Andre 3000 Says Critical Society And Fame Has Held Him Back From Making Music: “My Focus Is Not There, My Confidence Is Not There”

Andre 3000 reveals that his lack of confidence has held him back from releasing new music.

Rick Rubin released a new episode of his podcast ”Broken Record,” featuring one half of the Outkast duo, 3Stacks.  While there, the Atlanta rapper revealed that he hasn’t been visiting any music recording studios.

“I haven’t been making much music, man. My focus is not there; my confidence is not there,” Andre said. “I tinker. I tinker a lot. Like I would just go to a piano and sit my iPhone down and just record what I’m doing, move my fingers around, and whatever happens. But I haven’t been motivated to do a serious project. I’d like to, but it’s just not coming. In my own self, I’m trying to figure out where do I sit? I don’t even know what I am. And I’m nothing; maybe I’m not supposed to be anything. Maybe my history is kind of handicapping in a way. And so I’m just trying to find out what makes me feel the best right now, and what makes me feel the best is when I do these random kind of instrumental kind of things. They make me feel the most rebellious.”⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

The rapper went on to say that some of his reservations come from not wanting his music to be critiqued as well as the intense demand from fans. He explained that he isn’t sure what his new music would be like in 2019. “Any little thing I put out, it’s instantly attacked not in a good or bad way,” he explained. “People nitpick it with fine-tooth combs, and that’s not a great place to create from. Like, ‘Oh, he said that word!’ It’s not the greatest space to create from. It makes you drawback.”

While 3000 is respectfully one of the greatest lyricists of our time, he says that fame and society’s high expectations have put a damper on his creative process. “The problem with being an artist–a successful artist– is that you have to find a comfortable place to do that again,” he said. “I liken it to a kid playing in their room with toys. You’re [makes explosion sounds], you have this world going on. The moment you’re mom opens the door and says, ‘Andre,’ that world kind of stops. Once the attention is on that world, the world goes away. So you have to find a way to get back to that place to where you can build those worlds again and not have the eyes or the judging you know, and that’s hard for me. Maybe I don’t have the confidence I want or the space to experiment like I use to because the stuff that people love from back then, it was made [freely]. You didn’t give a s**t, you didn’t care, and they didn’t care. They didn’t even like you. So it was like, ‘Great, don’t like what we’re doing so we can keep doing what we’re doing.'”