If you're looking for new bars from André 3000, you might be waiting for awhile.
Since the release of Outkast's sixth studio album, Idlewild, 3000 has collaborated with everyone from Beyoncé ("Party"), Kanye West ("Life of the Party"), Frank Ocean "Solo (Reprise)," and Travis Scott ("The Ends"), but his own music has largely been instrumental, including his flute-centric new album, New Blue Sun.
In a rare interview with CBS Mornings, 3000 shared that he'd "love" to release another rap album, but the inspiration isn't hitting him for a full-length project. "I write down ideas and lyrics all the time," he said around the 5-minute mark. "And maybe I haven't found the music that's inspiring enough for me to want to write raps to. Or maybe I got to find a new way to rap. If I don't feel like I'm doing something, it don't matter to me."
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Elaborating on what "doing something" meant, he added, "Affecting something, moving something, saying some truth, revealing something, destroying something."
"It gotta move a needle," he continued. "Like, our power came from exploring."
When CBS Mornings reporter Anthony Mason said that artists can often "exhaust something, and they need to go somewhere else," 3000 agreed. "Maybe I exhausted a thing, and sometimes you have to try something else."
Trying something else has worked in 3000's case, as New Blue Sun charted at No. 30 on the Billboard 200 upon its debut, above recent albums from Lil Wayne, Ice Spice, Nas, and more.
Earlier in the interview, at the 4:35-minute mark, Mason asked 3000 if he didn't feel the "urge or desire" to partake in Hip Hop 50 performances like his peers. "Nah, nah, I didn't," the 48-year-old artist replied.
"I don't necessarily like looking back," he added. "And I wouldn't wanna be in a place where I'm doing it on some, just because I'm trying to meet an expectation. I didn't get into Outkast for that. We were just kids, like, trying to see how far we could take it."
However, fellow Outkast member Big Boi has been a part of various Hip Hop 50 celebrations this year, including "A GRAMMY Salute To 50 Years Of Hip-Hop” and the Atlanta Braves Outkast night in May, where he threw the first pitch.
