In case you had any doubts, André 3000 is living his — or anyone’s — best life. Instead of doing what people want or expect, he’s out here following his muse wherever it takes him. In 7 Piano Sketches, he goes for almost literally the last thing you’d predict from one of the greatest rappers ever: 16 minutes of improvised doodles, mostly recorded at home in 2013, with his iPhone sitting on the piano. “I’d rather go amateur interesting than master boring,” André told Rolling Stone last year, and he lives up to that motto on 7 Piano Sketches. There’s a true ATLien spirit in releasing this to the public, with the label, “Warning: No Bars.”
Like spaceships, pianos don’t come equipped with rear-view mirrors, and that’s the whole point here. He’s stepping free of the OutKast legacy, so he can start from scratch in a spirit of pure discovery. No goals, no expectations. Like his surprise 2023 flute album New Blue Sun, it’s a playfully enjoyable exercise in spiritual renewal by heading into the unknown, lost in music. As he describes it in his notes, it’s a “palette cleanser.”
André dropped 7 Piano Sketches as a total shocker on Monday night, at the same time he was attending the Met Gala fashion event in New York, wearing a piano strapped to his back. (He might be an amateur at his instrument, but the man’s a virtuoso at rollouts.) As with his flute experiment, he takes pride in coming to his axe as a raw beginner. For a sophisticated music mastermind who once played Jimi Hendrix in a movie, it’s a bold statement about doing something specifically because you don’t know what you’re doing.
“I cannot name which notes, keys or chords that I’m playing,” he writes in his social-media liner notes. “I simply like the sound and mechanics of piano playing. Some of my favorite piano music composers and players that inspire me are Thelonious Monk, McCoy Tyner, Philip Glass, Stephen Sondheim, Joni Mitchell and Vince Guaraldi.”
Editor’s picks
New Blue Sun was a lot more than a solo flute trip — he was collaborating closely with other musicians. That’s not happening here. He knocked it out in a Texas house where he and his son were living with no furniture — “only a piano, our beds and tv screens.” But there was no thought of making an album. “These piano pieces weren’t recorded with the intention of presenting them in any formal way to the public,” he explains. “They were personal, at home recordings. I would sometimes text them to my family and friends.”
But Three Stacks’ melodic sensibility comes through loud and clear, giving the whole thing a bittersweet low-key flow, even when he’s just winging it. “And then one day you’ll…” is a gorgeously jazzy meditation that sounds like the music you hear in your head driving alone in the rain — you can really hear his obsession with Monk. Same with the first minute of “hotel lobby pianos,” before it takes off on the riff from Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five.” (Or Pavement’s “5 – 4 = Unity”?) The high points come at the end, in “off rhythm laughter,” with its eerie echo and overdubbed human chuckles, dissolving into a reverberant drone. “I spend all day waiting for the night” has a welcome hip-hop beat, which gives him something to play against.
Trending Stories
Nothing too complex here, obviously — André is attracted to throwaways the way driven artists often are, as an exercise to keep their artistic muscles loose and limber. His original title: The Best Worst Rap Album In History. “It’s jokingly the worst rap album in history because there are no lyrics on it at all,” he explained. “It’s the best because it’s the free-est emotionally and best I’ve felt personally. It’s the best because it’s like a palette cleanser for me.”
So what’s next? A ukelele album? A harmonica concerto? A 40-minute cello solo recorded in a rented Mazda at the Burger King drive-through? Whatever it is, it’ll be exactly what André wants to try. 7 Piano Sketches is a tribute to enthusiasm for its own sake. He sat down at the piano and played around, with no thought of living up to his history — just jumping into a moment of freedom and riding it all the way through.
