Andre 3000: Cool OutKast

Andre 3000, aka Andre Benjamin, of the multiple-Grammy-winning duo OutKast with his partner Big Boi, set the music world on its ear with his club song "Hey Ya!" from the award-winning album "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below". Like a few other rapper/singers, Andre is moving over to motion pictures, recently wrapping Revolver, a Guy Ritchie film and working on Four Brothers with Mark Wahlberg and Tyrese.

The artist met with press in L.A.'s Century City to talk about his current role as a comic rapper/enforcer, part of Cedric the Entertainer's posse in Be Cool. Along with Vince Vaughn and The Rock, he provides some of the film's most humorous moments. We know Andre designs clothes and was named the World's Best Dressed Man by Esquire but wazzup with navy blue canvas pants, a green Boy Scout shirt, green and yellow check tie and a straw hat? Hey, on Andre, it works!

TeenHollywood: What about this character Dabu appealed to you and did you have any worries about playing a gangsta rapper?

Andre: Well, if you know the history of OutKast we going through a lot of changes. So early on, I was a knucklehead just like everybody else. Fresh out of high school. Doing the dastardly deeds. When (director) Gary (F. Gary Gray) directed the Ms. Jackson video and he was looking at the playback monitor, he said 'I think you're going to have a great career in film if you ever go in that direction so if something comes up I'll look out for you'. He calls me with the Be Cool script and I read it and I thought the story was great. But, I didn't want to play a rapper. You know it's the obvious thing to do. Gary said 'you're really playing a parody of what people think rap is. So it's way over the top. It's baggy pants down to your knees, pagers, and two-ways and all these platinum chains. Try it out. And on top of that how in the hell can you turn down being in a movie with these people? That would be great for your career'. I said, 'You're right, so let me try it'.

TeenHollywood: Wasn't the part of Dabu pretty small in the beginning? Didn't you develop him?

Andre: It wasn't one line, maybe three or four. Gary said 'you know I'll embellish the character, make it better'. He said, 'Where's Dabu from? Why is he like this? Why does he act like this'? We made up a back story. I said I was from the South. I sell records out of my trunk. Sin, Cedric the Entertainer's character, saw us perform and saw us making it in the hood selling our tapes and he said 'I'll be your producer and make you national' and when that happens, you'll do anything for that person because they got you out of the gutter. Our whole thing is to protect Sin. If you've never had anything, once you get it, you want everybody to know so you wear all the chains, and all the beepers, and all pagers. That's how the character was created. We knew we wanted a real soul, ghetto name, but we didn't know what it was so Gary said 'I'll give $200 to the first person in the cast who comes up with the most ghetto name' and Cedric the Entertainer came up with Dabu (laughter).

TeenHollywood: This film has an all-star cast. Can you talk about working with all these high-profile folks?

Andre: I think I was excited to see Harvey Keitel. I've been a fan of John Travolta's since I was little, way back to "Welcome Back Kotter". Vince Vaughn, you know he was always funny to me, but you gotta imagine I'm a beginner to it so you show up to work with all these people. I was really timid and tip toeing just trying not to make mistakes and trying to be real perfect and in acting that will kill you if you're thinking about it too much. I had to ease into it and just sit down and talk to John and just know he's a normal person. Talk about flying airplanes and houses and that kind of stuff. And me and Cedric man we tripped the whole movie. We had a good time. You get around these people and they become like a little family. You get into it and go into your scenes and don't think about it. And that's the best way to do it. Don t think about it.

TeenHollywood: Who are some actors that you admire or pattern yourself after and what advice would you give other hip hop artists interested in making the transition to acting?

Andre: Everybody has their own method, but actors I admire. I think Jeffrey Wright is one of the best actors, DeNiro, he's one of my favorites. Robert Duvall, he's one of my favorites. I think the reason why it's hard for a lot of entertainers to get into film and be believable is because people make it so you have to be perfect and you have to never make mistakes. Artists go to classes to learn how to do interviews and how to sit up straight and how not to say, um, um, and all that type of stuff so you spend your whole time trying to be perfect and in films it's a total opposite. Vanity is gone. You can't think about, Am I looking good? You can't be conscious of yourself. If you're going to do it, you have to make the full step. You have to spit when you talk, cry, trip up, make a fool of yourself. It took me a while because, growing up, I wasn't really a talkative person and being an entertainer, even though I perform on stage, I still get super nervous and it's hard for me to do it sometimes. In film I had to learn how to really just say, F--- it.

TeenHollywood: You are really funny in this film. Where did you get that comic timing? Did you learn from the actors in this movie?

Andre: Oh, I really don't think I'm funny, but if other people think I'm funny. I guess it works. Timing? I don't know anything about comedic timing, but I've heard a lot in the interviews so I guess it's working. You show up to work and you have all these vets around so I'm watching. I'm new to the game, watching it, I'm real quiet watching everybody and I watch Vince Vaughn and the scene where we take him into the office and he's beat up and out of breath. Two minutes before we do the scene, he's in the corner actually beating himself up. He's getting into it, I mean not punching himself, but he's (breathes heavy) and I m like, 'OK, that's how you do it'. You shouldn't have to wait until action to get into it because then you have to put it on. If you're in it you're in it. So I learned to get into character to have your thoughts ready before it's time to go.

