André 3000 Recalls Inspiring Talk With Prince Following “Horrible” Outkast Show
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Further revelations from André 3000 have surfaced in a recent interview with GQ, where he shared a story about Prince.
While speaking about his new instrumental album New Blue Sun, Three Stacks remembered a time he received a call from The Purple One following Outkast’s headlining Coachella show in 2014.
“I ain’t been on stage in damn near 15, 20 years! So it was odd for me,” he started about the “horrible” performance. “And right before the show, you see Paul McCartney walk and go to the left side of the stage. And then Prince walks to the right side of the stage. I’m like, ‘Ahhh! What the f**k, man?!’
Crediting new technology to the lackluster set, he went on, “You know, there’s new technology like ear buds and sh*t. I’d never used ear buds in my life! We were always just in front of the monitors or listening to the speakers, so if you were watching the Coachella show, I got people in my ear talking and sh*t. It’s like, ‘What the hell is going on?!’”
“Halfway through the show, I was already checked out… so I was just trying to get through it,” he added. “Yeah, the show happens and it was a bomb night. It was horrible — in my eyes.”
The “Hey Ya” star then revealed that Prince called him the following day, unbeknownst to how the late icon got his number. André shared that Prince inspired him with his uplifting words.
“The very next morning I get a call from Prince. I don’t know him like that, I don’t know how he got my number — I do not know,” he recalled. “And the first thing he says is, ‘You know what your problem is? You don’t realize how big y’all are.’ Then he was like, ‘You gotta remind people who you are.’ And from that point on, I was like, ‘Okay.’”
See below at the 26:25 mark below:
Speaking of fans who believe he’s “sitting” on a plethora of unreleased raps, he said, “People think, ‘Oh, man, he’s just sitting on raps.’ Or, ‘He’s just holding these raps hostage.’ I ain’t got no raps like that. Sometimes it feels inauthentic for me to rap because I don’t have anything to talk about in that way.”
He added, “I’m 48 years old, and not to say that age is a thing that dictates what you rap about, but in a way it does. Like, I gotta get a colonoscopy? What do you rap about? My eyesight is going bad?”
In multiple interviews, the 48-year-old explained the concept behind his long-awaited solo album New Blue Sun, an instrumental project with him playing the flute.
The eight-track LP has no rapping or singing — just vibes.
“New Blue Sun, for me, was like, I guess in a sci-fi way, the next world or the next beings will be under a bluer, cooler burning sun. It will burn cooler, but it will be larger,” he said in an official statement. “So when you look up at the sky in these times, there’ll be this larger globe of bluish, still bright but bluish because it’s cooler.”
New Blue Sun released today (Nov. 17). Stream below and listen to André 3000 share his story about Prince above.
More from VIBE.com
