André 3000 revealed that he has anonymously released wind music under a secret alias..
“Yes, from known artists. They’ve been cool about keeping it secret.”
André said he was credited for his contributions, but the reason they were able to fly under the radar is because he used different names — much like when he adopted the moniker Earthtone III when producing OutKast records alongside Big Boi and Mr. DJ.
“I’ve actually played some wind things that I’ve put out in the world that I called myself another name under different artists that are out there that, you know, I was just kinda testing it out in a way,” he said. “From known artists, and they’ve been cool about keeping it secret.”
For the first time in over 17 years, André 3000 is releasing an album of new music. New Blue Sun — announced Nov. 14 via NPR and released Friday, Nov. 17 — is a stunning 87-minute mind-bender, minimalist and experimental, tribal and transcendent.
One thing it is not, however, is a rap record: No bars, no beats, no sub-bass. André doesn’t sing on this joint, either. What he does do is play flute, and plenty of it — contrabass flute, Mayan flutes, bamboo flutes — along with other digital wind instruments. In place of lyrics, he offers eight provocative song titles, the first of which almost reads like a lowkey apology, with a wink of irony: “I swear, I Really Wanted To Make A ‘Rap’ Album But This Is Literally The Way The Wind Blew Me This Time.”
He added: “I wasn’t sure how to present the wind thing because I would just be on the street and playing [it]. I play in nature a lot. I play [while] hiking, walking, in the city, wherever. And what started to happen was people started filming me on their cellphones and posting it and making beats out of it which is cool to me.
“But I was trying to find a way, how can I share my love for discovering this wind instrument with more people where it’s not this kind of Where’s Waldo?, there’s this dude playing kinda thing.”
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