What Artists "Owe" Us
What happens when artists "betray" us? Thoughts on André 3000's "New Blue Sun," George R.R. Martin's "Winds of Winter," and how departures from *What Is Expected* scramble our psyches.
Hello from the dark side of Daylight Savings Time.
This weekend, I’m having fun listening to the new solo album from André 3000, the hip-hop pioneer whose influence in my creative life I’ve written about previously.
Only this new album – André’s first in over 15 years since the unofficial disbanding of OutKast, is not a hip-hop album. Rather, it’s an expressionist record featuring eight tracks of André on his new instrument – the flute.
Yes, the flute.
The album, titled “New Blue Sun,” is completely instrumental. There are no lyrics or vocals whatsoever. No rhymes, no bars, not a single spoken syllable. Zero of the bombastic, explosive wordplay that helped OutKast jet-pack to the hip-hop stratosphere in the ‘90s and ‘00s.
Instead, this is a wordless album of tone and melody.
How did this happen? How could it be that one of rap’s greatest emcees of all-time could essentially quit making the music that made him, go radio silent for the better part of two decades, and then emerge anew and drop… an instrumental flute solo album?
The title of the first track on “New Blue Sun” probably says it best (the track titles, by the way, are the closest thing to wordplay you’ll find on this release): “I swear, I Really Wanted To Make A ‘Rap’ Album But This Is Literally The Way The Wind Blew Me This Time.”
The title of the third track also hints at the unconventional personal experiences which might have helped shape this record: “That Night In Hawaii When I Turned Into A Panther And Started Making These Low Register Purring Tones That I Couldn’t Control ... Sh¥t Was Wild.”
In André 3000’s recent interview with NPR, presenter Rodney Carmichael remarked he thought the name of that third track, “… Sounds like a straight-up ayahuasca trip or something like that.”
André replied that yes – that track was indeed influenced by a life-changing “aya” trip he underwent in Hawaii, during which his powerful “toning” sounds emerged in a manner his shaman described as “… Twenty years of therapy happening right [at this moment].”
Daring Departures from “What Is Expected”
Hearing André link the creation of his album to therapy made my ears perk up. And it inspired me to wonder… is the “story” of this album merely that “André 3000 Plays the Flute Now”?
Or could it be that the story is instead something richer like, “Once-Pigeonholed Artist Embarks on Risky Journey of Abandonment, Departure and Rediscovery” - a journey which precious few megastars (fearful of abandoning The Known) would ever attempt?
Sure, it’s possible that André 3000 is pulling one over on everyone - most especially his longtime fans who have pleaded for decades for anything even remotely reminiscent of what OutKast put out at the height of their reign. But I don’t believe this is the case.
André even spoke to that point directly with NPR:
“I don't want to troll people. I don't want people to think, Oh, this André 3000 album is coming! And you play it and like, Oh man, no verses. So even actually on the packaging, you'll see it says, "Warning: no bars."
Another aspect which reinforces the authenticity of André’s new creative journey for me is that the reactions to his album clearly show that we don’t even know how to respond to it. Like, it’s not just that he plays the flute now. It’s that he stepped away from the surefire, can’t-miss, hit-factory sound and style of the beloved brand of Outkast.
How could you walk away from that?! – bellows the hyper-rational, empirically-obsessed parts of our brains. Didn’t you realize what you had? Just make another “Hey Ya!” He went off-script - and it boggles our minds.
Generally speaking, we hate departures from The Norm. Sure, we can handle a genre shift every so often – like when Taylor Swift moved from Bubblegum Country to Power Pop (much to her success). Or when Machine Gun Kelly changed from Hardcore Rap to Pop Punk.
But truthfully, we’ve always have a harder time with the true chameleons like David Bowie, for instance. Even more so with those who shed their past identities completely, as André appears set to do.
We say we want artists who continually change and reinvent themselves. But what we really want (painting with my broadest brush here) is predictable, long-term Vegas residencies and international reunion tours of teenybopper bands playing their hits from decades ago, ad nauseum.
Over the past 15+ years, André 3000 has faced enormous pressure to cave in and just make more of what worked, dammit.
And by not doing this – whether by releasing a flute album, a bagpipe album, or no album at all – he goes against the grain of our culture which perhaps-not-so-silently believes that artists who’ve “made it” owe us something in return.
In this respect, I can’t help but think of George R.R. Martin, who has famously been unable to complete “Winds of Winter” - the sixth book in his “A Song of Ice and Fire” saga - ever since his written stories (Books 1-5) were eclipsed and outpaced by the necessitated plot progression of the HBO television adaptation of his story, “Game of Thrones.”
Much like André 3000, George R.R. Martin has faced incredible pressure (probably more, TBH) to finish this book, which has been in the works for 12+ years and shows no signs of imminent completion. It’s not a perfect comparison, sine Martin is staying within his genre while André 3000 has stepped out of his.
Yet, I wager that the two men would be able to have a fascinating conversation about the expectations and pressures exerted by our culture - which is so hungry for meaningful content that we can’t allow the artists who create the that content the time, space, and privacy needed to produce their best work.
For not yielding to these incredible pressures, I raise my glass.
And as one last thought to connect “New Blue Sun," with “A Song of Ice and Fire,” I want to share the title of the final track of André’s album, which to me sounds like a perfect chapter title somewhere in a “Game of Thrones” book.
That track by André is wonderfully and hopefully titled: “Dreams Once Buried Beneath The Dungeon Floor Slowly Sprout Into Undying Gardens.”