in 2004 Andre 3000 was the most famous rapper in America today he’s a monk hiding from the world for 20 years but still people are just as interested in him as they ever were Andre 3000 actually escaped the curse that destroys most rappers the curse of falling off but the price for that was a curse of his own there have been times where I was like I’ve prayed like prayed to a god that I didn’t even know it existed really I would rather you take this away from me all of this if I could just feel normal like take voice career all that
you can have it if I could feel normal I love the way you talk about Andre 3000 as if he were a person that you knew well I know him sometime but despite his struggles he’s still one of the most beloved and respected rappers ever that’s why the Outcast album speakerbox slthe love below is the bestselling rap album ever over 13 times Platinum that’s why Outcast won six Grammy Awards that’s why every single Outcast album is a classic whether it’s full of experimental deep Cuts or Timeless number one pop hits without Andre 3000
artists like Kanye Tyler the Creator future Childish Gambino or even Kendrick Lamar might not sound the way they do today so why does this guy who’s basically a saint in the history of hip-hop say stuff like this I haven’t been making much music man my my focus is not there my confidence is not there sometimes it feels inauthentic for me to rap what happened to Andre 3000 this video is brought to you by nebula the only place where you can watch my original documentary danger music the true story behind some of the
most disgusting scary Dangerous Music ever made so go to [Music] nebula.com of the best creators on the internet more about that later it’s the 1995 Source awards ceremony and Outcast just won the award for the best new rap group but everyone is booing them how you going to get booed and you just one Best New Artist but it’s like this though I’m tired of folks you know what I’m saying cloes minded folks you know what I’m saying it’s like we got a demo tape on nobody want to hear but it’s like this the South got something to say
that’s all I got to say while the event also saw animosity between the east and west coast who had a complete Monopoly over wrap at the time the East Coast ain’t got no love for Dr D Snoop do y’all don’t love us we let it be known in we know y’all East Coast there was one common enemy no one wanted to recognize Outcast they were Outsiders from Atlanta their music was weird their clothes were weird and they weren’t welcome a lot of New York radio channels just refused to play their songs but Andre was no stranger to rejection he
remembered how a few years ago he was rejected by the only person in the music industry who could possibly change his life he had already been told that he would never make it and that there was nothing unique about him that he wasn’t good and he wasn’t a star and so this moment wasn’t much to be afraid of at all outcast was born from three different life paths meeting at one Crossroads Antoine Patton was born in the winter of 1975 in the small coastal town of Savannah Georgia he grew up in a three-bedroom house crammed full of
family members growing up poor made him pragmatic entrepreneurial and a natural-born leader at the age of 8 he would throw parties where he would DJ a set at his house and charge kids to enter and have candy as a teenager he became a straight A student while at the same time dealing drugs to make ends meet Antoine eventually realized he had to leave his small town if he wanted to find real opportunities he was able to convince his Aunt Renee to let him stay with her in Atlanta so he could attend the Tri Cities high school for
Performing Arts and learn more about music and it was there in Atlanta that he met Andre Benjamin Andre was only a few months younger and he grew up in the city he was introverted and some people even thought he was a bit naive always with his head in the clouds at Tri City’s high school he quickly got into rapping with his classmates and found it was one of his true passions at age 16 in school together Antoine and Andre were rival their personalities couldn’t be more opposed and that’s why they respected each other’s rapping skills
that’s why the Rivalry turned into friendship and before long they formed a musical duo called two shades deep Antoine was Black Dog and Andre called himself black wolf and yeah if this were 2015 instead of 1991 that would have been a furry Collective always looking for any way into the industry they would soon meet Rico Wade Rico a little bit older and a little more experienced was part of a production Trio called organized noise with his friends sleepy Brown and Ray Murray organized noise had been getting some work with Atlanta
labels like left face records but the artists they were working with weren’t what they really wanted they wanted something of their own man I wish we had two young dudes I’m talking about like two fly high school cats to come we’d be straight As I said that these two guys came walking over the hill were like what what can y’all do they wrapped over this song man I swear they wrapped for about 10 minutes peace with no breaks I was totally amazed so I instantly was like yo I want to take y’all to the dungeon he took them to the dungeon a
studio space he had built in his mom’s basement the same place that would go on to facilitate some of the greatest records in the history of Atlanta’s rap scene launching artists like Goody Mob TLC Janelle Monae Killer Mike future and of course outcast in 1992 it wasn’t much more than a room full of cobwebs rat and empty walls with the paint coming off and of course artists pursuing The Impossible Dream from scratch again though they were only 16 and 17 years old Antoine still managed to balance making music with good grades
but Andre completely dropped out if music failed he didn’t know what he was going to do that’s how much time they were spending working on music in the dungeon they had no other plan if this group failed they’d all be failures no one would want anything to do with them and that’s how they became Outcast Andre previously known as black wolf became Dre Antoine previously Black Dog became big boy and their shot at success came shortly after Rico Wade through doing production for left face records built buil a relationship with its president
La Reed after a while he managed to land an audition for Outcast but Reed wasn’t a fan he is a person who could put you in position to be a professional rapper he tell you you’re not good enough leface was an R&B in pop label with acts like Usher TLC and Tony Braxton no rap act had ever been signed and they weren’t looking for one either LA Reid was looking to sign more pop stars and he felt like Outcast was a lot like every other rap group they had good lyrics but no unique sound and they didn’t seem like futures Stars everyone
