Andre 3000

Something that stands out to me about Andre, is that he, perhaps without due recognition, could easily be seen as a queer icon, with an exciting and dedicated sense of style and fashion, which rejects expectations of men to appear a certain way, just the same as how ‘OutKast!’ rejected the expectation to act a certain way within the rap community they were part of. In the case of Andre’s work with Kelis in “Millionaire” (2), we see Andre 3000 maximise on this queer afrofuture style, with an androgynous Egyptian pharaoh costume that calls out to Sun Ra. There is a certain power radiating off of this, especially given the rap and hip-hop culture can come with this tendency to weaponize each other’s backstory or upbringing. There has been repeated reference to a time where many people were asking Big Boi what the hell was wrong with Andre, is he gay? is he on drugs?