André 3000 will release his first-ever solo album, New Blue Sun, this Friday, November 17th, the visionary rapper, singer, and producer best known as one-half of OutKast revealed in a new NPR interview.

Rumors of an André 3000 album have been circulating, but the project isn’t what fans might expect. Rather than rapping or singing, 3K plays an assortment of flutes, contrabass flute, Mayan flutes, and bamboo flutes, as well as digital wind instruments on the album.

Comprised of improvised jams featuring percussionist Carlos Niño, keyboardist Surya Botofasina, and guitarist Nate Mercereau with outlandish track titles like “That Night in Hawaii When I Turned Into a Panther and Started Making These Low Register Purring Tones That I Couldn’t Control … Sh¥t Was Wild”, New Blue Sun draws inspiration from a number of influences outside André 3000’s usual hip-hop milieu, including experimental, new age, and spiritual jazz artists like Laraaji, Brian Eno, Alice Coltrane, Steve Reich, and Pharoah Sanders. The album also features contributions from instrumentalists including Deantoni Parks, Diego Gaeta, Matthewdavid, V.C.R, Diego Gaeta, Jesse Peterson, and Mia Doi Todd.

André 3000 explained the origins of the project to NPR:

I’ve been playing flute for years. It got to a point where it’s kind of Instagram worthy, where people were kind of sneaking and filming me play—in space, in the public. I might be at Starbucks getting a coffee. I might just start playing. And people would just film it and post it. That started to happen a lot. One person actually came up to me on the street and he was like, “Man, it’s a thing, it’s a game almost like we’re trying to find you and trying to film you play a flute.” And that kind of was sucky because it was like a Where’s Waldo kind of thing.

And I didn’t like that because they just kept getting little nicks of me, just kind of messing around, you know.

So I just felt like I’d really like to play but it was really for me. I would just walk for hours and I’m a walker. I love to walk. So I would just walk and play for hours. I did that for years and it got to a point where, okay, I want to share. And so going into New Blue Sun, it was kind of like trying to figure out, well, how do I share it?

Though he has guested on tracks by other artists and released stand-alone singles in recent years, the album is André 3000’s first full-length release since OutKast’s 2006 LP Idlewild. “It’s not like I don’t try or it’s not like I have a lot of these songs just sitting—I have songs but it’s not like rap things that I really feel happy about sharing,” he said. “And really, that’s the most important part. I have to feel happy about sharing it. That’s why New Blue Sun was something that I realized, whoa, I really want people to hear it. I really want to share it.”

André 3000 described running the project by other artists including Frank Ocean and Tyler, the Creator, who both offered encouragement. He also spoke about being invited by the family of fashion icon Virgil Abloh to play flute at the late designer’s funeral. “I denied it, but only because I felt like I would be a distraction,” he said. “I don’t know, I just felt like it would have taken away from the moment and I only knew Virgil through texts and a few conversations. So I couldn’t pretend like I knew him that well. I was honored that the family asked me to play at the funeral, but I couldn’t.”

Scroll down to check out the tracklist for New Blue Sun (which is wild, by the way), and listen to André 3000’s full interview with NPR’s Rodney Carmichael for All Songs Considered below, or read the conversation here. Pre-save New Blue Sun here.

André 3000 – New Blue Sun Tracklist:

01 I Swear, I Really Wanted to Make a “Rap” Album but This Is Literally the Way the Wind Blew Me This Time
02 The Slang Word P(*)ssy Rolls Off the Tongue With Far Better Ease Than the Proper Word Vagina . Do You Agree?
03 That Night in Hawaii When I Turned Into a Panther and Started Making These Low Register Purring Tones That I Couldn’t Control … Sh¥t Was Wild
04 BuyPoloDisorder’s Daughter Wears a 3000® Button Down Embroidered
05 Ninety Three ’Til Infinity And Beyoncé
06 Ghandi, Dalai Lama, Your Lord & Savior J.C. / Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and John Wayne Gacy
07 Ants to You, Gods to Who ?
08 Dreams Once Buried Beneath the Dungeon Floor Slowly Sprout Into Undying Gardens