was disappointed Andre’s Spirit was broken he didn’t even have school to fall back on but big boy told him we’ve come this far so we might as well keep pushing so they did back in the dungeon Rico Wade started a Relentless training regimen for Outcast the production Trio experimented to create a new sound and Andre and Antoine did hundreds of rewrites to improve their raps they even started performing their verses while running to build strong lung capacity for concerts it was brutal work they were treating being in a rap group like
their lives depended on it eventually though they got a second chance to go back to LA Reed and do another audition and in 1992 at the age of 17 Outcast became the first ever rap artists signed to laface records just 2 years after Outcast met in high school their 1994 debut album Southern playalistic Cadillac music sold 1 million records within a year and of course won them the best new rap group award at the 1995 Source Awards all before they were 20 years old so why again did people try and boo them off the stage because 3
years ago they were rejected for being unoriginal and now they’re being hated for sounding too unique so what kind of album did they make to get people so mad they brought the new Dirty South Sound to the scene it combined live guitar keyboard and bass with the hardhead sampled hip-hop drums it was funky with dark undertones and it reflected the album’s themes of Pleasure and Pain the first half of the album is about the feeling the Hedonism the excitement of living in Atlanta Players Ball is a song about celebrating Christmas the Atlanta
way smoking dealing drugs and having a [Music] party it’s for the books you knew so now you know let’s [Music] go and if you think Andre 3000 looks young in this video it’s because he was he was 17 years old funky ride is a psychedelic Funk overdose that makes you feel like you’re floating on a hazy [Music] Cloud but then the second half of the album depicts the apathy the hopelessness and the self-destructive tendencies that make many teenagers give up on their Futures and their education in a very conscious yet entertaining way
like the song Call of the Wild where Andre confides that he’s scared for his future remember he wasn’t a famous rapper here he was just a random kid who was risking his future for his passion for music a hate and I’m wishing and I wonder damn will I graduate before I hit the summer I not I’m def trying to dig up in me he say I’m half I got no future and so he set me up the creeking choking like hell without no paddle but is getting SM we back on the saddle this album gave a huge voice to Southern hip-hop the awards the sales
introducing the rest of the country to the unique Atlanta accents the production the ideas and the stories but it also had a big effect on Andre in particular in the months after its success he went into a mental spiral and became almost unrecognizable to the people around him to a lot of Outsiders who were now interested in Outcast not knowing who they were before he looked pretty crazy there were even rumors flying around that he might be on drugs or gay or both one day completely out of nowhere Andre showed up to the studio
wearing a turban he told everyone that he had thrown away all of his jewelry quit drinking and smoking become vegan and spiritual and had started a year-long vow of celibacy Big Boy couldn’t believe that the chain smoking rapper who had taught him how to roll a blunt 2 years ago was now a sober vegan the same guy who just a few weeks ago was partying with groupies was now celibate Andre even started studying for a GED to make up for the fact that he dropped out of high school despite the fact he was now a famous artist who had
no need to go back to school ever he had achieved every rappers dream and now he was openly Throwing It All Away on a whim right after they had their big break and the reason why was because Andre resented the vices that came with his Newfound success he found them distracting and stressful and he didn’t want to be that way anymore I exploited my fame and then I got guilty about it and pulled back looking in the mirror they say when you’re high you shouldn’t look in the mirror and I did and I saw myself deteriorating and I was like you
look terrible you got to cut this out or you won’t make it and I stopped there was also the Heartbreak and regret that came from the end of his 2-year relationship with the singer Kesha Spivey she had dumped him and it left him feeling pretty empty but what he regretted most was that he apparently felt like a fraud personally and artistically Andre was going against his better instincts to become a hedonistic materialistic young 19-year-old rap star instead he wanted to live more true to himself most of all though Andre didn’t want to be a fake
gangster rapper anymore because even though Outcast was introduced as a kind of weird conscious funky version of the regular rap sound they were still abiding by the gangster look that was non-negotiable back then big boy he wasn’t a stranger to that world he had the aura of someone shaped by hardship he was about that life but Andre was a little different he went to one of the most elite private schools in Atlanta so does that mean that Andre 3000 was a rich kid pretending to have a poor tragic origin story not really it’s
pretty complicated but one one thing was for sure he wasn’t going to act like someone he wasn’t just for the sake of being famous Sharon Benjamin and her son Andre finally settled into the Bowen Holmes housing project in Atlanta when he was a young kid in the years before they had been moving around constantly because she didn’t have enough money to put down a deposit on an apartment for them to live in when she left Andre’s father all she had to her name was $450 and a mattress but what really broke her heart was to see her son Andre
who was only 10 years old fully accept the instability and the feeling of not having a home each time she got evicted from a place he would say I’m ready as if he were already used to it living in the Bowen homes she always worried when she looked out the window to see people fighting dealing drugs or police cars and fire engines pulling up to the building feeling determined to make sure that her son would have a good future she took the first opportunity that came her way she enrolled Andre in a school program that took kids from low-income
