Despite a 40-plus date schedule for OutKast’s 2014 reunion tour, which opened at Coachella in April and closes at the Voodoo Music & Arts Festival October 31, the duo has no plans to release another album.
“We don’t have any plans to do one,” Andre 3000 said during a press conference yesterday. “After this tour though, I’ve been thinking about recording this album that I always wanted to record. We’re both working on solo albums. Big Boi is damn near through with his next album. I think after we finish this last show on October 31st in New Orleans, I’d love to get in the studio and see if I can conjure something up.”
As the duo works on new material, Andre 3000 stars as Jimi Hendrix in the biopic, Jimi: All is by My Side, which hit theaters on September 26. Preparation for the role was intense, requiring Three Stacks to lose weight, learn to play guitar left-handed and attempt to assume the perspective of the late rock star as a 19-year-old.
“I used everything I could,” Andre 3000 says of his preparation for the role. “I watched every piece of Hendrix footage I could find. I listened to every interview I had never heard before…I looked at pictures and dreamt like a kid to see what he might be thinking. I also did weight training to lose 20 pounds because Hendrix was really skinny. I did months of guitar practices…Even mimicking his walking and mannerisms when he talked.
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“I think the biggest challenges were voice, guitar and physicality because my build was completely different from his,” Andre 3000 continued. “I have more of an athletic build and Hendrix had a slight build…I did the best I could at it. But I think the left-handed guitar playing was completely different. It’s a motion thing. It’s just really hard, like walking backwards.”
Despite months of preparation, Andre’s real-life stardom made it difficult for the rapper to always stay in character.
“It was kind of odd when we were actually filming the Hendrix performances and we would bring in a real live audience to watch so it would feel real,” he says. “It was hard between takes when you have fans that come up shouting ‘Andre 3000.’”
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY JUSTIN HUNTE
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