Lil Wayne reveals Andre 3000 ‘feeling too old’ to rap was depressing but offers his perspective on handling aging.
Perhaps the excitement of Andre 3000 unveiling his surprise album New Blue Sun was overshadowed with excitement for new 3k interviews. Like us Lil Wayne checked out the latest interviews with one half of Outkast and revealed him came away depressed. According to Complex, Wayne had strong feelings hearing Andre 3000 proclaim he doesn’t have anything to talk about.
“I read a depressing quote or two from someone that I respect a lot in hip-hop and music period,” Wayne said about André’s quote. “They would ask, ‘Why you ain’t been doing music,’ and they was like, ‘Man what am I gonna talk about? I’m in my 40s, like what am I going to talk about? What you want to know about me being 40 and the life I’m living?’…I was like that’s so depressing I have everything to talk about.”
“I thought that may be a downfall of me staying in it because you may at our age you may hear what’s going on and feel I’m so out of that. I ain’t bout to drop nothing,” he said. “So that’s why I say I don’t listen. I just go in my little hole, I love what I do, put it out, and hopefully, we swing for the fences, man.”
In a recent interview with GQ, 3stacks revealed he tried to make a rap album but had artistic struggles with his age and the content.
“I’ve worked with some of the newest, freshest, youngest, and old-school producers. I get beats all the time. I try to write all the time,” said André, who has only given fans a smattering of guest verses over the past few years. “Even now people think, Oh, man, he’s just sitting on raps, or he’s just holding these raps hostage. I ain’t got no raps like that. It actually feels…sometimes it feels inauthentic for me to rap because I don’t have anything to talk about in that way.”
He added, “I’m 48 years old. And not to say that age is a thing that dictates what you rap about, but in a way it does. And things that happen in my life, like, what are you talking about? ‘I got to go get a colonoscopy.’ What are you rapping about? ‘My eyesight is going bad.’”
We are witnessing our legends in hip-hop grow old and it’s a beautiful thing to see. Hopefully, Andre has a change of heart and understands no matter what he wants to say we will listen. If we will listen to his album of flute sounds we will listen to him rap about his eyesight going mia. Additionally, this is hip-hop, the most unrestricted form of self-expression, there are no rules. Wayne has been rapping since a pre-teen and we still listen to him at the young age of 40.
There is always something to say that will resonate with someone in this world and perhaps when they need to hear it the most.