areas and sent them to schools in affluent neighborhoods eventually Andre ended up at a middle school in Buckhead in Atlanta one of the nicest parts of the city and this was a formative experience for him these schools gave him access to top tier education and infrastructure in a racially economically mixed environment which led to a unique taste of Music he wouldn’t have heard at home he loved listening to Rakim Madonna sting and Duran Duran from a young age even before the prestigious schools though he had always been an
unusually curious child who loved to Tinker with his mom’s record player disassembling it and putting it back together and this school experience only increas inreased his curiosity it was no surprise that in middle school he got into art music and fashion and even developed his own style of dressing but at the same time as his school experience expanded his tastes and his interests he started to go through an identity crisis when he came back to the neighborhood people around was like what the hell you got on even after bouncing
back fixing her finances and home by becoming a real estate agent Andre’s mother still couldn’t afford nice things like brand name clothes at school he would see unfamiliar bougie Lifestyles and then he’d come back home and realize how different his reality was he slowly started to understand that things that were normal for his friends were Out Of Reach for him by the time Andre was in high school the integration program was over and pretty quickly he started to Rebel but smoking weed and drinking and Petty troublemaking doesn’t make you a
pimp or a gangster Andre was still the same exact eccentric introverted artistic kid with his head in the clouds just with a few bad habits and so it makes sense that with his early music Andre tried to fit in with the conventional Aesthetics and style but the sad thing was that they still didn’t want him the same way that people from his neighborhood didn’t want him the only answer in that position would be to sink further and further into his Daydreams and his eccentricities because that was the only place he could safely
be who he was his whole life he was too artistic too expressive and too colorful for the people around him it was only with big boy and Rico Wade and making music in the dungeon that Andre came to find a sense of belonging and so now the name Outcast starts to hit a little different and while their debut album was pretty great it didn’t make him feel true to himself this transformation he was now going through becoming an unrecognizable figure it was Andre’s way of swearing that he would never compromise who he really is and how he
feels and what he wants to do it was him proving that he’d never lose himself just to gain clout in a world that isn’t really true to him but ironically embracing that weirdness is what would soon make him bigger than he ever imagined one of the biggest figures in the history of rap outcasts next two albums would change hip-hop forever after the smooth yet edgy Street sound of Southern playalistic Cadillac music at ens starts like this you sure some go low to get high you may hurt till you cry you may die keep on
trying try till it’s summer in the city till it’s summer in the city after the thrill chasing and the youthful sound or the first album at Alan’s themes are mature looking at life as being bigger than your immediate wants and needs Andre told Spin Magazine you had themes around aliens robots the future the spiritual World introspection sins and Trauma and relationships with God and the daily challenges of the present at aliens Al not the alens Al it’s called at aliens for all y who be getting it wrong aliens from Atlanta
foreigners in the world of the East and the West Coast hip-hop rivalries the album combines musical elements ranging from gospel to R&B reggae to even country and rock Andre was really giving himself more to the music not only focusing on lyrics but also becoming a producer himself Andre handled production on onethird of the album’s songs which only added to the overall feeling of intense moodiness sci-fi inspiration and an atmosphere that’s larger than life and intimate at the same time y know what [Music] [Music]
it but it’s important to remember that both of them were just 21-year-old artists who had been outcasted by the mainstream Community from the start that kind of rejection can deeply trouble someone and make them confrontational in reality Andre caught most of the ridicule aimed at Outcast but still despite their polar opposite Styles and personalities big boy always stood by him back then there was a whole bunch of talking people just couldn’t understand how we were making the type of music we were making there were a lot
of attacks coming at my partner we wanted to let people know this man doesn’t stand by himself I mean that’s my dog it’s a team effort in success and in ridicule Outcast was known for their yin and yang contrast of the player and the poet while Andre had a laid-back poetic delivery with eccentric Artistry big boy had the Charisma the f G flows and he brought the Atlanta Street culture to the mix y y’all two look so different in the video what’s what’s you you got more of a funkify you know what I’m saying yeah your dress and
everything you coming through while you coming through more you know what I’m saying on a on a regular the next album was aquini Big Boy the Aquarius and Andre the Gemini Aquemini you got big boy the Aquarius half of the group and on this side you got Andre 3000 the Gemini of the group y’all know what it is it took the experimental sounds of at aliens to a new level and it became the moment that ended the east west coast Monopoly over hip-hop Andre doubled down on his new direction of eccentricity and spirituality while Big Boy kept things
real and sharp Dr toos became their superpower like in The Art of Storytelling part one big boy talks about his encounters with a highly promiscuous girl Susie screw but then Andre comes in with a story about a girl who had a bleak outlook on life and ODed while being 6 months pregnant we on our back staring at the stars above talking about what we going to be when we grow up I say what you want to be she said it made me for a minute in I could in this album Andre truly showed he could do it all he could do conscious and
sightful storytelling but he could also do lyrical kill shots better than any other rapper alive so they grow up in the dark never seeing light till they end up being like your Sor ass robbing and Broad ass they like get down Return of the ganger bangster who get the wrong impression of Express the question I was young and Wilder and some of my fashion choices people didn’t accept at the time I started getting Flack from some people so they were like either he’s gay or on drugs with big boy standing by me I knew
