André 3000 has surpassed Tool for the longest Hot 100 hit of all time. As Billboard reports, his track “I Swear, I Really Wanted To Make A ‘Rap’ Album But This Is Literally The Way The Wind Blew Me This Time” charted at #90 on the Hot 100 this week — it’s the first song on his new instrumental album New Blue Sun. It clocks in at 12 minutes and 20 seconds, longer than Tool’s “Fear Inoculum,” which is 10 minutes and 21 seconds and debuted at #93 back in 2019. André 3000’s track notched 5.8 million streams over the past week.
I’m a big ambientish electronic instrumental music listener, and I thought the track name was amusing so I went and checked it out. I got halfway but it’s not doing much for me.
It started out with some almost Rue the Whirl by Boards of Canada vibes which I’m a fan of, but it doesn’t seem to go very far and seems to focus on whether it sounds OK in that moment rather than as a full song journey. I’ll pass, but good for him for doing whatever the fuck he feels like.
One of my favourite 10min instrumental songs for comparison, which sort of shows what I mean by journey. The peak hits around 5 mins in Moya - Godspeed You Black Emperor.
Of the tracks listed in the article David Bowie’s blackstar is my favorite. The album is fantastic too
Great post and a quick question for you: How does Onion Tube differ from YouTube? Is it federated?
Onion tube is an instance of invidious. It’s an alternate frontend for YouTube, and as such isn’t a federation thing. My limited understanding is that it just queries youtube via API, but I’ve not delved into the source code to confirm that.
Its because all the melodies are just him noodling on what sounds good to him (what he said in a GQ interview at least) so zero song construction. Just 3000 noodling over a backing track for a hot minute.
Yep, that completely fits with what I thought it sounded like. Thanks for the verification of my gut feeling!
I only listened to ‘Dreams once buried beneath the dungeon floor slowly sprout into undying gardens’ and I know what you mean about it not being a focused thing. Makes good tabletop music tho.
Fair, I can definitely see it in that context. When I’m in the mood for an hour long atmospheric meandering background noise journey, I find the Shenzhou album by Biosphere a good bet, amongst others of his work. (I seem to have a thing for Arctic Circle rural desolate ambient soundscapes?) It’s repetitive enough to be unobtrusive, but I don’t feel like I’m listening as much to modern elevator music like I did with the other track.
If you like Biosphere and you haven’t heard him, Loscil is wonderdully minimalistic dub ambient very focused on “cold” granular synths with tastefully meanderingly monotone progression.
Thanks for the recommendation! I will try him out right now.