He's dropping an album this week!

The titles of the songs are hilarious, can't wait to hear what he's made

https://pitchfork.com/news/andre-3000-releasing-solo-album-new-blue-sun-this-week/

with that, if it's true.

I’m down

Carlos Nino, Deantonio Parks, Matthewdavid, VCR. Worse things than Andre 3000 hooking up with Leaving Record's ringers, even though you always want to hear one of the best rappers in the world rap. Hopefully he has some impressive flute chops.

Folks who are rolling their eyes or snarking or whatever may not realize the circle Dre has tapped into here is top-notch.

Once I heard it was coming, and saw some of the collaborators, I stopped reading articles about it. Would rather listen with few preconceptions.

I'm excited.

-thebigfunk

~ i could still snort you under the table ~

If this is a new age/ambient jam session like this group of artists sometimes does, I won't be checking for it. Hope there's some jazz/groove/rhythm to be found.

:/

Not far in yet but I'm enjoying it so far. It's almost exactly what my brain cooked up, combining the little bit I had read with what certain assumptions about where Dre's mind might go, lol.

It probably won't be an AOTY for me or anything but it's cool. And he's kept his sense of humor about it -- also cool.

-thebigfunk

~ i could still snort you under the table ~

But right now the ambient space is VERY crowded and it takes a lot to stand out to me. Doesn't help that sort of by it's nature, one good ambient album in your collection can have you pretty well set whenever you need that type of vibe.

It isn't sniffing it. It is wayyyyyy more new agey than ambient

There is a group of improvisational artists right now who are sometimes called "ambient" but are more in the spectrum of early Eno ambient and early "new age" ... arguably with a jazz-ish tinge. Folks like Nino and Mercereau, for instance.

The ambient you're referring to is decidedly different, hinting at a very specific vein of electronic music.

Even though "ambient" is used in both cases, it's a definite categorical distinction. It doesn't make sense to compare this to BoC or other ambient-ish IDM acts; they're not doing anything remotely similar.

-thebigfunk

~ i could still snort you under the table ~

I peeped about 6 of the tracks on Youtube. Probably won't give it a 2nd listen, but it's about what I expected.

I feel that's enough for me.

Didn't hear Deantoni Parks going crazy on the drums.

Sounds like standard spa music. Maybe I'll play it if I ever take up TaiChi in my old age.

(Waits for the slappin remix album complete with guest raps and random 3000 verses mashed in there)

Like, I'm certainly not over the moon on it, but I can concede that it's not the type of album for a two-minute skim job.

>(Waits for the slappin remix album complete with guest raps
>and random 3000 verses mashed in there)
>

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CzxOkTduC4e/?igshid=ODhhZWM5NmIwOQ==

>(Waits for the slappin remix album complete with guest raps
>and random 3000 verses mashed in there)

Like, let it be its own thing for a while.

If it gets the official remix treatment, I hope it's less to try and force it into a rap mold and more from an experimental/improvisational bent --- like the remixes you hear of stuff out of the London jazz scene.

-thebigfunk

~ i could still snort you under the table ~

I put it on as I was doing Internet research. I might play it again when I'm chilling out in the man cave, reading a book. Or if I'm lounging on vacation some.

Only one song really jumped out at it me as more than a pleasant enough listen.

Otherwise, it's completely inoffensive and will generate strong reactions on "both" sides that it doesn't really merit.

just not what I want from 3 stacks.

I can't bring myself to watch it, but I'm sure it's comedy.

https://youtu.be/EFp1P84Rtzk?si=Y8vgA8CmFPtdt-vo

“His album is corny and you are a cornball coming at me like that. Jive turkey that is some play school flute playing”

>“His album is corny and you are a cornball coming at me
>like that. Jive turkey that is some play school flute
>playing”

This Apple head turkey buffon has no money tracks!

Would like to see 3k connect with Madlib. He’s in LA ain’t he?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDGmSCXoSRs

I applaud him expanding his range musically.. more of his contemporaries should do the same rather than trying to be trendy (Busta Rhymes, Jay Z etc.),

but to make it seem like he can’t rap anymore because he is old is pure b/s… he is kicking the genre down

either you reached your limit as a writer or just dont want to anymore, which is fine

there are plenty of veteran MCs still rapping in abstract/conceptual form… Not everyone stayed on the street/conscious content

also it sounds like he wants to be like Madlib but with his music still played at a pop level.. lol

>but to make it seem like he can’t rap anymore because he is
>old is pure b/s… he is kicking the genre down
>
>either you reached your limit as a writer or just dont want to
>anymore, which is fine


Right. He's asking if he's supposed to rap about getting a colonoscopy or his eyesight going bad. I mean... maybe, at the very least how that makes you feel or changes your perspective of life. Totally doable. True poets have made classic work from much less motivation. Player's Ball wasn't exactly an important thing to talk about.


