We probably could have figured this all out from simply listening to “New Blue Sun” when it dropped on Friday, but just in case, André 3000 spent the previous 72 hours on a publicity blitz, managing the world’s expectations. “I’ve always kind of just been exploring what I can do and just kind of riding the ride,” he told NPR of his intuitive transformation from rapper to flutist. “I never knew that rapping would even take me to producing, and producing would take me to playing instruments, and instruments would get me here … I see this as just [being] further down the road.”
So that’s where he’s at. In OutKast, he helped create some of the most sumptuously brilliant music we’ll hear in our lifetimes — rap, pop or otherwise. But once the duo ceased creative operations in 2006, André 3000 went into semi-seclusion, falling deeper for the recordings of John Coltrane, taking up the saxophone and bass clarinet before eventually converting to the softness of the flute, which he has been filmed playing in public by overzealous Instagramers with great frequency in recent years — something he bemoaned to NPR as “a ‘Where’s Waldo?’ kind of thing.”
But if his commitment to jazz ever seemed performative, here’s my own eyewitness testimony to the contrary: Back in 2017, I spotted André 3000 in the crowd at a busy jazz festival in New York City, soaking up the atmosphere by his lonesome between a reading from the poet Fred Moten and a performance by the Dave Burrell Quartet. The beatific expression on his face was almost shocking. Wide eyes. Wide smile. Absorbent. Ever see one of civilization’s greatest mindblowers getting their mind blown?
“New Blue Sun” sounds like it was made to soothe minds. Throughout, André 3000 blows pliant melody lines through his digital flute, supported by a gentle coterie of Los Angeles jazz musicians he met through a random run-in at a luxury grocery store — percussionist Carlos Niño, guitarist Nate Mercereau, keyboardist Surya Botofasina and others.
The whole crew sounds all-in on the album’s opening track, “I swear, I Really Wanted To Make A ‘Rap’ Album But This Is Literally The Way The Wind Blew Me This Time.” (As explained in the aforementioned media offensive, the wordy-funny song titles are intended to make the album seem less lofty.) And from there, they improvise their way through another 56-minutes of ambient, jazzlike perfume, guided by the bandleader’s winning melodic and textural instincts. It feels smooth, plush, light, loose, intuitive, immersive, present, pleasant.
The further you sink in, though, the more you might get the sense that “New Blue Sun” isn’t creating a world so much as joining one — a sprawling musical ecosystem previously populated by the worldly breathwork of jazz hero Yusef Lateef, the extra-dimensional soundscaping of Jon Hassell, the sublime melodies that new age flutist Edward Christmas recorded under the name Swami Kriya Ramananda, the alien EVI (electronic valve instrument) playing of Justin Walter, the artificial woodwinds of composer Elori Saxl, and more.
This new turf is a long way from the roiling center of Southern rap music, or the sparkly summit of American pop, or any other precinct where André 3000 once ruled supreme — but it’s a beautiful place to visit. Or stay.