I had to address some of the cuz I can’t have my homeboy looking bad I knew a lot of people felt like Southern playalistic with some of our hardest work and they felt like we strayed from that so Return of the Gangsta was trying to give them a sense of hey I’m still a regular person at the end of the day you’ve still got to go through the same neighborhood so sometimes you have to say stuff to let people know what it is I’m a man so you can’t say some of this stuff to me and of course he became even more of the eccentric artist everyone
knew in fact he went so hard on being unique that he started dressing in ski boots monkey fur pants and wigs when Rico Wade asked him what he was doing Andre told him that the music was colorful and beautiful and he wanted to look like the music and the music was pretty beautiful your face you’re a superar around CU of who you are you get love cuz of what you got St happy for but they really not s a lot of Rec and you roll the men fall up in the spot now you’re losing [Music] friends aquim and I was so good that the
rest of the rap scene couldn’t stay mad for long it was thoughtful Yet full of bangers he was even more Moody than at alens exploring topics like human nature addiction relationships and again all while blending sci-fi and urban narratives together aquim and I went on to be ranked many times as one of the greatest albums ever made at the very least one of the best rap albums of the 9s again in large part due to how Andre 3000 was able to blend so many sounds together and bring such a freethink thinking yet soberingly real Spirit to
the songwriting he had become more strange than ever before but it wasn’t something that people could blame on drugs or addiction or strange beliefs he was just a truly unique person and him expressing that in his art made him more famous than ever before in the song Millennium from at elens Andre said this about his State of Mind like never lived up to my expectations so I accept the patience expect the worst but now I’m pacing back and forth but at this point now in the late ’90s life had started to get pretty good for Andre 3000 he was no
longer a hated Underdog in the rap world people were really starting to recognize the impressive creative output from Outcast with critics calling aquem a stroke of Brilliance cliche defying and the most Lush hip-hop album ever one critic said that aquai possesses an uncanny blend of Sonic Beauty poignant lyricism and spirituality that compels without command in to put it simply they were no longer outcasts their strange brand of Music had become so undeniably good it was now the norm on the personal side too things were improving after his
one year vow of celibacy Andre met Erica Badu a singer who was even more famous than he was at the time but she followed a spiritual vegan lifestyle just like him a year after they got together their son was born in November of 1997 a life started shaping up for Andre Beyond being stuck in his own head the birth of his son propelled him to further become his own person even pushing him and big boy to find their own paths literally they had diverging paths because they started riding in separate tour buses since Andre wanted his bus to be a no
smoking Zone but it wasn’t all perfect pretty soon Andre would find out that despite his spiritual awakening and strict monk-like lifestyle he still couldn’t completely avoid struggle and tragedy after just 3 years together he and Erica Badu separated which seemed to take a real toll on Andre he became self-destructive and lost his sobriety in the years after the breakup but Andre always said that to make great art you have to take time and live a life worthy of making art about so when your life is in pieces where do you turn instead of
sinking deeper into his thoughts like he had been for his whole life Andre decided to chase even more success and become the sound of 1999 feeling inspired by the dawn of a new era Andre submerged himself in the artistic process completely even choosing a new stage name officially going by Andre 3000 for the first time instead of just Dre on the one hand it is distinguish himself from Dr Dre but also to make one thing clear the New Millennium was right around the corner but Andre wasn’t from this one he was so far ahead that he was
from the next one the year 3000 but at a certain point Andre’s artistic Direction even started to worry Big Boy specifically when he would say that he was tired of rapping instead wanting to sing pop songs the more time went on the more he chased his ideas the more people felt that Andre was disconnected from reality so in hindsight you can start to see why their next album while possibly the most iconic thing they ever made was the last project they ever made together in Andre’s own words Stankonia is the place I imagined where you can open
yourself up and be free to express anything for him it was Tales of sex politics Street violence and his own personal struggles some days you wake up on one side of the bed and all you want to do is party and some days you got something to say so we put them both together Miss Jackson is the most popular song from Stankonia it’s one of the best best songs Outcast ever made period being ranked on many lists over the years as one of the greatest tracks ever it even won a Grammy and in this glitchy synth pop meets 70 Soul Meets
rap song Andre speaks directly to the mother of his ex apologizing for all the pain she went through from the turmoil of their relationship Miss Jackson is a truly huge song that has billions of streams even to this day 25 years after it came out and it became a huge cult [Music] classic The Story Goes that Erica bad’s own mom loved the song and was always proud of it even though it was about her own daughter’s heartbreak then there was the most controversial and Innovative song from the album Bombs Over Baghdad
Andre was annoyed that rap sounded so relaxed at the time everybody was getting paid so it wasn’t as hungry we wanted that song to sound Fierce and Urgent what’s hilarious is that this song’s name was so controversial that multiple radio stations banned it completely which stopped it from being a successful lead single but the song itself had no reference to Iraq’s Invasion or any military Conflict at all look at what came in the ma scale Arm and Hammer soing a baby mama black hair in a back of P back of with no
answers for cancer for a make a want to stay on T for days get back home things are wrong when not really it was bad all long before you left ass to it was actually a psychedelic Bas pounding track about life in the ghetto that somehow became an Anthem for the Iraq War later on this news reporter she said something something and Bombs Over Baghdad it sounded good I knew I could use it somewhere in his verse on the song red velvet you can hear the way that this song crucially influenced kendri Lamar later down the line and on
