The albums that changed André 3000’s life
One or two musicians seem to transcend genre as easily as they ply their trade on the airwaves. Artists who are not confined to categorisation or curtailed by the notion of sonic borders. One such artist is the inimitable André 3000. As one-half of OutKast, he came up through the underground of hip-hop to become a pop sensation before slinking into the background, operating more as a musical mystic in the misty shadows of the culture.
It’s a position that has made the musician’s announcement of an instrumental flute album, New Blue Sun, feel completely expected. The rapper has regularly rejected his position as one of the most gifted lyricists of his time and instead plied his trade in multiple fields, including taking the reins of the Jimi Hendrix biopic and providing funk and soul in equal measure through the speakers.
André 3000 rose to prominence as one half of the aforementioned hip-hop duo, making some of the most acclaimed hip-hop of the 1990s and early 2000s alongside his partner Big Boi. However, since they split in 2007, his career has been reserved only for guest verses with a range of artists, collaborating with musicians including Beyoncé, Anderson .Paak and Gorillaz. It’s a wide range of preferences, which is replicated when the musician spoke to The Guardian in 2006, sharing some of the albums that changed his life. While there’s a good chance there have been some additional records attached to this list since the interview, it does provide a snapshot of a mercurial artist.
“I started rapping and rhyming in school talent shows in Atlanta when I was 12 or 13,” confessed the rapper. However, it was one rap group, Eric B and Rakim and their LP Paid in Full, that changed everything for him. “It wasn’t until I heard Rakim that I realised what you could actually do it with it. He was the coolest, the calmest, and he showed that rap could be fluid, rather than just be a rhythmic attack.”
But André 3000 has always been more than just rap, and his love for other genres of music started at an early age: “I went to my dad’s house, and he would be smoking a joint, listening to Earth, Wind and Fire, Parliament and, most of all, Maggot Brain by Funkadelic. That album blew my mind. It made me want to learn to play guitar, and its huge range of styles – funk, bluegrass, country, opera – helped build our sound.”
Another family member was influential for the musician, as his cousin operated as his ultimate muse when it came to clothes and music, especially gifting André 3000’s love of Prince. “I would go round to his house, and he would play me ‘Kiss’ and ‘Dirty Mind’ and tell me what the words meant, and I knew that he had it going on,” he told the publication. “Then he played me Sign O’ The Times, and the way it was all over the place reminded me of Funkadelic. It’s one of the best albums ever made.”
André 3000 hasn’t always been into every style of music, though, and his love for jazz started relatively late, despite now keeping a copy of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme close at all times. “I like the kind of blues where people went to Mississippi to find the old guys who were doing what they always had done; people like RL Burnside, and before that Son House,” he revealed, selecting the latter’s John The Revelator. “I didn’t know anything about songs like ‘John the Revelator’ and ‘Death Letter’, but they’re so deep that they take you into another world.”
However, perhaps the strangest pick on the list is the groundbreaking Kraftwerk album Trans-Europe Express from 1977. But perhaps the connection is more obvious than you might think: “I heard Kraftwerk when I was young, but it was only years later that I realised how they have been the main influence on hip-hop. Afrika Bambaataa’s ‘Planet Rock’ is a rip-off from Kraftwerk, and that’s a seminal hip hop record. They used all electronic sounds – no guitars, no live drums – and they sounded like the future.”
It’s not easy to quantify the many threads of influence that make the tapestry of André 3000’s creativity, but the playlist below offers a near-perfect introduction.
Albums that changed André 3000’s life:
- Paid in Full – Eric B and Rakim
- Maggot Brain – Funkadelic
- Sign O’ The Times – Prince
- Trans-Europe Express – Kraftwerk
- John The Revelator – Son House
