Tuesday, March 6, 2012

André 3000 Talks Support for Chris Brown and Drake, OutKast’s Future

André 3000

André 3000 doesn’t do many interviews, but when he does, everyone takes notice. The OutKast recluse, who is readying a solo project, had a lot to say when he phoned into The FADER. Fresh off his collaboration with Gorillaz on the Converse-commissioned "DoYaThing", Three Stacks spoke at length about how he chooses his collaborations, his support for Chris Brown, being inspired by Drake and Kanye West, why we haven’t seen him in a music video lately, and the uncertainty of a new OutKast album. Read some of the highlights below.

On why he wanted to appear on Chris Brown’s remix to “Deuces”: “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 being inspired by newcomers like Drake: “Now I talk to Drake, and I know he had to be like 10 when he was listening to what we were doing. You just never know who’s listening until you hear a connection. I didn’t even know Drake dug my music, I just liked him as a rapper because I felt he had a balance. I didn’t even know that he grew up listening to me. But it’s cool to know that it’s a real lineage thing. I’m happy to see Kanye and Wayne and Drake and all these new artists. They inspire me in a way because they reach back and they say, ‘Hey, we want to get you on these songs.’”

On hip-hop’s new generation: “None of us old guys have new flows. None of us. The young guys have the new flows. The only thing that we have is years of experience. That’s all we have.”

On why he hasn’t appeared in music videos for his collaborations: “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 Beyoncé, from Young Jeezy and Jay-Z, from B.o.B, 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.”

On a new OutKast album: “There’s no plans for an OutKast album right now. … If we do another OutKast album one day, I would be super happy. Because I’ll know that the vibe is right, and we’ll put our all into it. But if we never do another OutKast album, you know, I won’t be sad because we’ve been blessed.”

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