here Andre even uses the chipmunk voice that many years later Frank Ocean and Tyler the Creator would take inspiration from as [Music] well stonia pushed Outcast to pop star levels of Fame it went gold within a week and it even won the Grammy for best rap album of the Year from the outside Outcast were on top of the world but beneath the surface Andre and big big boy had started drifting apart it wasn’t out of conflict they were always different people but more so their separate pace of Life taking them in different creative directions Andre was
getting more and more unusual wearing dresses colorful outfits long bright wigs and singing Pop Songs big boy he was an elite rapper one of the best but he wasn’t following Andre down the same path of experimentation and strangeness instead he stayed a lot more grounded in his writing and his Persona and no one ever asked if big boy was gay or on drugs he was a more traditional artist artist Andre was also behaving more strangely than ever before he expressed a hatred for performing live but then forced himself to do it anyway he
started withdrawing more to himself mostly spending his time alone at first it could be dismissed as Andre being more devoted to the craft of music as he started taking more serious lessons on learning instruments and music theory with Michael Jackson’s guitarist being his personal music teacher but in hindsight you get a sense that through his music Andre was really crying out for help in the energetic song Gasoline dreams he says this Ro every around me play married iay I can’t call never make no sense to [Music]
me it’s Eerie how the lyric might just pass by with the fast delivery and the energetic Anthem sound hiding the true feeling of his words what he was really saying underneath the happy sound was that his inability to manage romantic bonds or relationships in general was making him feel confused and empty despite the success he was enjoying at the same time ultimately Andre dived further into his music and he started working on a solo project called The Love below an album about the highs and the lows of love he was making it
because he needed emotional release in a dark moment of his life it wasn’t meant to be a hit it wasn’t meant to change the game but at the same time the love below ended up becoming the bestselling hip-hop album ever the love below was made to be a solo album by Andre 3000 but at the last minute his record label told him that this wasn’t a good business move outcast at the moment was too popular for Andre to go off on his own and they needed to keep riding the momentum from Stankonia so big boy was roped in to do another half of the
project and make it a double album but creative issues came up again when Andre started taking an excruciatingly long time to actually finish the project instead of being someone who could freestyle or put music out like a Workhorse he’s often said that he can’t force his art it either feels natural and comes out or he doesn’t make it but even by his own standards the love below was very slow he later told GQ in 2017 that a lot of people don’t know the love below almost wasn’t finished when it was finally finished it became very obvious
that speakerbox slthe love below is two separate albums put together you can see it in the name the album cover and even the track listing Big Boy speaker box is a progressive version of their signature funky Southern hip-hop sound listening to it you can feel how much big boy has grown throughout his journey covering topics like parent Parenthood religion politics marriage on the other hand Andre’s the love below sounds alien to anything he’s ever created it’s not an exaggeration there’s only one song on this album that’s actually hip-hop
everything else feels like Gothic horror to bite the right one then you come along and that freaks me out so won fight turn o dragul I’m terrified you vintage jazz need somebody to love oh it’s too late it’s too late sounding like the Beatles with soft rock [Music] I psychedelic soul for reason I think I’m on the right track now and listening to it you can understand why this album took so long to make Andre has always been the sole writer of his songs but on the love below he was also the main producer and played a lot
of the instruments himself this isn’t just an album It’s a tapestry of Andre’s full creative abilities so it’s really not shocking to find out that the album starts like this know [Music] wear this [Music] flow [Music] grow you can’t tell me that this song doesn’t sound like the direct inspiration for Tyler the Creator’s Flower Boy album even beyond the same sound look at the phrase where this flower grows Tyler literally has a track in his album called where this flower blooms Andre was way ahead of his time going even further in this unexpected
Direction Andre brought in Nora Jones for the song Take off Your cool which is a really easy listening smooth sound people still listen to today with Nora Jones going through a career Renaissance in 2024 thanks to Tik Tok Trends baby take off your Co I want to see you I want to see you baby don’t be so cool but the biggest song from this album and possibly the biggest song of outcast entire career was heya a couple of minutes ago I was talking about how Andre’s cries for help in his music often hide in plain sight under happy
instrumentals and hey yah he’s really not even trying to hide it but SE better with there feelings invol what they say nothing is forever then what makes then what makes then what makes then what makes so why why why I we’re not happy here yeah the song is upbeat it’s happy and Poppy but the lyrics are about deep isolation and Andre’s feeling that love is always destined to fail it’s pretty dark to realize that this is the song that’s become so widely used in wedding parties and graduations and Proms and then thinking about Andre going out
performing this song at shows for oblivious dancing fans it’s definitely one of those songs where the real meaning isn’t at all how people interpret it to be and speakerbox slthe love below ended up winning the Grammy for best album and it turned Andre 3000 into possibly the most famous artist in America at that moment but we’re still only halfway through the story Outcast became the kings of the music industry at the 2004 Grammys immediately after winning the album of the Year award Andre and big boy shared a long hug they