>
>also it sounds like he wants to be like Madlib but with his
>music still played at a pop level.. lol

I said this over in GD a while ago. He wants to be pop, talking about "connecting and catching the zeitgeist of what's going on." Then saying there are dope people on the internet everywhere that no one knows about. He's not here to proceed with his purpose and let it all follow from a pure place. He's here for attention and is so attached to the mainstream stardom that he's feel like a failure releasing a RAP album and it not being big. He'd rather play flute, because he's "a baby at it" so he can deal with not being huge with it. He has a built in excuse. He's still a wordsmith, using flowery language to disguise his fear of failure.

Overall, if just wants to do instrumental music, that's cool. If so, he doesn't know how to just do his thing without shitting on what he's not doing. I'm just not a fan of that. He only has to say "that's not where I am currently."

I didn't take it as he thinks you can be too old to rap, I think he feels he doesn't have anything to say that people would be interested in hearing.

Well he said "I'm 48 yrs old, and not to say that age is a thing that dictates what you rap about, but in a way it does..."

He's essentially saying that the things happening in his life as a 48 yr old aren't worth rapping about. So he kinda said he's both too old and uninteresting.

saying that he'd be uninteresting to others but he's rapped about not wanting to be on old rapper. so it's definitely an issue for him.

Jazz in particular?

I think that a good 95% of cats from the 90s should dive more into jazz (preferably). I’m not trying to hear to many of them with outdated bars and metaphors trying to still sound dope.

however, I don't have any issue with MCs continuing to put to put out rap albums.

basically, do what you feel.

>however, I don't have any issue with MCs continuing to put to
>put out rap albums.
>
>basically, do what you feel.
>
>

Yeah but if they’re not hot these days then I think that more MC’s should look to create elsewhere.

They can put out what they want, but if shit ain’t hot then what’s the point in releasing poor material??

Andre said some real shit and people went up in arms when he said that he doesn’t have anything to rap about. I feel a lot of folks these days don’t have much to talk about so they put out bad music. He is seeming not to want any part of that. When you’ve said and done it all like he has then moving to something else is a wise move I think.

There are many MCs that make “grown man hip hop”( for lack of a better term) that does not fit into the typical punchline rapper .. the most obvious example is Q-Tip…

If Andre 3k reached his limit, then yes, as a fan I prefer him doing instrumental albums over starting a bullshit podcast based on gossip ( Joe Budden, Drink Champs etc)

Super interesting, so far.

Is it just he wants a challenge?

I wonder why classical artists or Jazz musicians or pop singers never feel that they need to "branch out" musically and start spittin' hot 16s.

...Dre said he wants to make another Kast album....


So...

...all the criticism Dre's getting seems to be prodding him to show he's not all about making too much of his analysis of being a rapper at his age.

And yes, jazz and classical musicians rethink and reorient their musical paths, too. There's a whole long history of musicians entering the field via "straight" jazz and increasingly resisting not just the label but the sound -- and they do so in part by making music that sounds more and more like "everything else."

The modern version of that story is Glasper et al.

But on Dre: he has been nothing if not consistent in interviews for a long time now that he hasn't felt like making a rap album.

Considering he has, for equally as long or longer, not made a rap album... why don't people believe him? That's clearly not just a line.

So to answer your question: why not make the album he wants to make? If he has been struggling with finding the right output for his shit, and this actually clicked for him --- what reason does he need?

-thebigfunk

~ i could still snort you under the table ~

Musician of any type who wanted to expand and grow as an artist and chose to rap.

side project


https://pilerats.com/music/bands/king-krule-is-back-as-archy-marshall-with-an-album-titled-a-new-place-2-down/


A New place 2 drown

https://youtu.be/JawgV3apIeM

damn, I forgot about that record!

-thebigfunk

~ i could still snort you under the table ~

...ok. Sure, that's cool. This is the type of expansion of musical horizons which I can fully support. I appreciate his effort.

I definitely don't know many that choose *rapping* specifically. I thought you were speaking more figuratively of genre change, and particularly shifting from trad forms (jazz) to more popular forms...

And *that* happens a lot, or at least I could think of a lot of examples.

There are also folks like Kassa Overall who seem intent on making rapping a part of their repertoire, even though he started as an improvisational drummer.

I guess I'm not sure what your point is, so I'll stop there, lol.

even by people within the art that excel at it. They seem to limit rap in ways that doesn't happen with a lot of other art.

i agree with that, to a point. i definitely think it is sometimes limited in its potential even by those who are heralding it (and thus sometimes unintentionally). and of course there are a lot of folks who think it a less serious art than X.

but I also think that rapping - as an act, as a thing that one does, and as a skill - is recognized as posing distinct *barriers* to folks wanting to seriously engage it, with three particularly large hurdles:

* it is recognized (by some at least) as having strong roots in a particular culture and thus somewhat taboo for outsiders to engage with seriously.

