André 3000 brought a special guest to the stage — neo-soul queen Erykah Badu — during the Saturday night Dallas stop of his “New Blue Sun Live” tour. The former Outkast rapper shares a son, Seven, with Badu and they dated in the ’90s.
André posted a clip of their concert reunion at the Winspear Opera House to his Instagram. In the video, he plays a flute and Badu plays a theremin.
“It was such an honor and pleasure to play with one of my best friends in the world,” said Badu, in another clip posted to social media.
When the pair were romantically involved, André told The Dallas Morning News last week, they pushed one another artistically.
“We were both kind of influencing each other in strange ways, you know? Turning each other on to certain music, living together, singing together,” he said. “It was almost like a twin flame type of situation.”
Throughout the years, the musicians have maintained a close relationship.
“When we became boyfriend and girlfriend in the Nineties, we didn’t become friends first. We were attracted to each other first,” Badu told Rolling Stone in 2020. “Over these years, we’ve just become closer and closer as friends.”
The Dallas tour stop was a homecoming of sorts for André, who lived in the city for two years in the 2010s, when he was co-parenting with Badu. His main recollection of Big D was the weather: “Very hot,” he said to The News. “I didn’t know it got that hot in Dallas.”
New Blue Sun, his first album in 17 years, is 87 minutes of purely instrumental music. It features him playing and improvising on a variety of flutes.
He was originally planning to make a rap album, which he alludes to in one track called, “I Swear I Really Wanted To Make A Rap Album But This is Literally The Way The Wind Blew Through Me This Time.”
“I hate that people think that it’s a joke, or I’m trolling,” he explained to The News. “I would love a rap album, and that’s why I said the title. But that’s just not what’s on tap.”
