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    André 3000 on 3 Grammy Nods for ‘New Blue Sun’: ‘Super Duper Cool’

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    He was half of Outkast, the last rap act to win album of the year — 20 years ago. His latest nominations are for “New Blue Sun,” an expression of ultimate freedom.An album of the year nomination at the Grammys? André 3000 has been here before.Two decades ago, he and his Outkast partner Big Boi won the prize for “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below,” their multifaceted hip-hop opus that became a crossover pop breakout. This year, though, André has been recognized for something quite different: “New Blue Sun,” the improvisational flute-led album he released last November, which on Friday was honored with nods in three categories: best alternative jazz album, best instrumental composition and, perhaps most shocking, album of the year, competing against Beyoncé, Billie Eilish, Taylor Swift and pop’s heaviest hitters.The album is a thoughtful musical excursion and also a statement of creative purpose — a demonstration that even one of the most storied figures in pop music can rewrite their own script in real time. André 3000 has spent the bulk of this year touring with the band who recorded the album, putting jazz-influenced experimental music on grand stages around the world. But he’s still working far from the pop and hip-hop forms that formed the foundation for his success. Relative anonymity is a trade-off he was willing to make for creative freedom, but the reception to the album has also shown that fans — and now Grammy voters — are interested in welcoming him back to the spotlight.After gathering his thoughts early Friday afternoon, André 3000 spoke about how the seed for his current adventure was planted back in the Outkast era, using the audience as an instrument, and what it’s like to make it all up as you go. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Big day. Where were you when you heard?I’m in Virginia today, we’re playing tonight. I was just waking up and I heard that the nominations came in. We were trying to be nominated in some type of way for alternative jazz or ambient, possibly. But I was totally surprised by this. So yeah, it was super, super, super duper cool.We’re 20 years past “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below” winning album of the year, and it’s the last rap album to take that top prize. Do you think that’s still on voters’ minds? That they’re seeing your creative evolution?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      13 Scary Good Halloween Songs

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      Fill up your holiday playlist with spooky and satisfying tracks from Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the Sonics, Geto Boys and more.Karen O and Brian Chase of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (being watched … closely).Chad Batka for The New York TimesDear listeners,Hello from your guest playlister for the day — I’m Dave Renard, an editor on the Culture desk who writes about music occasionally and tries to keep his record collection from outgrowing its allotted shelf space (currently failing).Let’s just get this out of the way first: Halloween has the best music of any holiday and it’s not even close. Christmas may be the sales leader, but its canon is too tied to a tight list of classics and standards, and if you have the bad fortune to encounter a repetitive earworm like “The Little Drummer Boy” or (shudder) “The 12 Days of Christmas,” there goes your whole day. Thanksgiving is a great opportunity to throw on some soul music while you mash potatoes, but like most other holidays, it doesn’t have much of a musical tradition of its own. Fourth of July, we’ve got Galaxie 500 and what, Katy Perry? (My editor offers a star-spangled dissent, but I think the point stands.)Halloween, on the other hand, has a huge range of spooky sounds to draw from. (If you know the old joke about hell having all the good bands, it’s kind of like that.) My playlist strategy is to surround the typical novelty favorites like “Monster Mash” or “Ghostbusters” with a critical mass of songs that are, you know, actually good. I can only listen to DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince do “A Nightmare on My Street” so many times before I start to lose it. If you think “Saw” is terrifying, try revealing to your teen daughter which songs drive you nuts and then — jump scare! — remembering she can control the sound system from her phone.A bigger pool of shared Halloween favorites makes that prospect less hair-raising. I lean heavily on black-clad ’80s punks, goths and post-punks, like the Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees, along with ’60s garage rockers and their descendants. But really any song with a creepy edge to it, or lyrics name-checking a wide range of October signifiers, will do the trick. Here are an unholy 13 selections to soundtrack All Hallows’ Eve.I’m a human fly and I don’t know why,DaveListen along while you read.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Is It Too Late Now to Say Sorry? 8 Songs for the High Holy Days.

