A mixture of jazz heads and OutKast stans lined up outside the Blue Note Cafe in Greenwich Village. The tickets promised doors would open at 6 p.m., but by 5:15 p.m. there was already a healthy queue forming. “Who are you seeing?” a passerby asked a man in front of me. “André 3000,” he responded in a hushed tone, as if he could hardly believe what he was saying.
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André 3000, one-half of OutKast, has acquired a near-mythic status among music fans and in pop culture at large. The band split shortly after their commercial peak. André went on to feature on projects from the likes of Frank Ocean and Beyoncé, and save for a brief set of OutKast reunion shows with Big Boi in 2014, has stayed solo. He’s popped up around the world, in airports and street corners, with a flute in hand, not really performing, just jamming, apparently uninterested in whether anyone was paying any attention or not.
If most rappers announced a new-aged flute album, it would read as a gimmick; when André announced New Blue Sun in November, it was par for the course. The select few intimate concerts he announced in January to promote the album sold out almost immediately. The opportunity to see him perform anything was rare enough that I didn’t mind waiting in line, surrendering my phone, and chatting with my table mates for two hours as we threw back a couple drinks and eagerly waited for him to take the stage.
Finally, we lifted off. André and bandmates Surya Botofasina, Nate Mercereau, Carlos Niño, and Deantoni Parks took the stage, wordlessly beginning several minutes of calming, heavenly improvisation. Dim, blue lighting couched the details of André’s face, reinforcing a message that we were not there to look, but to listen.
Eventually, we had the opportunity to listen to his voice for the first of a few times. André emphasized throughout the show a child-like feeling of discovery and wonder and play. It’s that feeling that brought him to these instruments and to this stage. He encouraged the crowd to make animal noises while he performed, if we felt so compelled. He told us stories about moving between schools as a kid and how he would make up a New York City backstory at some of the new schools. He was candid, good-humored, and sincere.
But it was the music, of course, that was the main event. While repeat listeners of the album may have been able to make out some familiar melodies, that wasn’t really the point. The point was discovery. Andre and his band allowed themselves the space to be dissonant, to riff and riddle and growl. At one point, he removed one of the flutes from his mouth to deliver a pseudo-rap in a dialect I couldn’t place; he said after, “That was a language I just made up.”
And what was the show if not André introducing us to a language he had made up? There was a sense of time standing still inside the club, but when the set ended, it felt like a blink. In the hours we had disconnected from the outside world, I had meditated and transcended. I was refreshed. I felt as new as his blue sun.