had made history with their 10-year Journey that started by being booed off the stage and laughed at back when they won the award for best new rap group back in 1995 and they’re only 29 years old but they achieved everything they could have imagined thinking back to when Andre was worried about not graduating from high school and having no future and then after that dealing with being sidelined by the other rap scenes and then even being considered the weird artsy rapper that people love to judge finally he had it all so it
doesn’t make a lot of sense why a year later on his 30th birthday Andre 3000 was hiding away in a hotel all alone he didn’t celebrate his 30th birthday he didn’t see anyone it could have been a moment to celebrate the decade of hard work and the incredible success but instead he turned away from the world completely and then a year after that he officially said he was done with music and Andre’s new mindset didn’t just hurt him it also started to have major consequences for Big Boy and the group itself in 2004 outcasts were invited to
perform at the Super Bowl halftime show arguably the biggest honor any American Artist can receive but Andre didn’t want to perform short versions of their songs the way they were required to to make the set list manageable he was aggravated and he said he was either going to perform full songs or not go at all big boy tried to convince Andre not to throw away such a huge opportunity but Andre refused and they didn’t perform Andre also canceled the concert tour That was supposed to support the huge success of the speaker box love
below album because of Andre’s sudden unease with being around too many people and not wanting to do live performances Big Boy also lost out on millions and millions of dollars of tour Revenue this is unheard of a MC that doesn’t want to be on stage that’s almost blasphemy you know you know according to the rules you know what is it that happened inside of you where you decided you know what I got to I got to really put this aside after like if you’ve been doing it for years it’s kind of like my personality I
kind of have to be excited about something like really excited and passionate about it and after you’ve been doing it for years and it’s been times right before I made a decision we were on the tour with Lauren Hill and there was been days where you be on stage and you’re not even you’re not even there you kind of you’ve been doing it so long that you know all your stuff so much it’s kind of like you thinking you your head is in a whole another world so I say well let me take a break from this you know uh and that’s that’s
basically what it is but not to say that one day y’all may not come oh yeah Never Say Never Say Never And after a final album in 2006 which was not so much an outcast album as a movie soundtrack Outcast dis banded for good silently there was no announcement of a breakup they just stopped making music Big Boy never insisted that Outcast was done for good though years down the line he would mention in interviews that he never even brought it up with Andre because he felt Andre wasn’t exactly the same person anymore they pretty much just parted
ways without a word so what happened superficially we all know Andre withdraws from the public eye but he turns up here and there from acting in a few movies to launching a failed fashion brand to being a mythical creature that walks around airports and cities playing the flute by himself even becoming one of the most legendary guest rappers of the last 10 years on other people’s songs he was always around and he never let go of creating even if he never released his own music again from 2005 to 2023 we’ve all heard the many Andre
3000 features on songs by artists like Frank Ocean Drake future James Blake and many more he has stayed a very active rapper without releasing his own projects and a lot of people have been introduced to him just through his guest verses so people weren’t exactly shocked that Andre did finally announce a solo album in 2023 almost 15 years since his last release but what was shocking was that it wasn’t hip-hop it actually didn’t have any vocals at all it was an instrumental flute album with experimental Vibes and when he got asked
why it wasn’t rap one of the most loved influential respected rappers alive said I can’t make a rap album people were confused with some of his post Outcast features even standing among his best work keeping his legacy alive for so long why would he say he’s not able to make a rap album getting old and losing his creative spark was always Andre’s biggest fear to become uncool and lose what made him special seemed horrifying so instead of facing that future he just walked away from it all at the peak of his Fame his decision to not make his
own music but still collaborate with a new generation makes a lot of sense he gets to be active but in a way where he knows he won’t fall off in the process from the days of Stankonia where he co-signed a young Dungeon Family Protege by the name of Killer Mike to hanging out with a young Eminem or even forging friendships and songs with future Frank Ocean Tyler the Creator Drake Kanye Anderson pack and more artists who popped off after he did some of the best work of his career has come from his work with other people songs like Pink
Matter from Channel orange or Life of the Party from daa Andre’s modern verses are amazing so if he didn’t want to drop a rap album which makes sense why did he drop a flute album out of every possible genre and why does he live such a monk-like lifestyle of not doing live shows avoiding people and isolating himself well the truth is even if Andre didn’t want to fall off as a rapper and he managed to save himself from that he still has another problem as an artist and a person and that is the poison of Fame especially in success there’s all
this emotion that no one teaches us how to deal with no even people that you know for a long time start acting different to you yes and you start acting different cuz they start acting it’s it’s weird it’s the whole thing unnatural no one teaches you how to deal with it and it’s it’s a crazy making process yes yes so people do stuff to try to just numb that pain oh yeah that the more success that you have you become more and more isolated you spend more times in hotels you spend less time around people yes and your writing kind
of goes to too yeah Andre always considered Fame to be unnatural to have that much attention on you so much praise and so many expectations it not only affects an artist’s ability to create it also affects their Humanity Andre describes it through the story of a Blues artist who gets successful rich and famous but then has to hire a woman to break his heart so he could write real blues music again what he’s trying to say is that becoming famous can ruin the passion that made you relatable in the first place often times Andre would
