Photo by Per Ole Hagen/Redferns.
You’ll Never Guess the Rapper Andre 3000 Recently Compared Himself To
We have the OutKast artist’s son to thank for introducing him to this rapper.
Andre 3000 has found some parallels between himself and another equally enigmatic rapper amid his foray into more experimental music — Lil B.
In an interview with Grammy.com published on Wednesday, the OutKast rapper not only name-dropped the Berkeley rapper as a peer, but explained the similarities he sees between his and Lil B’s approach to making music.When asked who he considers his peers for the jazz music he’s creating — he released his debut solo album, New Blue Sun, in November last year — 3 Stacks said, “A long line of historical bands like Sun Ra, the Chicago Art Ensemble. Even rapper Lil B.”
“I was joking to myself: I was like, I'm almost the Lil B of this type of music,” he continued. “Lil B is, they call it based rap. My son actually turned me on to Lil B.”
The musician then spoke further on his connection to Lil B and said that, “A lot of what he's doing is made up or improv or really reactionary. It's not this studied, perfect thing. Because I came up in the ‘90s, we came up with Nas and Wu-Tang and some of the [people] considered the best rappers around. It was about clarity. It was more of a studied kind of thing.”
“A person like Lil B is not studied at all. But the way the kids respond to him, it's because of that,” he added. “It's kind of like a punk way of rapping, and I like it. [And what I’m doing is] almost like punk jazz or punk spiritual jazz. It's pure feeling.”
As one of rap’s most eccentric figures, who’s rapped over everything from Kraftwerk samples to new age-sounding instrumentals, it’s not too surprising that Lil B has found a fan in Andre 3000. (Fun fact: Lil B released a song called “OutKast” on his 2020 mixtape, Trap Oz.) Now, all we need is for the Based God to rap over the entire 10-and-a-half minutes of "That Night in Hawaii When I Turned into a Panther and Started Making These Low Register Purring Tones That I Couldn't Control... Sh¥t Was Wild.”
Elsewhere in the interview, 3000 talked about how he recently revisited some of his work in OutKast, as well as guest verses he did on other songs — something he confessed he rarely does.
“So one day I was in my hotel room listening to all this stuff for hours — five hours of albums and guest stuff. And it was surprising because you’re listening as a fan and not remembering where you were at the time when you did them,” he said. “It's almost like you're having an out-of-body experience listening to yourself. Then you realize how much time has gone by and how different of a person you are, which is even crazier.”
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