André 3000 throws caution to the wind in a dazzling Met Philly appearance

On Friday, November 1st, André Benjamin brought his New Blue Sun tour to The Met Philly. The evening of freely improvised music delighted the crowd and raised some crucial questions about the nature of fame, creativity, and discovery.

When rapper-turned-multi-instrumentalist-André Benjamin (aka André 3000) announced his debut solo album New Blue Sun roughly one year ago, the internet — predictibly — erupted in a flurry of jokes, memes, and disbelief. Billed in its press release as a new age record with references to jazz and ambient music thrown about in news coverage of the record, it was clear that New Blue Sun would not be what most hip-hop fans had hoped for in a 3000 solo album. As one-half of beloved Atlanta duo, Outkast, Benjamin built up a body of work that is nearly peerless in rap music’s history. An inventive storyteller and lyricist, Benjamin’s name is regularly brought up by fans, critics, and artists alike in discussions and debates ranking the greatest rappers of all time. With record sales to match their creative accomplishments, Outkast reached commercial and creative heights that few hip-hop acts have ever dreamt of.

With that kind of pedigree in rap music, Benjamin’s decision to release a dreamy, instrumental album, centered around his flute-playing, the responses ranged from outrage, mockery, and dismissal to sincere curiosity. On its face, Benjamin was making a simple choice. Like many artists before him, he was simply following his curiosity and experimenting.

This sort of musical departure is not without historical precedent. The annals of pop music history are filled with artists who made great strides by refusing to give their audiences exactly what they wanted/expected. On July 25th, 1965, Bob Dylan infamously “went electric” and drew the ire of his fan base when he played a set at the Newport Folk Festival. Backed by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Dylan eschewed the understated, acoustic folk sound he was known for in favor of loud, raucous, rock n’ roll-inspired renditions of his songs. The festival audiences booed and jeered Dylan so violently that only three songs into the set, he left the stage. After Peter Yarrow took to the stage and urged Dylan to come back and finish his set, Dylan and the band returned, played two more songs, and left again. History has been kind to Dylan’s decision to challenge his audience that night. Dylan’s set that night is now remembered as a moment of great artistic bravery. The controversy around that set has subsided and that evening has since been regarded as a defining moment of Dylan’s career and a cornerstone of his mythology.

Much like Dylan’s electric set, New Blue Sun is a dramatic moment of departure that has become a crucial piece of Andre Benjamin’s story. A nearly 90-minute epic, New Blue Sun was less a “jazz” album as the memes and news reports claimed, it was more of a freeform, electro-acoustic ambient music. Produced by multi-instrumentalist, Carlos Niño, New Blue Sun was freely improvised with Niño, Benjamin, and a cast of musicians creating the music on the spot, collectively. Recorded at Rick Rubin’s Shangri-La studio in Malibu, Benjamin and Niño recruited a diverse cast of musicians like vocalist Mia Todd Dodd, producer Matthewdavid, guitarist Nate Mercereau, and others to contribute to the album. Surrounded by a community of skilled and experienced improvisers, Benjamin found the freedom to pursue a more exploratory approach to the music. The result is a collection of pieces that are as spiritually fertile as they are creative and experimental. When New Blue Sun was released, fans who were adamantly against Benjamin’s experiment were not won over. The more adventurous and curious listeners gave it a chance to mostly positive and some mixed reviews.

When Benjamin pulled up to The Met on Friday, he was supported by experimental soul singer, serpentwithfeet and backed by Surya Botofasina on keyboards, Carlos Niño on percussion, and Deantoni Parks on drums. As the band set up to follow serpentwithfeet, attendees took their seats, greeted by the sound of avant-garde pieces like Steve Reich’s “Music for a Large Ensemble” playing over the house system. Benjamin’s set opened with an ominous, slowly building soundscape. Percussion, vibraphone, and synthesizer congealing together slowly, forming a dense, palpable wall of sound. Lamp-like lights were fixed in a semi-circle behind the band, flicking on and off and pulsating in time with the music. Sometimes cloaked in darkness, other times spotlit, Andre Benjamin soloed on flute from time to time, much to the audible delight of the crowd. At times, the lengthy, open-ended improvisations explored moments of achingly slow and patiently swelling sound. There were points in the band’s playing where they filled the auditorium with an almost, tender, softly undulating sound. At other points, the ensemble built up and unleashed furious climaxes.

At some point in the first half of the set, the band laid out and Benjamin checked in with the crowd, asking “How y’all feeling?” to a roaring cheer. From there he discussed the music, explaining that everything that the audience was hearing and experiencing that night was completely improvised with Benjamin even going so far as to say “We’re composing on the stage. I didn’t know what I was going to play when I hit the stage.” A cynic would dismiss this sentiment outright, claiming that the band was just making up anything. Even jazz’s greatest improvisers like Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, and Sun Ra played within established harmonic, melodic, rhythmic, and compositional systems, even if they had to first invent those systems themselves. What Andre Benjamin and his ensemble have been playing on this tour is a truly “free” music.

While inviting Philly soul legend Bilal, producer/composer MNDSGN, and Sun Ra Arkestra leader Marshall Allen onstage to play, Benjamin talked about the time he spent here in the city. “I spent a lot of time in Philly. I walked for miles and miles.” In the summer and fall of 2019, Benjamin was in Philly filming the dramatic TV series Dispatches From Elsewhere. Social media was flush with selfies of Andre flute in hand-smiling with various city residents and the notion of Andre as the traveling, free spirit became a legend and meme in and of itself. As Benjamin, his band, and guests played Friday night, all the memes and online discourse surrounding New Blue Sun seemed insignificant and insufficient.

As Benjamin alluded to during his Marshall Allen introduction, what he was doing up on that bandstand is not as radical a departure as some would have us believe. The music of New Blue Sun is connected to a tradition of experimentation and risk-taking. It’s hard to tell whether most of the fans who met him during his Outkast days will ever truly embrace this new music. Regardless, there’s something significant about seeing one of the world’s biggest rap stars — who could’ve easily been one of its biggest pop stars — challenge himself. Stardom, prestige, and fame are as much traps as they are avenues. By subverting our expectations, Andre Benjamin reminds us of the joy of throwing caution to the wind and discovery a new aspect of ourselves.