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      Apology, forgiveness, moving on: These are some of humanity’s richest themes, and they have rich songs to match.Bob DylanFiona Adams/Redferns, via Getty ImagesDear listeners,As Lindsay mentioned on Friday, she’s out on book leave for the rest of the month. Starting next week, a series of knowledgeable Times staffers will sub in to provide thoughtfully curated playlists each Tuesday. This week, however, you are stuck with me: a reporter on the Culture desk who has written about Dylan and the Dead, and whose current Spotify rotation includes CoComelon’s “Wheels on the Bus” and the “Encanto” soundtrack (possibly Lin-Manuel Miranda’s finest work).For some of us, this is a week of reflection, repentance and weaning ourselves off caffeine: It’s the Days of Awe, the 10 days between Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, which was last Thursday and Friday, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, which begins this Friday night. There are more superficially appealing holidays; Yom Kippur in particular is a fast day and is not supposed to be “fun.” But I earnestly don’t know what I would do without this time of year and the space it provides to pause and take stock. You don’t need to belong to any particular faith to find that a useful exercise.A High Holiday playlist might appear a tricky proposition. Popular music is not typically a space for solemnity and self-denial. On Yom Kippur itself, sex and nonessential drugs, to say nothing of rock ’n’ roll, are prohibited. But apology, forgiveness, moving on: These are some of humanity’s richest themes, and they have rich songs to match. While we cannot skimp on some of the most obvious artists — hello, Barbra; nice to see you, Leonard — we are also including Stevie Wonder and Outkast.I hope you reflect and enjoy. And, if you celebrate, have a sweet new year and a meaningful fast.Gut yontif,MarcListen along while you read.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Bouquet of Songs for May Flowers

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      Tom Petty, Patrice Rushen, Billie Eilish and more.Tom Petty.Chad Batka for The New York TimesDear listeners,Last month, I sent you a playlist of rainy songs, in honor of April showers. I also promised a sequel. I bet you have spent weeks racking your brain thinking what that playlist’s theme could possibly be. Well, wonder no more. It’s time for a selection of songs about (say it with me) …. um, no, not bell towers. And also not cauliflower, but that’s a fun guess.May flowers, guys! May flowers!Music history is, naturally, scattered with references to flowers — giving them to a lover, or maybe just buying them for oneself. There’s a song for just about every possible type of flora: irises, forget-me-nots, lilacs, you name it. Roses probably get the most mention of any flowers, but hey, even they have their thorns.Today’s playlist is just a smattering of the many songs out there about flowers. It features a few throwbacks from Scott McKenzie and Patrice Rushen, as well as a few freshly bloomed tracks — from Billie Eilish and Cassandra Jenkins — that came out this May. You’ll find a few wildflowers, a rhododendron and even a lotus. Consider this a sonic bouquet from me to you.Buy more stock in roses,LindsayListen along while you read.1. Tom Petty: “Wildflowers”We begin with the tenderhearted title track from Tom Petty’s great 1994 solo album. A few years ago I wrote about the deluxe edition of “Wildflowers” — a treasure trove for Petty fans — and a fact I stumbled upon in my research forever changed the way I hear this song. Written during a turbulent time in his life, the song is not a loving missive to someone else but rather, as Petty eventually realized with some help from a therapist, “me singing to me.”▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTubeWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Rico Wade, an Architect of Atlanta Hip-Hop, Dies at 52

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      As one-third of the production team Organized Noize, Wade nurtured the careers of Outkast, Goodie Mob and Future from the confines of his mother’s basement, known as the Dungeon.Rico Wade, an architect of Southern hip-hop who produced albums for rap acts including Outkast, Goodie Mob and Future, has died. He was 52.The death was announced on social media on Saturday by the artist and activist Killer Mike, a longtime collaborator. No cause of death was provided.His family confirmed the death in a statement. “We are deeply saddened by the sudden and unexpected passing of our son, father, husband and brother Rico Wade,” the statement said. “Our hearts are heavy as we mourn the loss of a talented individual who touched the lives of so many. We ask that you respect the legacy of our loved one and our privacy at this time.”Wade, Ray Murray and Patrick Brown, known as Sleepy, formed the Atlanta-based production crew Organized Noize in the early 1990s, coalescing during an era when offerings from the East and West Coasts dominated radio and major label releases. Their work propelled the region from the fringes of the genre to a mainstay at its center.Barely out of their teens, the production crew welcomed aspiring musicians and artists into the basement of Wade’s mother’s home in East Point, Georgia, in the early 1990s. The cellar became known as the Dungeon with the artists who performed there, including the groups Parental Advisory and Goodie Mob, who emerged from it as part of the collective colloquially called the Dungeon Family.“I don’t know if you can imagine how weed and must and dirt would smell together, but that’s what it smelled like,” Dee Dee Hibbler, Outkast’s former manager, said of the Dungeon in the 2016 documentary “The Art of Organized Noize.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      André 3000 Brings His Solo Album ‘New Blue Sun’ to the Stage