* it also generally carries certain characteristics, especially youthfulness but also certain elements of tone and presentation, that are perceived as bound up with the art. even if we imagine a musician who wants to try their hand at rapping.

So even if there is a musician who wants to engage rap, there are two big hurdles right there: *may* I do this in a serious way and not be dismissed as a culture vulture; *can* I do this, in terms of aesthetic, tone, and background and how those mesh with expectations in the art.

And I think that we see this in the way some who *respect* hip hop engage with it musically. To point to Glasper and the current wave of jazz-ish instrumentalists again, a lot of these players aren't learning to rap but are certainly engaging seriously with hip hop sound and history, incorporating it substantially into their work.

But to bring this back to Dre (I'm segue-ing to part 2 of this long response), let's not mix apples and oranges here. Rapping isn't the same as playing an instrument. You might learn saxophone and later jump to (trumpet/piano/guitar) to explore a new part of your art. There is a shared foundation that enables that and makes such translations possible.

Rapping is a very different musical skill, one that combines lyricism, rhythm, musicality, and of course vocal/physical technique. It doesn't have an analogue or a parallel --- there's no other "instrument" or skill in music that does this thing in this way. (We forget this!) Particularly the lyrical piece, right? That doesn't mean it isn't an instrument or can't be imagined as one. But it's complicated.

So that third hurdle, in a way, is this weird cognitive/categorical leap a musician would have to take to jump from saying "i am a trumpet player" to "I want rap, *seriously*" --- and certainly that it is different from, I don't know, a country star trying on heavy metal for an album or two.

In this sense, the jump Dre made here is layered:
* it's a genre jump, obviously
* it's sort of an instrument jump, in the sense that he put down rapping and picked up the flute
* but it's not an instrument jump at all, because I don't think rapping and playing an instrument

In the interviews I've read/listened to with Dre, I've always gotten the impression that it's less that Dre thinks rapping itself is limited and moreso that he isn't sure how to be himself/grown up in the context of the form.

Fair or not, it's an understandable fear. One of the biggest flaws in this run of Nas records we've been gifted with is that his subject matter appears diverse on the surface but is pretty limited when you get close up. Its version of aging seems to be... being more comfortable with comfort? But still feeling the need to shout out luxury brands? There's a lot of replaying of the past that feels limiting. The "introspection" provided is pretty superficial.

If you look at his features over the last few years, he's definitely been trying to thread the needle on rapping about older adult shit in interesting ways. (See his verse on that Anderson Paak track from Ventura.) But maybe what's successful to us doesn't seem successful to him?

Ok, rambling now, so I'll stop here.

-thebigfunk

~ i could still snort you under the table ~

I agree all around.

About rapping at 49. It's just so limiting and condescending, even though I don't think he meant it that way. There's nothing wrong with rapping at 49. If *he* isn't feeling it, that's also fine, nothing wrong with that. But no one should act like it's childish to be rapping at whatever age. As so many others have rightly pointed out in this post, there are dozens of MCs still writing rhymes into their 40s and even 50s, and doing it very well.

Besides being a wordsmith to the nth degree, Andre's gift is his wandering creative spirit, finding muses in unanticipated places.

In his early career, it took him from a dope, but conventional rapper to someone who fiercely innovated and harnessed his artistic voice and rode it to great creative and commercial heights.

In his post-OutKast career, has shown a tremendous level of artistic integrity and loyalty to that wandering spirit. That spirit led him to reinvent himself multiple times over his OutKast career, and it's pointed him to redirect his career into jazz.

In a time when rappers and, really, all musicians who are making 'popular music,' are more beholden to growing brands and using their musical gifts as gateways into generational wealth (not a bad thing), Andre's decision to put out this album, knowing it would throw everyone for a loop, is a stand for 'art for art's sake' and art over commerce and clout.

The unconventional and head-scratching nature of the decision to release this project is the same thing that led him to wear those crocheted sweaters and turbans back in the day.

Yes, in those days, we got some great music from that nature that pushed the art form forward and made him an unlikely everyman. And in this case, we got some interesting music, but nothing mindblowing.

I, too, was disappointed to hear this album wouldn't have any rhymes. And to be honest, I haven't listened to all of this yet, although I've liked what I've heard so far.

But I think he's just someone whose creative energies can't be contained in a neat, easily anticipated way. Maybe this is his Kingdom Come before he comes back with American Gangster down the line. I hope so, but even if it isn't, he's a legend and a true artist in an era when marketability is more important than being an iconoclast.