visit clubs and watch unknown artists perform because he loved to see the hunger and the passion in their work it made him feel human again they were fighting to be known without any promise of success and they had a lot to l lose but they still fought to create music because they loved it and as Andre knew firsthand Fame caused a lot of damage for him in 2014 when it got to a point that he started feeling terrified of meeting new people he finally went to a psychiatrist to find out why he’d been having these troubles throughout his
career it was only then that he was finally diagnosed with social anxiety and hypers sensitivity disorder two mental disorders that are known to make functioning in daily life very difficult let alone when you add in the insane pressures of Fame but playing the flute turned out to have a strong strong calming effect for Andre it became the most effective coping mechanism for his struggles that’s why it was the flute album that felt so special to him and it ended up being his first ever solo project it wasn’t a gimmick it was
actually really important to him and it represented a lot of healing and introspection he had done over a period of nearly 20 years it’s the same reason why one of the only ways to keep up with what Andre 3000 has been doing for two decades is seeing random videos of him playing the flute in different cities because he just loves how the ACT of playing in public removes his ego as a performer he isn’t a star that everyone’s drooling at he’s just in many ways a nameless figure playing the flute to entertain strangers no pressure no
toxicity just the joy of creativity and performance in 2019 this is what he said I don’t I don’t even know what I am and maybe I’m nothing maybe I’m not supposed to be anything maybe you know my history is kind of handicapping in a way and so I’m just trying to find out what makes me feel the best right now yes and what makes me feel the best is when I just do these random kind of instrumental kind of things because in his middle age with no Persona no work pressure no rigid spiritual codes to hide behind Andre had
to eventually face his childhood experiences and unresolved trauma the very stuff that had been bothering him ever since he became famous especially the effects of a secret that his mother told him only once he was in his 30s his relationships with his parents and their deaths these things became more unavoidable when he realized that a lot of his trouble from his failed romantic relationships to his social anxiety were a product of his childhood the end result of Andre 3000’s Reckoning with himself was a beautiful song possibly
the most beautiful he’s made since the end of outcast better than his flute album better than his features and that was life of the party with Kanye for D we know that Andre 3000’s parents were never married and his birth was unplanned but what we didn’t know and what he didn’t know was that the reason his mother stopped living in the same apartment as his father was because one day he showed up with a new woman he was dating and he told her the only reason I’m with you is for the baby she chose to leave on the spot to protect her
dignity even though it meant going through homelessness and poverty she started working tirelessly to give Andre opportunities and it was only once Andre turned 35 that she would tell him what that cost had been for her my mom was everything I grew up a mama’s boy completely when I was small she was like a dictator I understand it now but she still went hard and then one day I was 23 or 24 I caught her face in such a way that I thought oh wow that’s Mom it’s like that moment where she’s not just this person that took care of you when I
was around 35 my mom pulled me to the side in the kitchen out of nowhere she was like you know when you were five I used to go and do crack she was like it was new during that time I was dating this drug dealer guy and he sold cocaine and we would do cocaine and that was like a normal thing and she said me and that guy broke woke up and I had to find something to get high and there was this new thing called crack so she tried it and there it was she’s married to a preacher and she’s always in the church and she’s this
helpful person in the community so she was strong enough to break that and change over Andre learned a lot about Hope and resilience from his mother of course but he also started figuring out why he was so afraid of Aging to the extent of hiding in a hotel on his 30th birthday away from everybody he knew unresolved pain from your childhood made worse by success from a young age left him too fragile for fame they say that if you’re an Entertainer whatever time you took off you stay that age I was 17 you got to understand I’ve only written
one check in my life when I was 17 they still had checkbooks and my mom taught me how to write a check and do my balance and then Outcast took off even when he tried to grow past his childhood and start a family of his own a clean slate still wasn’t possible because Andre reconnected with his father and he realized realized he wasn’t an evil man he was just another regular guy afraid of Aging afraid of intimacy and with a big fear of Abandonment his dad was probably also part of a cycle that started long before him but most
importantly Andre started to realize he was the same way I don’t know I don’t think so he had all these troubles the last few years he had to get his heart valve replaced and prostate cancer and colon cancer but I think we made amends and that was a cool thing I do miss not being able to talk to him about him living alone and not ever being married I think I would have gotten a lot of great Insight I think he would have told me something growing up I would always see these great women but for some reason he kept not making it happen and
that’s always happened with me so I know my kid sees me the same way after the death of both of his parents and with his own son going off to college Andre 3000 found himself at times feeling like he didn’t have much to live for even until 2020 he said that his life often felt like a treadmill of Silent dread I’m a pessimist I always think of the worst I’m always thinking of death in some way in recent years my parents and my stepdad passed away so it’s been a little bit of funeral fatigue this is reality now the older we get the more
