Billboard Magazine

dedicated to André.” “ FOR EVERY ARTIST, A few short weeks from now, when the YOU’VE GOT TO tour ends and the movie’s opening recedes into memory, will Benjamin himself simply FIND OUT WHAT’S fade from view again? He’s got no plans for another movie or a solo album — never PUSHING YOU. LIKE, mind new Outkast music. And just to be clear, here’s how he explains that last one: “There are no plans to do [an Outkast album]. It’s not like some people think: ‘They’re about to drop this album!’ We I DIDN’T don’t have, like, one song. There’s no trick- ery or nothing like that.” GROW UP AS A KID “He’s the kind of artist who requires SAYING, ‘MAN, I inspiration,” says Antonio “L.A.” Reid, 58, chairman and CEO of Epic Records, who WANT TO GROW UP signed Outkast in 1992. Says Benjamin, sighing heavily: “At TO BE A MUSIC STAR.’ ” this age, the driver is just different, and I think for every artist, you’ve got to find out what’s pushing you. Like, what do you do it for? I didn’t grow up as a kid saying, ‘Man, I $100,000 for a guest verse. In certain want to grow up to be a music star.’ ” cases, after hearing a track, he says, “I had to call them back and say, ‘I’m sorry, I Benjamin’s earliest performance couldn’t come up with nothing cool.’ ”) was as an actor, at Atlanta’s Sutton Through the years, rappers from T.I. Middle School. The seventh-grade to 2 Chainz to J. Cole to Kendrick Lamar drama club, the Ritz Players, cast him as Clockwise from top left: tea and milk. I’d never had tea with milk in With Erykah Badu at the have called Benjamin one of the greatest Avery in Charlotte’s Web. On a parents’ night Soul Train Lady of Soul it before.” lyricists of all time. On his 2002 song “ ’Till performance, he missed an entrance cue Awards in 1997; with son He grew up an only child who split time I Collapse,” Eminem put him in his top because he was kissing a girl backstage. But Seven (left) at Governors between his parents, who were never mar- Ball in June; with Big Boi five rappers of all time; in a 2007 interview the group’s director, Ina Gottlieb, exposed (left) at the 2001 VMAs; ried. Benjamin was particularly close to his with XXL, Jay Z cited him as one of the top Benjamin to a different world. “She wanted performing as part of mother, Sharon, a real estate agent, who Outkast at Lollapalooza MCs; and Drake told Paper magazine in to give us that English experience,” recalls in August. Below: At cautioned him against dropping out of high 2010 that he has “a shrine in my apartment Benjamin, “so she would bring biscuits and Milk Studios. school to chase a music career — which he did anyway. When Benjamin and Big Boi were both 17, Reid signed Outkast to LaFace Records, where he was co-founder. Before long, Benjamin had established himself as the group’s fashion-forward mav- erick to Big Boi’s streetwise pimp. “André was at a video shoot,” recalls Reid with a laugh, “and an executive at a my company called me and said, ‘André’s here, and he’s got on a blond wig, and he’s got on knickers and socks and a Nehru jacket, and I don’t know what he’s doing.’ And I remember calling André and saying, ‘Whatever you did at that video shoot, don’t stop doing it!’ He was evolving as a fash- ionista, an artiste, a rapper and just getting greater and greater.” Outkast made six acclaimed albums. Their last one, Idlewild, soundtracked a movie musical directed by Bryan Barber that was set in a Deep South juke joint. But Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, a double-disc set released in 2003, was their11.104 commercial triumph, spawningit 06000“Hey Ya!” and “The Way You Move,” winning the Grammy for album of the year andOM eventually gettingMPH. certified 11 times platinum. The differences between Benjamin and Big Boi had always been obvious, but the album enshrined them: Speakerboxxx was for all intents and purposes a Big Boi solo album, and The Love Below was an all- Benjamin production. By the time they separated, Outkast

42 BILLBOARD | OCTOBER 4, 2014