AI Musings II: Andre 3000
Nothing snaps me back to my adolescence faster than the music of Outkast. Stankonia and Speakerboxxx/The Love Below were mainstays in the CD player of the busted up Mitsubishi Gallant I drove to school during my senior year. Hip hop as an art form and culture has been deeply impoverished by the loss of Big Boi and Andre 3000’s unique musical collaboration. So like many others I was not only surprised but truly overjoyed to learn that after seventeen years Andre 3000 had released a complete new album of music.
That album, New Blue Sun, made me respect Andre as an artist more than I could have ever expected.
This may be a surprising take if you look at fan reaction and comments on the album. To say it is a departure from previous Outkast releases would be the understatement of the century. New Blue Sun for one is not a hip hop record. It features no bars, no beats, no samples, and barely any instrumentation. The entire album is Andre playing flutes with minimal supporting elements in an ambient tribal spiritual sort of vibe. And “vibe” really is the word for it. The album is truly a meditation.
It’s also very much not for everyone. There are a great many things New Blue Sun is not. It is not catchy. It is not something you can dance to. It is not an album you blast from your car or at a party. I can empathize with fans that wanted more Outkast. Given the state of modern hip hop I would have welcomed the return of the kings with one last great collection of bangers to show the misguided youth how it’s done. However we should not be angry with Andre for walking his own path. That would be entitlement. He is not required to be what we want him to be. It takes a lot of integrity as an artist to not grab the easy big pile of money that would be an Outkast reunion or even just a typical Andre 3000 rap album. It takes guts to just say as an artist, “here is what is in me, I must express it honestly,” and not worry about how much it will sell or who will like it.
It is also a uniquely human trait. It is something that artificial intelligence cannot do.
The fear about AI art is that it will make human artists obsolete. Andre 3000’s work proves that this is impossible. The scandal about the AI Drake song earlier this year was that the imitation was too good. If an AI can just ingest Drake’s catalog and spit out something similar but new that will sell, what need is there for Drake or any artist for that matter?
Andre 3000 is the answer. No AI software could have taken in all of Outkast’s prior work and then produced something like New Blue Sun. The road from the origin to the endpoint is one that only a human could walk. And certainly it isn’t just Andre. If we reflect we can see this in many artists who have evolved musically in unexpected directions.
Much as I enjoy the peaceful meditative vibe, New Blue Sun is not an album I will listen to nearly as much as The Love Below or any previous Outkast work. Yet I still appreciate it for what it is. Whether you’re Miles Davis or Madonna what gives an artist staying power is fearlessness in taking unexpected paths with their work. Art is meant to be expressive and the subject of that expression — the living human soul and their evolving nature over time — can never be captured by an algorithm.
Thank you Andre for reminding us of this.