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      Performing live for the first time with musicians from his solo LP, the onetime Outkast rapper played various flutes, said little and tried to change perceptions.Toward the end of his late set Wednesday night at the Blue Note in Manhattan, André 3000 said he and members of his band had gone to an instrument shop earlier in the day and picked up some new toys. He showed off his haul: something he’d thought was a flute, but turned out to be part of a bagpipe.Nevertheless, he persisted. He blew through it, and what came out was sonorous and weird. A kind of sexy skronk. He looked at the long, thin tube with a nod of admiration. “This got something serious in it,” he remarked, before chuckling just a bit, and blowing even harder.This is how André 3000 — one of the most gifted rappers of all time, and one of the true pop pathbreakers of the 2000s — communicates now. In November, he released “New Blue Sun,” an improvised album of experimental music on which he plays a variety of flutes. It reached No. 34 on the Billboard album chart, demonstrating what happens when decades of pent-up curiosity about a reluctant star meets art that demands curiosity, close attention and perhaps the benefit of the doubt. For fans, it reinforced the idea of André as a mystic beyond the pull of ego.“I think I’m blessed with being oblivious,” he said Monday night at Crown Hill Theater in Brooklyn, performing his first show under his name alone. “It kind of keeps you pure.”“New Blue Sun” is sometimes entrancing, sometimes frustrating. It is perhaps less a purely musical project than a philosophical or emotional proposition expressed through music. In many sections, you hardly hear André or his flute at all. Its arrival was greeted with awe and relief, and also conversations about the virtues of amateurism, and the right of a celebrity to recalibrate the terms of his fame.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      7 Great André 3000 Guest Verses

