Outkast's André 3000 to release flute-focused debut solo album this week

Outkast's André 3000 will release his debut solo album this Friday, 17th November.

Titled 'New Blue Sun', it features no beats, rapping or singing, and instead centres the artist as a flautist. Across the record, André 3000 plays various forms of flute, including contrabass, Mayan and bamboo.

Taking in seven tracks, the album also features an interesting tracklist, with song names ranging from 'I Swear, I Really Wanted To Make A 'Rap' Album But This Is Literally The Way The Wind Blew Me This Time' to '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'. You can see the full tracklist below.

'New Blue Sun' will be André's first full album release since Outkast's final record, 2006's 'Idlewild'. The new record was born out of jams that the artist undertook with percussionist Carlos Niño, with keyboardist Surya Botofasina and guitarist Nate Mercereau also joining the pair to finalise the improvised material that makes up 'New Blue Sun'.

The record is said to be inspired by the works of Laraaji, Brian Eno, Alice Coltrane, Steve Reich and Pharoah Sanders, as well as an ayahuasca trip in which André 3000 turned into a panther, as referenced in the title of the album's third track.

In an interview with NPR shared this week, André 3000 said of his new direction: "It's not like I don't try or it's not like I have a lot of these songs just sitting – I have songs but it's not like rap things that I really feel happy about sharing.

"And really, that's the most important part. I have to feel happy about sharing it. That's why 'New Blue Sun' was something that I realised, 'Whoa, I really want people to hear it. I really want to share it'."

In 2021, it was reported that André 3000 was joining the cast of Netflix film 'White Noise', which was released in 2022.