funerals we’re going to I’m 45 right now as I’m giving this answer and I have had to start thinking of things I never had to think about before I never planned on being an adult sometimes I’m looking around and I’m like damn I have to be an adult but then one day Kanye West called him at just the right moment to create something amazing and what we got is in my opinion not just some of the best songwriting I’ve ever heard but also a career defining moment for Andre 3000 where his past and present meet in a truly Transcendent way you’re R until my
mama please tell her I said say something I’m starting to believe ain’t no such thing as Heaven’s trumpets no after over this is it done if there’s a heaven you would think they let you speak to your son maybe she has in the form of a baby’s laugh I heard passing by in a stroke reminded me hey keep rolling on no maybe she has with the prick of a blade of grass I’ve been laying on way too long got me itchy got up and roam a little more Miss D you see my father please ask him why he never married always smiled but was he happy
inside because I carried my mother’s name did he carry shame with them I’m sure she did it out a spike TW her decision at Birth she probably will hurt a PO baby two young people with different views a lot for a young lady no coincidence they both passed away from heart conditions there’s a dissidence in 24 we now see Andre 3000 flourishing in many ways because he finally accepted that Fame just wasn’t a good fit for him he became such a great influential artist that achieved big success but it cost him a lot and
brought a lot of his Old Wounds up to the surface again it makes sense that he had to withdraw to protect himself as many artists do but now he’s managed to overcome a lot of his struggles as recently as June of 2024 he’s on tour with his flute album he’s no longer terrified of live shows no longer terrified of being around people and he’s exploring art in his own way even if people are confused as to why he doesn’t want to make rap music he’s making what he wants to make and he has more than enough fans who are ready to
appreciate it ultimately he managed to achieve everything with his career having some of the bestselling rap albums ever leaving behind a perfect discography that people love and still talk about 25 years later being in demand as a rap artist into his 40s and 50s when most of his peers fell off a long time ago he has a pretty insane Legacy one of the only rappers to go Diamond four perfect albums a small pile of Grammys and still love to this day but after knowing his story the last thing that anyone should care about is
whether Outcast or Andre on his own would ever drop One More album going through so much criticism hiding from the outside world going on Hiatus for years and years while also breaking records and hugely influencing an entire genre Andre 3000 is the definition of an artistic soul and it’s a miracle he still shows up at all with all the pressure from the outside world to fit into a mold that just wasn’t right for him and that’s what makes him one of the greatest artists ever being criticized and loved at the same time is what makes
you truly unique having conflict with the system and realizing it’s not made for you and the size and scope of your vision is what makes you a Trends Setter that won’t ever be forgotten and ultimately I think we all have a little Andre 3000 inside of us pushing yourself to fit into the mold of success and popularity is stressful and we all have to do it at school at work or even when making art I don’t blame Andre for just throwing in the towel and walking around playing his flute in different cities and only dropping rap verses when he
feels like it truly being yourself and saying what you want to say comes with a cost one of the projects I really struggled to make for YouTube was danger music it’s a documentary I made about the history of violent music with all of the raw footage included talking about bands that committed murder and burned down buildings over their music performers that hurt the audience or destroyed the concert venue or threw poop at their fans as part of the show I think it might be obvious why ultimately it’s not on YouTube because it just
isn’t a YouTube video danger music is a nebula original funded by and exclusively available on nebula because of their mission to be the best place for creators to make work that we couldn’t make anywhere else they gave me the resources to make the best documentary I possibly could and I think it turned out really great nebula is a platform I own and co-founded with other creators as a place where we can Elevate ourselves to a level beyond what we were previously capable of we’ve come together to create our own platform and
it’s quickly becoming the most interesting fastest growing independent video platform anywhere it’s not our safe haven it’s not a place to hide from the rules it’s a place to grow and Blossom into something completely different nebula has produced Originals like Lindsay Ellis’s ballot of John and yoga which Dives deep into the unintended consequences of the murder of John lennin it’s a beautiful documentary exploring one of the strangest stories in modern music history and they have even more interesting shows like the
in-depth geopolitics show modern conflicts or jet lag which is a travel game show where the players use the literal real world as their sandbox it’s a unique concept which is exciting and wouldn’t be possible without nebula we’re even producing movies this year one of them is Dracula’s ex-girlfriend it’s coming out in a few months and it got covered in variety one of the most popular entertainment magazines in the world so nebula is becoming the answer to the question how do you make art or content that’s as high quality and
interesting as traditional media without the corruption and exploitation associated with that industry I’ve always wanted to take my videos to the next level and make them more substantiated and more interesting than ever before and nebula is enabling that for our entire list of creators better stories better production value taking creators to the next level is what nebula is all about and it’s only getting better as time goes on so if you want to join a platform that’s pushing entertainment forward enabling us to
make things we never could have made before you can get access to exclusives like my danger music documentary and highquality thoughtful videos from hundreds of other creators like Adam Neely Todd in the shadows polyphonic FD signifier Bobby broccoli and countless other storytellers you should join nebula today so go check check out my show danger music or jet lag or the ballot of John and Yoko by going to nebula.
com which I think a lot of you would enjoy as well it’s not just any project it’s my project and and it’s a project you don’t want to miss out on
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