![]() Since signing to EMI Records Nashville, they’ve released seven country Top 40 singles and three studio albums, including their swoony, rollicking platinum hit “Stay a Little Longer,” which crossed over to mainstream radio. He’s the lead vocalist of Brothers Osborne, the duo he formed with his brother John, a guitarist, in 2012 together they make roots-inflected, soulful country-rock that sounds just as good on the radio as it would filling an arena. is tall and friendly, with a twangy, sonorous voice that often crests into deep, warm laughter. “I’m ready to put this behind me,” he says. Now, at a masked-up photo shoot in east Nashville, he insists that he’s feeling good as he slips on a jacket. Osborne how he’s feeling, which makes sense, given the thing he’s about to do, but it’s making him uneasy, hearing that well-intentioned question over and over again from so many people-his friends, his family, his team, and even me, over the course of the days that have led up to this one. And I’m always aware of how people will take it.People keep asking T.J. But I like this shit!’ So I like to get different opinions. “He said, ‘Man, if you put that out, your career is over.’ In my mind, I’m like, ‘Damn. Once, he says, he played “Hey Ya” for someone close to him. Then you got the homie that be like, ‘Y’all gon’ put some beats on that shit?’ You get it all, man.”Īndré says he is used to his friends not always liking his music. You may get someone that immediately starts to do yoga. It’s kind of like: You may get someone that cries. So I know that’s how the world will react too. “I’ve played it for certain friends,” André says, “and depending on who they are, you get certain reactions. ![]() When expectations become suffocating, defy expectations. “I just think it’s a stepping stone,” he says. To-in a very André way-turn the game into an entirely different game. New Blue Sun is many things, but one of those things is maybe an attempt to change the terms of the conversation. He said, ‘You don’t realize how big y’all are.’ And then he was like, ‘You got to remind people who you are.’ And from that point on, I was like, Okay.” The shows went notably better from there. “ ‘You know what your problem is?’ Prince asked. In 2014, OutKast reunited for Coachella and an ensuing tour-André can still recall the first night, how strange it was, being back onstage, in front of thousands of people, not to mention Paul McCartney and Prince, who called the next day to reprimand André for checking out of the show, halfway through. “Sometimes I don’t even remember what cities we performed in.” At some point, the duo stopped playing shows, and then they stopped putting out records. What happened to him and Big Boi is still mostly a blur. He thinks warmly about the early days of the group and has more complicated, harder to express thoughts about its pinnacle. Right before OutKast, I was supposed to go to art school.”Īndré is compulsively honest, and eager to talk about just about anything OutKast is the one subject that occasionally leaves him short of words. “I’m almost going back and digging up something that I kind of abandoned before. In some ways, it was OutKast, in retrospect, that was the aberration in André 3000’s life, he says. So if that’s sculpting, if that’s actually physical artwork, painting, designing instruments, that’s where I’m at right now.” “I’d like to make things that when I’m dead and gone 3,000 years from now, people may dig up and find. Having built one immortal legacy with OutKast, he’s begun to think about others. He is planning a store called A Myriad of Pyramids, which will sell clothes and artwork. Increasingly, André says after we’ve gone back inside, this is what he’s up to: doing anything but making rap music. This turns out to be the logo of the workwear brand he is developing, which he has decided to call From Now On, They Will Have No Choice But to Call Us The Ants. On his overalls is a small drawing that he did of ants spiraling around a flute. In the laundromat, after his clothes are loaded in the washing machine, he hefts his flute, invites me to come hear him play it in the California sun, and so I spend a dazzling 15 minutes outside in an alley, listening to the quiet rush of nearby traffic and the hollow, playful sound of André finding his way through something new. But it is awesome, in any number of expected and unexpected ways, to spend time around the guy.
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