ANDRÉ 3000 – Surprise Concert in The NY Times Newsroom (2024)

This week, André 3000 sat down with Popcast, The New York Times music podcast, for a wide-ranging interview about his journey from platinum-selling rapper and pop star to experimental flutist, discussing what it’s like to improvise after a career of writing down raps, the perks of naïveté and a tour-saving call from Prince.

Two decades after he and his Outkast partner Big Boi won the Grammy Award for album of the year, for Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, he is again nominated in that category on quite different terms. At the show in February, he’s up as a solo artist, for New Blue Sun, an album of improvised music on which he plays a variety of wind instruments and speaks no words.

It’s a sonic pivot, but maybe not a philosophical one for a musician who has rewritten his creative approach several times over a 30-year career. Following his interview, André 3000 and the band behind New Blue Sun — featuring Surya Botofasina, Nate Mercereau, Carlos Niño and Deantoni Parks — performed an improvised piece in The Times’ newsroom.