7 piano sketches
May 5, 2025, will stand now as a historic benchmark for André 3000. Famously elusive since the split of his iconic Southern hip-hop duo, Outkast, André arrived at the Met Gala—a celebration of Black dandyism that raised a record-setting $31 million—with a massive model of a piano strapped across his back. Beneath a red cap and round glasses, he beamed for red-carpet cameras. The night represented not only the surprising relaunch of his erstwhile fashion line, Benji Bixby, but also the surprising release of *7 piano sketches*, his first full project since his surprise 2023 entry into serene spiritual jazz, *New Blue Sun*. *7 piano sketches* began to take shape a decade ago, when André and his son temporarily lived in a Houston house with spartan furnishings—some TVs, some beds, a piano. Around the time of the final shows of the most-recent Outkast reunion, he began recording little piano pieces and even pondered releasing several as *The Best Worst Rap Album in History*. The liner notes were set to read, “It’s the free-est emotionally and best I’ve felt personally.” But he shelved them, leading first to lingering questions about when he would return to music and, ultimately, to *New Blue Sun*, a stunning break with expectations for one of hip-hop’s best-ever minds. These little pieces—seven tracks, 16 total minutes—perpetuate that break. After a voice offers the track number and title, André feels his way through a theme and variations. Where opener “bluffing in the snow” is a refracted and pensive blues, “hotel lobby pianos” drifts into a confident midtempo stride as voices drift in the background. The record ultimately points toward new directions. After he dances through a smiling melody for a while, “off rhythm laughter” blooms into an exquisite drone. And on closer “i spend all day waiting for the night,” he improvises around a drum machine’s languid march, his sunken-world piano rising to meet the rhythm in the middle. André 3000 continues to push hip-hop expectations off his back, this time with the actual piano strapped to it.
This low-key collection of no-fi piano improvisations is the latest step in the rapper-songwriter-producer’s new era as spiritually attuned vibesmith. It’s also more substantial than it may seem.
André 3000 is doing his own thing. Forever one of rap’s true individualists, his time with OutKast helped to re-define Southern hip-hop, granting modern