The Pop Corporation

“I swear, I Really Wanted To Make A “Rap” Album But This Is Literally The Way The Wind Blew Me This Time”

If the opening track title didn’t address the concerns of hip hop fans wanting bars and beats from Andre 3000’s first album in almost two decades, then we don’t know what to tell you.

Fact is, anyone who has kept an eye on Benjamin this last few years, no-one really expected him to fly out of the gate and give us the 3 Stacks we knew on tracks like ‘Gasoline Dreams’ and ‘So Fresh, So Clean’. He’s been spotted about the place, looking rested and seemingly always with a wooden flute in tow, happy to have a picture taken and a million miles away from the rap circuit.

So, with ‘New Blue Sun’, he’s back with new music and while Hip Hop Only listeners may wonder what’s going on, it’s fair to say that most music listeners aren’t One Genre Ponies and music fans will find something great to listen to. Of course, record collectors and kids have been delving into New Age Music, Balearic, Ambient and ’70s synth LPs for a while now, and that’s exactly the vibe you’re getting from Andre Benjamin here.

You almost wonder if it should’ve come out under his real name, but it’s a small detail that doesn’t really matter. That’s the thing with Dre – he’s earned the right to do whatever he wants.

Of course, New Age Music doesn’t have the bad rep it once had – since the pandemic, albums like ‘Plantasia’ have captured people’s imagination, and there’s been a reappraisal of people like Enya, with natural psychedelics, reconnecting with nature and partying outside being a thing to kick against the Capitalist Stuff and big brand corporate sponsor heavy events.

3000 has timed his run perfectly with a psychedelic LP that’s going to really scratch an itch for a lot of listeners.

The track titles are of note, with things like ‘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’ and ‘Ghandi, Dalai Lama, Your Lord & Savior J.C. / Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, And John Wayne Gacy’, and what does it all mean?

Well, that’s not our place to guess, but if you think that they sound like thoughts and ideas opaquely revealing themselves, then that’s what the music does too. Wooden flute, hazy ambient synths, ’70s electric piano, delays, bells, and all that good stuff, ‘New Blue Sun’ may have accidentally become the highest profile ambient LP release since imperial period Eno.

And the thing is, and most important – it’s really good. You might worry that you’re trying to like it BECAUSE it’s 3000, but that’s unfounded.

It’s a shapeshifting vibe and each instrumental track bleeds into your pores and muscles and honestly, if you’re into meditating or yoga or whatever, this could be on heavy rotation for you. Studying, unwinding, or just a love of selected ambient works, this may well be the first interaction with Andre that many listeners have, while switching some Dirty South listeners onto psychedelic spiritual music in the process.

Fact is, the way Andre 3000 has been living his Post Outkast life (if there is such a thing – as we could argue that this is firmly Outkast canon, given Big Boi inducting Kate Bush into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame the other week), this album should come as no surprise.

He’s always done things on his own terms, so when something arrives that is exactly that, well it really shouldn’t be shocking or surprising, or any of that nonsense.

It’s beautiful LP that slowly unfurls itself and it’s well worth your time.