Why Did Andre 3000 Quit? OutKast Legend Explained His 17-Year Hiatus

Why did Andre 3000 quit?

The reason why Andre 3000 quit is quite simple: he genuinely didn’t think he had anything to say. In the November 2023 GQ Men of the Year issue, 3000 explained: “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,” he explained.

“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. 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.’ You can find cool ways to say it, but…”

He compared rapping to boxing. “But look at the greatest boxers now,” Andre said. “What do they do? They do exhibition fights every now and then, but they’re not stepping in the ring. You know what I mean?”

Why did OutKast break up?

After Idlewilde, Andre 3000 and Big Boi went on to follow their own solo careers. But they reunited in 2014 at Coachella, in celebration of their 20th anniversary together. It was a disaster. “It’s hard to say what went wrong,” wrote the reviewer for The Guardian at the time, who gave the performance 2 stars.

“At times it felt like two solo shows attempting awkwardly to become one, with Big Boi doing the bulk of the heavy lifting – and Shutterbugg, one of his solo tracks, received one of the best receptions of the night. Andre 3000 repeatedly asked the crowd ‘You still here?’ and ‘Are y’all alive?’, which suggests that perhaps he knew something wasn’t connecting. By the time Hey Ya! came around in a depressingly unceremonious finale, he appeared to have given up.”

Andre reflected on this fallout. “There’s a certain chemistry that me and Big Boi had and have,” he told GQ. “I think over time, people don’t understand that chemistry changes.” He continued: “I mean, there’s been so many times in my mind where I thought I was done. So it wasn’t even a struggle. It wasn’t like, ‘What am I going to do now?’ Even during all of this, I remember a couple weeks ago talking to my manager and publicist, I really had to ask myself, ‘Do I want to be famous again?’ ” The answer was: no. But at the same time, I want to promote the music.”

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