The reckoning · read 17 Sep 2026
official solo releases. Neither one has a rap verse on it.
The five album-length releases under his name that do contain rapping are all unofficial. Other people built them out of verses he gave away.
By CLERK · MusicBrainz release groups and recordings credited to André 3000 as lead artist, read 17 September 2026, cross-checked against LRCLIB for lyric presence.
He titled the opening track
“I Swear, I Really Wanted To Make A 'Rap' Album But This Is Literally The Way The Wind Blew Me This Time”
The two shelves
We did not decide which of these records are real. MusicBrainz carries a status field on every release, and that field is the only rule applied here: Official on the left, everything else on the right.
Official · released by Epic · 2 albums
2023 · Epic · Official
No rapping
Flute and wind instruments. Seven of its eight tracks are flagged instrumental by LRCLIB; the eighth returned no record.
Its opening track is titled "I Swear, I Really Wanted To Make A 'Rap' Album But This Is Literally The Way The Wind Blew Me This Time".
2025 · Epic · Official
No rapping
Solo piano, 16 minutes, seven tracks. No rapping; the only voices are spoken introductory notes. MusicBrainz catalogues it as an Album and Wikipedia as an EP. We print the disagreement rather than picking the one that flatters the count.
Recorded years earlier on an iPhone and a laptop microphone inside a nearly empty Texas house, sent to friends, never intended for release.
Unofficial · 5 albums · all contain rapping
The rap albums exist. He just did not make them. Other people assembled them out of verses he had already given away, and those are the only André 3000 albums you can hear him rap on.
The album he announced by not making it
Eight tracks, and the title of the first one is the entire press release. Seven return no lyrics at all and are flagged instrumental; the eighth is absent from the lyric database, so we mark it unknown rather than counting it as silence.
Where the verses went
Words in the full lyric of tracks he appears on as a guest. These count every word on the record, not only his, which is the honest reading of what a lyric database can see. The point is not how many are his. The point is that there are any.
Method, and what it cannot see
What counts as official is MusicBrainz's call, not ours. Every release there carries a status of Official, Bootleg, Promotion or Pseudo-release, entered by that project's editors. We read it and reported it. Had we ranked these records by our own judgement of what is "real", the finding would be worth nothing.
Checked against a second source, and they do not agree about everything. Checked against Wikipedia's Andre 3000 discography on 18 September 2026, independently of MusicBrainz. It lists no solo rap album, does not list any of the five unofficial releases, and confirms New Blue Sun (2023, Epic). It classifies 7 piano sketches as an EP where MusicBrainz says Album, which is the one place the two sources disagree and the only thing the count turns on.
What we cannot see. A lyric database knows whether a recording has words, not who said them. So we never claim a given word is his, and the guest figures above are whole-track counts. We also cannot see unreleased material, and MusicBrainz completeness varies by artist, so a missing record is missing from this page too. 362 recordings are catalogued as involving him in some capacity; 93 of those are credited to his name alone.
Discography and release status: MusicBrainz. Lyric presence and instrumental flags: LRCLIB. 7 piano sketches as an instrumental release: Variety and NPR. Independent discography check: Wikipedia.
Questions people are asking
Two official solo releases: New Blue Sun (2023) and 7 piano sketches (2025), both through Epic. Neither contains rapping. MusicBrainz catalogues both as Albums; Wikipedia's discography lists New Blue Sun as his only studio album and 7 piano sketches as an EP. That is the single point where the two sources disagree, and it is recorded here rather than resolved quietly. MusicBrainz lists 27 release groups credited to him as lead artist; every other album-length entry is catalogued as a bootleg or a promotional release.
No. Not one, under either source's taxonomy. The album-length releases under his name that contain rapping are all unofficial compilations of his guest verses, catalogued as bootlegs: Whole Foods (2007), Crack Addiction (2008), Three Stacks (2008), The Myth (2011) and Otis Benjamin (2019). Wikipedia's discography does not list any of them.
Yes. It is a flute and wind record. Seven of its eight tracks are flagged instrumental in LRCLIB and return no lyrics at all. Its opening track is titled "I Swear, I Really Wanted To Make A 'Rap' Album But This Is Literally The Way The Wind Blew Me This Time".
A 16-minute solo piano release issued through Epic on 5 May 2025. Variety described it as an instrumental project. It was recorded years earlier on an iPhone and a laptop microphone in a nearly empty Texas house, sent to friends and family, and was never intended for release.
Not on other people's records. He appears on 362 catalogued recordings, and the tracks he guests on are full of words: Rick Ross's Sixteen, Kanye West's Life Of The Party, Tyler, The Creator's SORRY NOT SORRY and Frank Ocean's Solo (Reprise) among them. What he has never done is put rapping on a record with only his own name on it.
Open dataset (JSON) · Albums (CSV) · CC BY 4.0, free to reuse with attribution.
Cite it: RapCanon (2026). Every André 3000 album with rapping on it is a bootleg. Retrieved 17 Sep 2026 from https://rapcanon.com/hip-hop/andre-3000/