / Nothing is for sure, nothing is for certain,
nothing lasts forever…”
In this case, he refers to the inevitability of the end of OutKast as a rap duo. But it also serves as a testament to the uncertainty of life, love, and career. And now, 30 years after the debut of OutKast, André Lauren Benjamin, better known as his stage name André 3000, is providing fans with something new and different.
The credits of his album “New Blue Sun” show that André plays a “digital wind instrument” on most of the tracks, but he also plays a variety of flutes, including contrabass, mayan, bamboo, and other various wood flutes. He also makes low purring panther noises and other sounds of him breathing. Pretty far out and interesting stuff when you’re listening at home or in the car, but seeing him do this live is both cool and unusual, but not surprising.
“I love you André! The South still got something to say baby!” yelled a fan after the first track of the evening at the Hobby Center. André smiled and laughed, responding with “What she say?! I can’t hear nothing y’all saying!”
He thanked the audience for their attendance, and for bringing in the energy. “Everything y’all brought to the building tonight, from your jobs, families, relationships… We are absorbing all that and composing on the spot.”
The night was a cacophony of sound, a mix of electronic and acoustic, brass and woodwind, strings, bells, whistles, claps, percussion, and seemingly everything in between. At one point, André began speaking in tongues! For about two minutes, he spoke/sang/rapped in an indecipherable language – maybe African, possibly Amerindian.
“And I mean that from the bottom of my heart” he said in English when he finished those alien words. He paused…. then followed with “I just made all that shit up, I have no idea what I was saying!” The crowd laughed confusingly, but not at all upset, just amused by his antics.
“Even though I made that up, and even though all of our music tonight is improvised on the spot, we have real intention behind everything we do, and THAT’s what really matters.” He allowed another pause for reflection, and then laughed again saying “But if y’all had seen y’alls faces, that shit was so deep! Man!”
At one point, I stopped taking notes and just started writing down singular words that popped in to my brain: Floating. Flying. Birds. Breath. Animal. Jungle. Forest. Computer love. Interstellar. Whispering. Bells. Japanese. Arabic. Gospel. Yoga. New Age. Experimental.
The next day, when my friend Los asked me about the show, I responded with the following:
“It was pretty good. Weird and different, as you would expect. It was like the music they play while getting a massage, except the massage chair is in an RV speeding on the freeway in space, but you’re also underwater somehow…”
“You should have done some mushrooms…”
I wrote earlier that André was providing something “new and different” to his fans, but then I re-listened to the instrumental of Aquemini. This André has been with us all along, and we are all finally fortunate enough to experience it in its totality.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