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      He isn’t rapping on his new LP. But he showed his skills on these tracks.Amber Fouts for The New York TimesDear listeners,After announcing a new album just a few days ago, André 3000 has released his solo debut, “New Blue Sun.” Coming nearly two decades into his rap duo Outkast’s long hiatus, the album’s mere existence is surprising enough. But here’s an understatement: It is not what most people were expecting from the man behind hits as disparately brilliant as “Ms. Jackson,” “B.O.B.” and “Hey Ya!,” who is arguably one of the most skilled and beloved rappers of his generation. It’s actually not a rap album at all. It is, in fact, an 88-minute instrumental album of ambient woodwind compositions.Seriously.If you do not believe me, consider the title of the 12-minute opening track, which is at once a mea culpa and a statement of purpose: “I Swear, I Really Wanted to Make a ‘Rap’ Album But This Is Literally the Way the Wind Blew Me This Time.” And then listen to it, because it’s crystalline and beautiful in a way that recalls Laraaji, Brian Eno and Philip Glass — all cited as influences on the album.“New Blue Sun” is a genuine left turn in an all-too-predictable musical world, and it’s definitely worth spending some quality time with this weekend. But for today’s playlist, I wanted to turn back the clock and consider André’s prowess as a rapper by highlighting some of his greatest guest verses.Since Outkast released its sixth (and seemingly final) studio album, “Idlewild,” in 2006, Big Boi has released three solo albums, while André’s musical output has largely been limited to a smattering of guest verses. But oh, what verses they’ve been.André has played the wise sensei on two era-defining Frank Ocean albums and duetted poetically with his baby’s mother, Erykah Badu. He’s lent some extraterrestrial flair to tracks from superstars like Beyoncé and Drake, and teamed up with underground favorites like Devin the Dude and Killer Mike. His verses still feel like special events, though, because he doesn’t just lend them out to anybody. His co-signs feel personally curated, because they’re still relatively rare.Dré can be funny, poignant, incisive, revealing and obfuscating — often within the span of a single verse. He has a canted and utterly idiosyncratic approach to rhythm; he always seems to hop on the offbeat and then hit the ground running. More than most of his contemporaries, he manages to be both lustful and self-aware about his own lust. He’s an otherworldly ATLien and he’s down to earth. He is cooler than cool. He’s ice-cold.So if an instrumental flute album wasn’t what you were hoping to get from André 3000, give it a moment. And listen to this playlist to appreciate all the razor-sharp bars he’s given us in the meantime.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. UGK featuring Outkast: “Int’l Players Anthem (I Choose You)”Regal, occasionally crass and thoroughly tender, this 2007 stone-cold classic is one of hip-hop’s great odes to monogamy. André’s plain-spoken, feelings-forward verse opens the track and sets the tone: “Hate to see y’all frown,” he says of the women with whom he’s broken it off to go exclusive with another, “but I’d rather see her smiling.” (Listen on YouTube)2. Frank Ocean: “Solo (Reprise)”André bursts into the world of Frank Ocean’s 2016 opus “Blonde” in a gust of rapid-fire wordiness. Accompanied by James Blake’s sparse piano, he experiments with some inspired “solo”/“so low” wordplay (“so now I’m so low that I can see under the skirt of an ant”) as his flow careens around corners and suddenly — as if to assert the control he always has over his rhythm — yanks the emergency brake. That it’s the most prominent feature on Ocean’s deeply personal album attests to the respect the younger artist has for 3000’s artistry. (Listen on YouTube)3. Beyoncé featuring André 3000: “Party”On this verse, featured on a single from Beyoncé’s 2011 album “4,” André indulges in some light braggadocio, makes up his own memorable pronunciation of “gyro,” and, approaching his late 30s, expresses ambivalence about his evolving status as an elder statesman of hip-hop: “Kiddo say he looks up to me, this just makes me feel old.” (Listen on YouTube)4. Rick Ross featuring André 3000: “Sixteen”This eight-minute track from Rick Ross’s 2012 album “God Forgives, I Don’t” is a meta-meditation on what happens when “16 ain’t enough” — or how difficult it is to condense one’s life into a standard, 16-bar rap verse. Both Ross and 3000 manage to cram multitudes into their rhymes here. André’s feature in particular is an absolute tour de force, beginning with a vivid flashback to his youth (when he was just “drawin’ LL Cool J album covers with Crayolas on construction paper”) and somehow shifting into another gear toward the end, as he offers some clear-eyed reportage from the other side of one’s childhood dream coming true. (Listen on YouTube)5. Drake featuring Lil Wayne and André 3000: “The Real Her”From way back in 2011, when Drake was still trying to sound like a genuine romantic, André 3000 slid onto this “Take Care” track to show him how it was done, name-dropping Adele and laying his soul bare. “Everybody has an addiction,” he raps with arresting simplicity. “Mine happens to be you.” (Listen on YouTube)6. Devin the Dude: “What a Job”Another meta-ode to a musician’s creative process, this song from Devin the Dude’s gloriously named 2007 album “Waitin’ to Inhale” finds the Houston rapper — along with Snoop Dogg and André 3000 — offering perspective on and gratitude for his chosen profession. André uses part of his verse to make an argument against then-rampant piracy: “If I come to your job, take your corn on the cob,” he asks, “and take a couple kernels off it, that would be all right with you?” (Listen on YouTube)7. Killer Mike and André 3000 featuring Future and Eryn Allen Kane, “Scientists & Engineers”André proves he’s still got bars in the present tense on this track from Killer Mike’s 2023 album “Michael,” which just last week scored Grammy nominations for best rap performance and best rap song. Amid some evocative bleeps and bloops, André sounds like an alien visitor beaming in from another galaxy, though his verse is also imbued with plenty of human vulnerability: “Too much that I can’t communicate with all of them,” he raps. “I do wish I had scientists to engineer friends.” Later on, though, he’s more optimistic when considering the future: “Hope I’m 80 when I get my second wind.” We should all hope so, too. (Listen on YouTube)Keep your heart, Three Stacks, keep your heart,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“7 Great André 3000 Guest Verses” track listTrack 1: UGK featuring Outkast, “Int’l Players Anthem (I Choose You)”Track 2: Frank Ocean, “Solo (Reprise)”Track 3: Beyoncé featuring André 3000, “Party”Track 4: Rick Ross featuring André 3000, “Sixteen”Track 5: Drake featuring Lil Wayne and André 3000, “The Real Her”Track 6: Devin the Dude, “What a Job”Track 7: Killer Mike and André 3000 featuring Future and Eryn Allen Kane, “Scientists & Engineers”Bonus TracksIf you ever find yourself in Brussels (as I did on vacation last week), I cannot recommend highly enough a visit to the Musical Instruments Museum. The M.I.M. boasts a huge collection of instruments new, old and even older, including some wonderful curiosities. I got to see one of Adolphe Sax’s seven-bell trumpets (which was not as successful as one of his other inventions, the saxophone), a notorious glass harmonica and a collection of woodwinds extensive enough to have satisfied André 3000.Also, on this week’s Friday Playlist, we have new music from Drake, Dua Lipa, Julia Holter and more. Listen here. More

