The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Andre 3000: ‘Awesome to be home’
Legendary rap artist meets with college students during visit.
The kids had no idea. Sitting on a stage at the Ray Charles Performing Arts Center in West End, almost two dozen Black college students from Morehouse College, Spelman College, Clark Atlanta University and Georgia State University were shocked when Andre 3000 walked out to greet them.
Rocking a black Supreme coat, blue overalls, red beanie and Air Jordan 3 sneakers, the legendary OutKast emcee greeted the students with a smile and hometown acknowledgment: “It feels awesome to be home.”
Andre 3000 is in town doing several shows at Variety Playhouse and Center Stage in promotion of his album “New Blue Sun,” which finds one of rap’s greatest emcees trading bars for woodwinds.
As part of programming for Sony Music University, local students pursuing careers in the industry took part in a discussion with the legendary artist. The talk was led by artist Fahamu Pecou and hip-hop scholar Joycelyn Wilson, who touched on everything from Andre’s views on changing Atlanta to assessing the response to “New Blue Sun.”
Andre also took questions from students about whether he still loves rapping, finding inspiration in isolation and performing live with flutes instead of a microphone. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution sat in on the conversation. Here’s what we learned.
Being back in Atlanta and how the city has changed for Black creatives
Andre explained that he hasn’t been home in six years, so he’s been taking in the city’s changes while here.
“It has me in a reflective kind of state because this city has birthed a lot of pioneers, people that are pushing things. There’s just so much from when we started, even before us, but from Dungeon Family and what Future is doing and Playboi Carti . ... It’s just amazing stuff that’s come out of the city . ...
“In the city that we were kids doing stuff, now those kids are doing awesome things in a different way. The rest of the world was looking at them still and getting influence from Atlanta still. When we were in high school, Atlanta did not have an identity at all. It was New York or West Coast rap music and that was it.”
Looking back on his ‘South Got Something To Say’ moment
Though his clarion call to action went on to become a cool T-shirt slogan and an AJC documentary, Andre still feels emotional about it.
“A lot of people referenced that piece of footage and that saying, but I think a lot of people don’t know what happened right before, why I actually said this. Even the person reading the paper when they said that ‘the winner is OutKast’ it was like a ‘who the (expletive) is this’ kind of thing. I was acting out of nervousness. It was more out of discussing you trying to big up your city, your team. I just felt like they didn’t know us well enough. So that saying came out of the boos. So it was the situation that sparked that saying that people quote now, which I guess is fitting.”
If he still gets excited about rapping
Andre said he and his publicist made a point to let audiences know there would be no rapping on “New Blue Sun.” He said it wasn’t an effort to troll fans, but to just be upfront and honest.
“I write all the time. I may not write it in a rap form. And most of the time it may not start as a rap. Sometimes it’s just a thought and I’ll write it down. I’m inspired by something all the time. And I think because I’m 48 now, (I’m) challenging myself to do something that is pushing myself, challenging myself to not getting stuck in a pattern. When you rap long enough, you really realize that it’s really all patterns. It’s like, I guess it means it’s 8, 16, 32, 64. It’s a challenge for me to figure out what can I do or how I can do it.
“I got to figure out how do I say what a 48-year-old person is or feels or sees, but do it in an inspiring way where I’m not trying to mimic a certain person or trying to fit in or trying to rest on what I already know. So I’m inspired by the possibilities of what can happen.”
If he is bothered by negative responses to ‘New Blue Sun’
Yes, Andre has been tracking responses to “New Blue Sun” after it released. Beforehand? Not so much.
“I didn’t think about it, if I’m being completely honest. I only thought about the audience when I was naming the songs. This is a good practice to me for artists. I don’t care if it’s visual, sonically, considering the audience, it’s part of your process. Considering an audience should probably happen after it’s done. I think it keeps it a little bit more pure. I wasn’t thinking, ‘They’re going to love these things from the flute.’
“It wasn’t that. It was like we made this music that I felt like was a thing of beauty, which at this age, my intention is to present things with beauty.”
Finding a new muse by stopping drugs
Andre referenced watching the documentary “Chasing Coltrane,” which explores how John Coltrane and Miles Davis — two genius musicians — kicked their heroin habits, and its effect on their creativity. In response to the discussion about artists finding their muse in isolation, Andre spoke about a change in his creative process by listening to his body decades ago.
“At a certain point I was just smoking every day, all day, back to back to back. Just in the studio chain-smoking blunts. There came a point where I just stopped and I took off. I’m not against marijuana at all, but sometimes I think you have to be honest with yourself to figure out what works for you . ... Some people can get high and kill it and it’s awesome. Some people can’t.”
Doing live shows as a flutist versus as an emcee
Andre was asked how he manages performing as an instrumentalist as opposed to an emcee.
“I hope this is not a bad thing to say, but it’s the truth: I think rappers have it the easiest on stage, especially now.
