Andre 3000 is not on twitter. He’s not on facebook. And he rarely does interviews. He’s the perfect example of an artist retaining their mystique in a world were everyone is dishing their every thought on social networks.
Even though he has pretty much kept himself out of the public eye since he and Big Boi finished collecting the accolades they racked up from the Speakerboxxx/The Love Below LP, he’s built up anticipation for a new album by blessing artists like Beyonce, Drake, Jeezy, Chris Brown and Ke$ha with guest verses over the few years. But although he’ll write a verse here and there, Andre 3000 is not sitting around writing rhymes all day and he’s definitely not up to being in anyone’s videos.
Fader recently snagged one of his rare interviews. See what he had to say below.
On Collaborations and supporting Chris Brown
Most of the time it has to be the music. The music has to kinda move me in some kind of way. Sometimes it’s emotionally, sometimes it’s just being there supporting another person. Even the Chris Brown remix—of course I love the beat, but at that time a lot of people were on Chris Brown as a human being. And I know he’d gone through his troubles or whatever and I just was like—I just wanted to stand by him and be like, Hey, you know, you can’t really charge a man forever and condemn a man forever. So it’s really just like a support thing. I thought it was a cool thing to do.
On why he hasn’t appeared in videos [ Ex. Beyonce’s ‘Party’ music video]
When I would get these calls from artists, I felt great about it. At the same time, I never wanted to tease people in a way where I’d be in the video and then they won’t see me for another ten years or anything. So, you know, when I would talk to these artists and we’d agree that we’d do these songs, we would all be in agreement that it was just vocals. There was no visual or anything. Every artist I work with from Beyonce, from Young Jeezy and Jay-Z, from BoB, it was all understood before my first rhyme was written that there was going to be no videos. And I always felt like—you know, I haven’t been in even in a video with Big Boi—it’s kind of disrespectful of me if I can just jump in a video with a new artist and I haven’t even jumped in the video with my own partner. […] I just feel like—it just didn’t seem like a right time to do it. If it’s not my project or an Outkast thing, or you know, if I’m supporting Big Boi, then it just didn’t make sense for me. It just didn’t feel right doing it.
Read the rest of Andre 3000’s interview where he talks about the state of Hip Hop and getting older at Necole Bitchie.com.
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