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      André 3000 Announces Debut Solo Album, ‘New Blue Sun’

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      The artist, best known as one-half of Outkast, will release “New Blue Sun,” an instrumental album of ambient woodwind compositions, on Friday.André 3000, the unpredictable rapper, producer and songwriter best known as one-half of Outkast, is finally releasing a solo album. In a twist, it has no words.Instead, “New Blue Sun,” due out Friday, “is an entirely instrumental album centered around woodwinds,” according to an announcement on Tuesday. Citing Laraaji, Brian Eno, Alice Coltrane, Steve Reich and Pharoah Sanders as influences, the musician has traded beats and raps for flutes and clarinets — a swerve he began some two decades ago as Outkast was winding down.“I’ve been interested in winds for a long time, so it was just a natural progression for me to go into flutes,” André, 48, said in the announcement. “I just like messing with instruments and I gravitated mostly toward wind.”The artist, born André Benjamin, last released an album with Outkast in 2006: “Idlewild,” the soundtrack to the duo’s movie musical. “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below,” the group’s Grammy-winning double album, arrived three years earlier.In the time since, André has surfaced as a featured rapper on songs by Kesha, Beyoncé, Future, Kanye West and others, appearing most recently on Killer Mike’s “Scientists & Engineers,” which was nominated last week for two Grammy Awards (best rap performance and best rap song). In 2014, André and Big Boi reunited as Outkast for a run of festival concerts.“I remember, at like 25, saying, ‘I don’t want to be a 40-year-old rapper,’” André told The New York Times in 2014, when he was 39. “I’m still standing by that. I’m such a fan that I don’t want to infiltrate it with old blood.” He added, “I don’t sit around and write raps, I just don’t. Now the only time I’m really inspired to write raps is if an artist that I enjoy invites me to their party.”The first track of “New Blue Sun” is 12 minutes long and titled, “I Swear, I Really Wanted to Make a ‘Rap’ Album But This Is Literally the Way the Wind Blew Me This Time.” (Other tracks on the eight-song ambient album include “Ninety Three ’Til Infinity and Beyoncé” and “Ghandi, Dalai Lama, Your Lord & Savior J.C. / Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and John Wayne Gacy.”)The album was co-produced by André and Carlos Niño, and includes contributions from the guitarist Nate Mercereau and Surya Botofasina on keyboards and synthesizers. André’s playing encompasses a digital wind instrument, a Maya flute and others of wood and bamboo, the announcement said.For years, he has hinted at his new, preferred musical direction. On Mother’s Day in 2018, André released two songs on SoundCloud, “Me&My (To Bury Your Parents)” and “Look Ma No Hands,” centered around bass clarinet. And spotting the musician around the world with his woodwinds, from the Los Angeles airport to the streets of Japan, has become something of a game for fans.In a new interview with NPR, André cited positive feedback for his ambient music from younger artists like Tyler, the Creator and Frank Ocean. “I don’t want to troll people,” André said. “I don’t want people to think, Oh, this André 3000 album is coming! And you play it and like, Oh man, no verses. So even actually on the packaging, you’ll see it says, ‘Warning: no bars.’”“In my mind, I really would like to make a rap album,” he added in the announcement. “So maybe that happens one day, but I got to find a way to say what I want to say in an interesting way that’s appealing to me at this age.” More

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      Mahogany L. Browne’s Love Letter to Hip-Hop

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      It was a clear black night, a clear white moon. Warren G, “Regulate” (1994)Originally appearing on the soundtrack of the Tupac Shakur film “Above the Rim,” this song is built around a sample of Michael McDonald’s “I Keep Forgettin’ (Every Time You’re Near).” I’m looking like a star when you see me make a wish. […] More