“When I say rappers had it the easiest, you have the beat that people know, you have a song people know, you have the chorus that people know, you have your verse that you can just put your microphone and let everyone else do.
“What we’re doing now, you can’t lean on a thing. So it is very exciting for me to have come from rap to do what I’m doing now. So the shows are very much alive. ... We don’t know what’s coming, we don’t know what’s happening.”
Georgia Power soon will flip a switch and turn on its latest clean energy construction project: battery storage.
When millions of Georgians begin their day by turning on lights and the coffee machine, taking a shower, drying their hair and running the dishwasher, the energy demand spikes. But clean energy sources like solar may not be available to produce electricity during times of high demand when the sun isn’t yet shining — or if there is a rain storm.
When that is the case, Georgia Power, the major energy supplier in Georgia, now has to rely on carbon-polluting sources like coal power or natural gas to meet the demand of 2.7 million Georgians every day.
But to cut back on fossil fuels and also meet its decarbonizing energy goals, Georgia Power is adding Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) to its clean energy portfolio. BESS creates more flexibility with energy usage from demand fluctuations and adds more capacity to the energy system.
“As Georgia Power looks at our energy transmission system across the state, we want areas that have the capacity to inject more energy to support what the grid naturally needs,” said Aaron Mitchell, vice president of planning and pricing.
The new 65 megawatt BESS, named the Mossy Branch Energy Facility, sits on 2.5 acres of rural land in Talbot County, 40 minutes north of Columbus. Mossy Branch is nestled between existing transmission lines near the 400-person town of Shiloh.
It will have the capacity to both accept the charge from the grid and discharge energy from the grid. It also can charge any type of existing grid energy source, not just solar. The Mossy Branch facility can store “whatever makes up the grid system at the time,” Mitchell said.
At first glance, it might not appear like an energy facility. The 6-foot-by-6-foot gray steel boxes are symmetrically distributed on the land, surrounded by a canopy of trees.
Fifty people were employed during the construction and design of the project. Wärtsilä, a Finnish-based company, provided the engineering, procurement and construction.
It’s set to come online and be operational sometime between April and June of this year. There will be no changes to electricity rates for Georgia Power customers.
The first of many
In 2019, the Public Service Commission (PSC) of Georgia approved 80 MW of BESS for the Integrated Resource Plan — a three-year, long-term plan that Georgia Power must provide to the PSC. The remaining 15 MW from the approved 80 MW is currently being developed near U.S. Army Base Fort Stewart, in southeast Georgia.
That BESS will be charged not by the grid but by existing solar: A 30 MW solar plant will directly charge the 15 MW BESS facility. Alternatively, it can be grid-charged the same way Mossy Branch is charged. While this type of BESS is more flexible, the project still is in development.
Georgia Power proposed another 830 MW of BESS, and received approval during the 2022 IRP.
Georgia Power will install 265 MW at McGrau Ford substation in Cherokee County, with 560 MW still available and being determined for deployment. That puts Georgia Power on track to own and operate a total of 915 MW of BESS over the next several years.
As far as the plans for incoming BESS construction projects, the company wants to use existing solar power and transmission lines.
“We’re looking at existing solar facilities where transmission infrastructure is already constructed to be cost-efficient with installation facilities,” Mitchell said.
Right now, California and Texas dominate the BESS landscape in the U.S. As of November 2023, California had 7,302 MW of BESS capacity and Texas had 3,167, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Before the Mossy Branch project, Georgia Power did a smallscale 2MW pilot project in northwest Georgia to experiment with battery storage. But most of the company’s learning has come from the Mossy Branch facility.
“We have learned a significant amount during development and construction that will aid us in the next 1,000 MW of BESS,” Mitchell said. “We will be able to do the next projects more efficiently, faster and better integrated.”
The latest data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration suggests storage capacity has been growing since 2021 and could nearly double by the end of this year in the U.S. The U.S. initiated a number of energy storage programs in the 1970s, but only recently have they come more into vogue.
Good news for climate and grid resilience
“Mossy Branch will improve grid reliability and flexibility without any local air emissions,” said Simon Mahan, executive director of Southern Renewable Energy Association.
Mahan noted that 65 MW is equal to 260 megawatt hours of energy storage.
“A typical home may use about 30 kilowatt hours in a day, meaning Mossy Branch would provide enough energy for over 8,600 homes daily or power over 2,600 electric vehicles,” he said. “It’s about the size of a small to midsized natural gas power plant.”
American Clean Power (ACP), a nonprofit group dedicated to renewable energy, called BESS critical to a clean and efficient infrastructure.
“Energy storage systems can support entire buildings or larger electrical grids during extreme weather events,” ACP’s energy storage fact sheet said.
“Batteries react faster to emergencies on the grid than any other type of power plant,” Mahan said. “Coal and nuclear plants can take hours to react, natural gas power plants can react sub-hourly and batteries can react on a sub-minute basis.”
As far as the cost of the system, Georgia Power would not release figures, citing trade secrets.