TeenHollywood: Did you base the role of Dabu on anyone? How much improv did you do?

Andre: I have home boys just like that. I know people in the rap game just like that. I have friends just like that. We joke and talk about each other. Just playing. Talk about how many chains you have on so I kind of channeled a certain type of rapper and kind of just pumped it up. I do know people like that and when they see the movie they'll be like, 'Yeah, I know you got that from me.' (laughter) Because I'm kind of new to it, I didn't do too much ad-libbing.

TeenHollywood: What about the hilarious scene where you try to get rid of your gun?

Andre: Oh, the whole 'don't give me a gun' thing. That part was a mistake because the gun actually went off when it wasn't supposed to go off on set. Everybody was looking at me and I said, 'well, don't give me a gun then.' I tried to stay in character and do it so they kept it. Drinking tea and the gun. Gary said, 'I want you to sit there and sip tea and use your gun as a saucer.' I tried to do it as dandy as I could. Put your little pinky out. You know you try a little stuff, you play, the more comfortable you get with it the more playing you do.

TeenHollywood: How are you combining doing film with your music?

Andre: It's not a departure from doing music. I think I always do music in some kind of way. I can't juggle them though so when I'm doing film I'm doing film and when I'm doing music I'm concentrating on music because it's hard to give 100 percent to each one. So after I finish Four Brothers I'm back in the studio recording. I'm always thinking of concepts at night when I come home from the set. In conversations sometimes you get song ideas. I may be around the set talking to people and thinking of a song maybe. I'll always do music.

TeenHollywood: What is cool to you?

Andre: Cool is not just one type of cool. Cool is confidence and knowing I guess what you are and being fine with it. Some people can be what people call nerds and they're cool because they know they're nerds and they know what they are and they're so confident in knowing what they are that that makes them cool and somebody aspires to be like them, because they re fine with it. It's confidence, you know.

TeenHollywood: Talk about John Singleton's Four Brothers and what we can expect from it.

Andre: Four Brothers is a story about four brothers who were adopted as kids. It's myself, Mark Wahlberg, Tyrese Gibson and Garrett Hedlund. We grew up together. My three brothers left town. It takes place in Detroit. I'm the only brother that stayed and made something of myself. I have a wife and two kids and someone kills our mother who adopted us. My brothers come back into town for the funeral and they do a little investigation to see if the cop's story is true. To see if it was a random shooting in a convenience store and it wasn't. It was a hit and so we have to find out who did it and there's a lot of twists and turns and that's all I can really tell you right now, but it s fun. We're in Toronto right now shooting, on a frozen lake brrrr (laughter).

TeenHollywood: Did you have to audition for Four Brothers?

Andre: John Singleton knew he wanted me to play the part, but for studio execs a lot of times they may not know so you have to prove to them and there was a lot of great actors up for the part so I had to compete. I just finished a Guy Ritchie movie called Revolver so they set up a screening where Gary Gray showed them the footage from this movie. Brian showed them footage of the My Life in Idyllwild movie and I did an episode of "The Shield" so they just put something together where they could see something and that was pretty much my audition.

TeenHollywood: What can we expect from the OutKast movie?

Andre: The OutKast movie we finished. I haven't seen it. When I'm shooting a film I don't look at playback. Brian Barber directed it and he told me that it looks phenomenal. It's a musical. It takes place in the 1930's. It's a love story mixed with gangsta story. I play a mortician. Son of a mortician. Generations of morticians. Big Boi's character is this hustler guy who, he has to end up taking over this club, a little juke joint type of thing, and he gets mixed up in smuggling liquor. I fall in love with this girl who comes into town.

TeenHollywood: Is it going to be on HBO or coming out in theaters?

Andre: They're trying to decide right now if they're going to release it in theaters or not. Everybody wants to release it in theaters. They've only seen one cut of it and it got a standing ovation for one cut. The music wasn't even in it, just kind of rough pieces. So we pray that it works. It's a musical so I may be sitting in a room and start going off into a song. So it's maybe six performing numbers. Me and Brian wrote the story and Brian made it into a screenplay. It's not straight 30s music, because we're not from that era. We're not trying to play it true to true. It's still OutKast music, but it's a perfect fit. It's a perfect match. It's not out of place at all.

TeenHollywood: You have a great sense of style. Do you choose your own clothes and what informs your decision?

Andre: Yes, I choose my own clothes. I don't have a stylist. I like going shopping and picking out my own stuff. Not that having a stylist is bad because some people just don't have time or they really don't know what they want to do with themselves so they have a team, but I love going shopping and finding little stuff, this and that. Inspiration from movies. Old people I may see walking down the street. Everybody who I meet.

TeenHollywood: What's happening with your clothing line?

Andre: I am starting my clothing label. It should be launching by the end of this year or early next year. I have great people on my team that's been in the business a long time. I want to do it right this time so I look forward to it and I hope that ya'll go into the store. It's going to be something for everybody. It's called Benji.

At this point, Andre tries to leave but the questions keep on coming. We learned that he s afraid of snakes, thinks the best CD for a road trip is John Coltrane, "Love Supreme", and that he's been a vegetarian for eight years but you have to "season it right".

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Lynn Barker is a Hollywood-based entertainment journalist and produced screenwriter.