Andre 3000 : 7 Piano Sketches

I think if you’re still waiting around for Andre 3000 to drop a new hip hop album, or crazier yet return to OutKast, you’re wishing upon a fading star. I think Andre 3000 would rather do anything else BUT rap. He dropped an out of left field ambient/jazz/experimental flute album two years ago. Regardless what you thought of that, he did it right by surrounding himself with some serious heavy hitters in the jazz/experimental music world and the nearly 90 minute New Blue Sun was released to positive reviews.

Two years later we have 7 piano sketches. Where New Blue Sun had the luxury of impeccable session players, solid production, and the guiding hand of producer/musician/DJ Carlos Niño, 7 piano sketches is Andre 3000 sitting at a piano plunking out something more akin to bored 8-year old sitting at a piano on a rainy day trying to annoy their older siblings. Very simply recorded mostly on his iPhone back in the early 2010s, these 6 airless piano doodles are short and sweet(thankfully). But even if it’s only 16 minutes out of your day, you’ll wish you’d chosen something else to waste those 16 minutes on.

I’m not saying Andre 3K isn’t talented. Of course he’s talented. Amazing rapper, lyricist, and really “Hey Ya” is one of the best pop songs of the 2000s. And while I’m not jamming out to his flute record, I appreciate the reach he made and that he’s not afraid to step out and do something well out of his comfort zone. He obviously loves jazz and ambient music, and New Blue Sun was his step into that world. If a record label was willing to hand him cash to make an album inspired by Sun Ra, Pharoah Sanders, and Eric Dolphy, then why not go for it?

And I think if Andre 3K had taken those cell phone recordings to the studio and contacted some serious jazz cats to help him flesh it all out, 7 piano sketches might have been something worth our musical listening time. Instead, it all comes off like he needed to make room for the latest iPhone update. The spoken word intros, the long and obscure song titles, and just the lack of thought all around comes across lazy and pretentious.

If you have an extra 16 minutes you need to burn on nothing in-particular, 7 piano sketches could be that stopgap. Fair warning, Thelonious Monk this is not.