A New Blue Sun And Maybe, A Better Horizon
A string of words about a highly anticipated André 3000 album with no rap lyrics, but much-needed healing.
“Solitude can be a profound teacher. It can teach us how to hold ourselves — how to affirm ourselves and listen. How much is the sound of your own voice worth?” — Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation and the Stories That Make Us
It’s an unseasonably mild November morning as I sit and listen to New Blue Sun, the new album from André 3000, for about the fifth time. I go back to earlier in the week, when I first heard that he was going to release an entire album of new music for the first time in 17 years. Instantly, I went to scour the web for more information and found out that he wasn’t going to be rhyming on it at all. That it would be a fully instrumental album, with the flute as the predominant instrument. I shrugged at this development, but the news prompted an armada of jokes that André 3000 was making spa music, or music to listen to when put on hold by your call center. You know how we do. But somewhere along the line, you could see the jokes turn into indignation. Expectations turning into unnecessary jabs by online trolls looking to build empires where their Bored Ape NFTs failed. And then Friday arrived.
I tuned in. And with the first notes of the first song, entitled “I swear, I Really Wanted to Make a ‘Rap’ Album but This Is Literally the Way the Wind Blew Me This Time”, I felt what I suspect a lot of you who are reading this felt — calm. Calm and acceptance. I found myself in the exact same state of mind that comes after I undergo my daily meditations and prayers. Sitting by myself, typing away at my laptop, I let the music wash over me like I was lying down on the beach at the water’s edge. That good feeling lasted well after the album ended after 90 minutes. I sat in silence with one prevailing thought: Dammit, I needed that.
As reactions poured in online, I caught one tweet from a user by the name of MoCertified that piggybacked off of another observation that the album’s tuning was at 432 Hz, detailing how much that helps the body improve across the board when listening to it. It’s affirmed science — The National Library of Medicine published a paper in 2019 based on a study done in an Italian city where a group of people who suffered from chronic diseases listened to movie soundtracks on two days, one day at 440 Hz and the other at 432 Hz. Studies showed that their vitals responded better (lowered heart rate, respiratory rate, and blood pressure numbers) at the 432 Hz mark. It is also a key component when studying the chakras and their related healing tones, also referred to as the Solfeggio frequencies.
Think about it — André 3000 has stated that he suffers from social anxiety often. In the GQ video interview that was released a couple of days before the album dropped, he touches on it: “And it never goes away. It’s not like a cure-all kind of thing. It just becomes a part of life and you just have to take a deep breath, smile a little bit, and just get through it for tomorrow. That’s the best I can say.” I sympathize because, in my own journey, I’ve found that I grapple with anxiety. As a Black person in these United States, hell, a Black person on this planet? It’s definitely part of your resume, hell it's in the blood. You try to find a way through it, your own way through it.
What New Blue Sun is, is a safe space for those in that same state. For everyone who asks “What now?” when doomscrolling online. As I type this out, we are on day 43 of a war that has added to the polarization of people here and abroad with mostly children and other innocents comprising the bulk of the dead. We’re still grappling with our fourth — fifth? version of a pandemic in COVID-19. You’ve got people who are willing to bend over and get shafted by a fascist with a nectarine skin tone all because they don’t like anyone who’s not their version of default white American. With a housing shortage and corporate price-gouging they want to hide behind “retail theft epidemics”. It’s a lot of shit going on. The album is 90 minutes of “slow the entire fuck down, please.”
“It’s all about creation and surprise. It just needs to be appreciated and watered like flowers. You have to water flowers. Their peaks will come again.” — Sonny Rollins
Let’s also not brush aside the fact that it is monumental in that it marks a new path for Hip-Hop in its 50th year of existence as well as jazz. New Blue Sun is the stage for the alchemy between the two genres to create a new flow. Surya Botofasina, a veteran pianist and composer who’s featured on the album, trained under Alice Coltrane (and yes you will get throes reminding of Journey to Satchidananda here). Carlos Niño, a musician who has ties to Stones Throw Records and has worked with Cut Chemist and Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, contributed as a musician and co-producer. New Blue Sun is a boundless album that makes you appreciate more genres that much more. Yes, there are other notable jazz musicians who’ve extensively used woodwinds that people can check out past and present, from Bobbi Humphrey to Yusef Lateef to Jerome Jennings and more. But it doesn’t make sense to throw shade at André 3000 for adding to that trove.
Also — can we stop cherry-picking that one part of the aforementioned GQ article where he talks about feeling like it’s “inauthentic” for him to rap? I’ve seen a few individuals online try to make that something that it isn’t when they can read CLEARLY that it’s his personal perspective. That “expectations” shit again because you might be mad that an artist is growing and you’re still caught up on honey packs and bad takes from podcasts. Plus, let’s not act like you don’t already have a slew of MCs out here who are addressing “grown folks” subjects. MCs like Phonte and his poignant “Expensive Genes” track from his No News Is Good News album.
Like Substantial, another seasoned vet in the rap game who just dropped a whole album on the subject in Adultish. Then there’s Oddisee. Even Megan Thee Stallion and her recent hit, “Cobra”. It’s plenty of people in Hip-Hop tackling these subjects now from their own personal perspectives without trying to force someone into a space they’re not comfortable in, have evolved from, or both. We need that for the art to last another 50 years and beyond.
Ultimately, New Blue Sun is also a healing balm. I can tell you that in listening to this album, I found myself in a better space of dealing with the stress I accumulated throughout the week. I found myself reflecting on how much I miss my mother, who passed away a year ago next December, feeling that Three Stacks was letting the pain of losing his own parents go with each note. This album was the extension of the verse that he gave Ye for DONDA that never made the final cut. It came full circle as I finished The Upcycled Self, a memoir from Tariq Trotter aka Black Thought of The Legendary Roots Crew who I got to hear talk about his experiences with Jon Stewart at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on the same day I got wind of New Blue Sun being released. I’m 4 years away from being the same age Hip-Hop is. I’m not one of those to bemoan certain changes and be a rap music fogey(not ALL the time to be honest). However, I recognize that as I grow, there are different ways I want the culture and those involved in it to nurture me as it did when I first fell in love with it. Get more fiber to it, more hearty vegetables, all of that.
I’m better for this album showing me a new horizon is not only possible, but it is here. Only if we slow down to listen. Thank you, André 3000, for reminding us that what we find in solitude can bring us multitudes if we let it.
