𝐃 𝐗 𝐌 𝐈 𝐍 𝐈 𝐐

Few artists have rerouted the current of hip-hop as profoundly as André 3000. As one-half of OutKast, alongside Antwan “Big Boi” Patton, André helped detonate the myth that Southern rap had to sound one way. Then, just as the world caught up, he disappeared. Hey Ya!, still somehow omnipresent two decades later, wasn’t just a hit; it was a goodbye. In the years since, André has re-emerged now and then: blowing flutes on street corners, delivering guest verses like coded dispatches, showing up barefoot and wordless on ambient jazz records. Now, with 7 Piano Sketches, he returns again, this time with a batch of raw, meditative piano improvisations recorded on his iPhone. They are offered up like fragments pulled from a dream.

It’s worth retracing the arc. With OutKast, André shaped the grammar of modern hip-hop, especially on records like Aquemini (1998) and Stankonia (2000), which tangled funk, gospel, and spacey psychedelia into something defiantly their own. The Love Below (2003), his solo half of the duo’s split album, pushed even further. It was not rap exactly, not pop entirely, but a kaleidoscopic confession scored with synths, croons, and strings. Then came the retreat.

What followed was drift. Woodwinds in Tokyo. Philosophical rambles in interviews. Eventually, 2023’s New Blue Sun, an ambient flute record that abandoned structure altogether. 7 Piano Sketches, released in tandem with a surreal Met Gala appearance where he wore a piano strapped to his back, continues that refusal. These aren’t songs in the traditional sense but sonic murmurs. They suggest a man communing more than composing.

1. “Bluffing in the Snow”

A halting, exploratory opener. Chords wobble and resolve, then fall apart again. André fumbles, finds a loop, loses it. You can hear him listening to himself. Pitchfork described this approach as “a pencil moving across the page,” more process than product. Some critics have invoked Bartók’s Mikrokosmos, though the comparison flatters. The spirit of experimentation is intact.

2. “And Then One Day You’ll…”

Warm chords stretch and sigh, punctuated by sparse, hesitant notes. It feels like a lullaby half-remembered. It evokes The Love Below’s “Prototype,” stripped of melody, voice, and any pop architecture. What remains is mood. A kind of afterglow.

3. “Hotel Lobby Pianos”

A loosely improvised piece that delivers what the title promises. Jazz figures drift in and out like hotel bar music half-heard while checking in or waiting for a cab. McCoy Tyner is a cited influence, but André plays with the unpolished cadence of someone who is simply passing time.

3. “When You’re an Ant…”

A vocodered voice opens the track before it falls into a space between dissonance and barely-there melody. The title conjures questions of scale and perspective, and the music leans into that feeling. It resembles ambient noise more than traditional composition. One critic called it “free jazz without the jazz,” which feels close to the mark.

5. “Blueberry Mansions”

Reportedly the only track not recorded on an iPhone. Ironically, it is the most chaotic. Transitions stutter, ideas appear and vanish without warning. It is full of erasures. But its vulnerability becomes a kind of logic. It holds together in its refusal to.

6. “Off-Rhythm Laughter”

The clear standout. A looped piano phrase turns and erodes, eventually giving way to eerie, distant laughter. There is something of William Basinski here. Not just in the texture, but in the structure. Repetition as decay. PopMatters described the project as helping “paint a fuller picture of André 3000 as a singular artist in constant flux.” Nowhere is that clearer than here.

7. “I Spend All Day Waiting for the Night”

A soft, tentative closer. It floats for a moment before a drum machine enters awkwardly near the end. It feels like an intrusion, or maybe a concession. Still, the track’s fading quality is fitting. Like waking from a dream a few seconds too early.

7 Piano Sketches has no interest in virtuosity. André 3000 is not trying to impress anyone. He is chasing something smaller. Tone, gesture, silence, emotion. Some critics call the album indulgent or unfinished. When is art finished, really? Others, like Rolling Stone, describe it as “a moment of freedom, ridden all the way through.” That reading feels right. These aren’t compositions. They are field notes from wherever André’s mind has gone.

If you came looking for the bounce of “Ms. Jackson” or the hooks of “Roses,” you won’t find them here. But if you have followed André 3000’s withdrawal from spectacle and his pursuit of quiet forms, this sparse and off-kilter record might feel like what it is. Not a comeback. Not even a pivot. Just a signal. A soft transmission from a world adjacent to ours.