Well known rapper and now known as a flutist, André 3000, released his first album in 17 years, titled New Blue Sun. Even though André went through the majority of his career as a rapper, he embraced a new style of music through playing the flute through the entirety of the album. The opening song, I swear, I Really Wanted To Make A “Rap” Album But This Is Literally The Way The Wind Blew Me This Time is an almost 13 minute track filled with beautiful and unique sounds. The cleverness of the title was an element of this song that I really appreciated, with the metaphorical and literal meaning of This Is Literally The Way The Wind Blew Me, which describes metaphorically, that the wind pushed André to take up a completely different style of music. At the same time, the title also dives into how using the word “blew” can be taken as also blowing air into a flute and other kinds of instruments throughout the album. This was a good opening for the song, since it feels like it’s sort of explaining how the rest of the songs will sound.
For some reason, almost every song in the album has a extremely long and/or an interesting title, a lot of them are hard to explain, especially the third song, 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. The background to this song is pretty interesting, where André finds himself in Hawaii, having taken ayahuasca for the first time, which is a psychoactive brew. Ayahuasca can make you hallucinate and experience other strange sensations, hence the title When I Turned Into A Panther…That I Couldn’t Control. Obviously hallucinations for the most part are something that you don’t have control over, hence the title.
I think that this album was strange, but also a change that can be appreciated by anyone. I think that this was a good turning point in his career, but I wish that there was at least a bit of lyricism in this album. The album itself was good, but I found myself getting confused on telling the songs apart from each other. I hope the next André album has a bit of both rapping and flute work.
