Introduction
Every so often I find myself randomly meditating on a certain artist’s work – and how that work (or the artist themselves) impacted my life.
Last week, this happened again. This time the artist was Outkast – the iconic hip-hop duo of Andre 3000 and Big Boi. Formed in Atlanta, Outkast released their first three albums during the ‘90s, when I wasn’t quite old enough to appreciate – let alone afford – a hip-hop CD.
Thankfully that changed by 2000 with Outkast’s fourth album, “Stankonia,” and its funk-washed single, “Ms. Jackson.” In the years since, I’ve come to appreciate a broader range of Outkast’s catalogue. But “Ms. Jackson” was my first love – and it was that track which resurfaced in my mind a week ago, freshly inspiring my creative life.
“When Andre 3000 Speaks, Everybody Listens”
When a song overtakes me like that, I try my best to open up to what it wants from me. Sometimes, the song just wants to be “remembered” and hummed a few times before departing my mind. Other times, though, it seems like the song wants to draw my thoughts in a particular direction. In the case of Outkast, it was the latter.
Within a few days of “Ms. Jackson” looping in my head, I stumbled by chance across a short YouTube clip from 2022 titled, “Andre 3000 Says He NEEDS To Create in Rare Interview.”
I opened the video; in it, Andre 3000 – donning a tattered green army jacket and a thick red beanie – speaks for less than 45 seconds. Here is the entirety of his dialogue:
“If I ain’t creating nothing, I don’t feel good. You know so, at a certain point, you gotta feed yourself—you can’t feed on mimicking. You gotta put the time in to figure out who you are, and what you’re not.
“A lot of times, what you’re not is very important. Because you can wanna be something – but your strength is actually something else. This is what makes you start to do your own thing. And that’s when your skin starts to breathe, and you start to like, get into your primal self, you know. And your primal self is the best contribution to the planet.”
This video clip was apparently shot behind-the-scenes during Andre 3000’s photoshoot for the clothing brand Supreme. So naturally, the skeptic in me said, “OK, Supreme probably just asked Andre to say some artistic mumbo-jumbo to emphasize the brand’s ‘cool factor.’”
Yet something about the clip really made it seem Andre was speaking from the heart. Perhaps it was his natural, relaxed delivery. Or perhaps it was the way he almost seemed to surprise himself with what he was saying, particularly the part about “Knowing who you’re not.”
Even if the video was meant just to create marketing buzz, I’m still willing to bet it captured something genuine about what makes Andre Benjamin tick as a creative person.
What It Means To Me
Andre 3000 made three key points in this video:
You have to nurture your creative self.
You have to put the time in to discover who you are, and who you’re not.
Knowing who you’re not can help you create/perform from your strengths.
His advice hit me right in the solar plexus, precisely because I haven’t been doing any of this.
Instead of nurturing my creative self, I’ve been losing myself in others’ projects and priorities. Instead of putting in the time to find out who I am, I’ve been sheltering inside the agreeable, “frictionless” identity I’ve cultivated throughout my adult life. And instead of creating from my own strengths, I’ve been trying to imitate what works for others.
It was advice I really needed to hear – and on the sub-conscious level, it’s probably why Outkast’s songs got stuck in my head in the first place.
Questioning My Own Creative Path
Writing is supposed to be in my blood.
I’m the son of a newspaper writer and editor, who is himself the son of a newspaper writer who covered New York Rangers hockey in the 1950s. Growing up, my parents had wall-to-wall bookshelves, and in my eight-grade time capsule (which I’m due to open in 2025) I wrote that I hoped that future me would be “a book author.”
Well, I didn’t go into journalism like my dad or grandad, and as of yet I still haven’t written the Great American Novel. But until recently, I still felt confident that writing (specifically, novel-writing) would be my path in life. Now, I’m holding that dream between my two hands and inspecting it from all angles.
It’s a beautiful dream – but is it really mine?
Is it possible that writing books is not my destiny? If it was truly for me, wouldn’t it have happened by now (age 36)? I’ve made earnest starts on two different story ideas - sketching out characters, plots, timelines, and even starting (but not completing) first drafts.
But truthfully, those attempts always felt more like “playing writer” than being a writer.
I’m not saying this to let myself off the hook. Writing is a tremendous creative outlet and anchor in my life. I’ll do it “until the wheels fall off,” as Tony Hawk might say.
And it’s not that I’ve lost hope either. I may yet realize an idea for a novel which is truly mine, one that I will have no choice but to fulfill.
What I’m trying to name instead is the widening gulf between the kind of writer I thought I’d be, and the kind of writer I think I actually might be. A perfect example is the historical nonfiction book I’m currently reading – “The Wager,” by David Grann.
“The Wager” is an amazing read, and at the same time: holy-shit-how-much-fuckin’-research-did-this-guy-have-to-do?
When I was a high school student and even a creative writing minor in college, nothing could have sounded cooler than being a historical nonfiction writer. Now, I look at this brick of a book and think, “Shit, maybe the idea of writing is cooler than actually doing it.”
Let’s face it, writers are really cool people.
I don’t know about you, but my college writing classes were filled with effortlessly cool kids who churned out absolute bangers every single week in between their cigarette breaks - the only time they weren’t writing.
These kids only grew cooler after college. One girl and guy went to Oregon, where they wrote all summer at a lakeside cabin while drinking coffee and whiskey out of tin mugs. Another guy took a job at a New England foundry so he could write nonfiction about metal casting. One former classmate even drove his battered 1990s Ford Bronco from coast to coast during the Great Recession, each night tapping out digital essays about his Kerouacian road trip.
No doubt, my peers were fueling up to write their Great American Novels – the same kind I’d write one day, if I could just save enough money to quit my job, move out of Mom and Dad’s house, and hit the road myself (even though I’d just gotten my driver’s license at 22).
Almost 15 years later, I now see that kickass lifestyles were only part of the math. My peers were good writers not because they wore checked flannel or owned Zippo lighters dating to WWII. They were good because they practiced their craft every day. And each of them, as far as I know, grew to develop styles of their own rather than the writers we imitated in school.
“You can’t feed on mimicking. You gotta put the time in to figure out who you are, and what you’re not,” said Andre 3000.
I’ve admired many writers in my life – from my father and grandfather to my mom and the authors she filled our house with, to my preternatural classmates and the authors we loved as young adults in the mid-morning hour of our lives.
But I am none of those people. And while I hope to create work they might all vibe with, I can’t create with the specific goal of pleasing them all. I need to feed, and be, my most primal self.
Thanks for Reading!
I hope you’ve enjoyed this latest installation of The Gargoyle. Please leave a comment and let me know what you enjoyed, or what I can improve on in future installments.
Andre 3000 on Creativity and Knowing Who You're Not