André 3000 reacts to Album of the Year Grammy nomination: "super duper cool"

Last year, André 3000 released New Blue Sun – his debut solo album, and first release in over two decades. His last release was Outkast’s album Idlewild, which was released in 2006 as the follow-up to their Grammy-winning double album, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below.

Now, André 3000 has been nominated for three Grammy Awards of his own – Best Alternative Jazz Album, Best Instrumental Composition, and Album of the Year – with the latter seeing him pitted up against Beyoncé, Billie Eilish, Charli XCX, Chappell Roan, Taylor Swift, and Jacob Collier.

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Speaking to the New York Times about being nominated for AOTY, he said: "We were trying to be nominated in some type of way for alternative jazz or ambient, possibly. But I was totally surprised by this. So yeah, it was super, super, super duper cool."

André 3000 has been touring the album for the past year, which has allowed him to fall back in love with live performance, due to the improvisational nature of the set. "This art isn’t a chorus that the audience knows. It’s not a verse that the audience knows. It’s not a beat that you can hide behind. It’s really an open exercise every day," he offers. "Musicians that have made great music over time come to our shows and we meet them backstage and what they comment mostly on is like, “Man, this is freedom. I wish I could be doing this. I wanted to get up there with y’all.” It’s the freedom more than anything."