ANDRE 3000 FOR GQ

Tonight it has been confirmed that Stankonia's funkiest exports have announced the biggest hip-hop tour of 2014. Andre 3000 (former GQ Man Of The Year, Benjamin Bixby designer and occasional actor) together with Big Boi (strip club connoisseur, pitbull breeder and sock designer) are apparently reuniting next year, starting with a performance at Coachella.

To mark the occasion GQ revisits an unpublished interview with Andre Benjamin conducted when the pair were promoting their sprawling southern musical Idlewild. "Personally I don't like to talk about the future of Outkast," he explained down the line before describing the odd circumstances that led to the creation of the musical (including why there's a coffin painted green in the middle of the "Hey Ya" video). To mark the Outkast reunion, here Benjamin discusses Atlanta's finest suit store, vegan pizza and reinvigorating John Travolta's music career.

GQ: What are you listening to at the moment?
Andre 3000: I'm a big Coltrane fan - everyone knows Giant Steps andBlue Train, during that time just before he goes into the crazy stuff. There's actually a Sonny Rollins album with him going head to head with Coltrane -Tenor Madness - a faceoff between the two.

What stores should GQ readers check out in Atlanta?
Guffey's have great suiting - they deal with the Oxford suit company, one of the oldest suit makers in America. They're super. They'll come down and meet me and we'll go through fabrics and go through shirts. You can get nice sportswear and accessories there as well - ties, top pockets and braces. They also have a great children's line.

Do you take your son there?
He can't sit still. But he's really into clothes and lately he's been into vest sweaters. I don't know why he loves 'em but he wants to wear one every day.

Have you ever been tempted to dress him up as a mini version of you?
Nah, I want him to end up what go up and make up his own little thing.

What's the best thing you've bought clothing wise recently?
I invested in a pair of John Lobb equestrian boots and a pair of saddle shoes. They've taken a year to make. I've never been through that process where they measure your feet and make these shoes just for your feet. Actually I got a pair of equastian boots and a pair of saddle shoes being made…

What's your fancy dress outfit of choice?
I don't do costume parties that much! I haven't been invited to one since I was little. But I'm playing characters every day, having fun with your outfit, so when you look in the mirror, you're damn near a different person. You damn near go to a costume party every day!

How has British style influenced you?
Man, it's influenced America period. American style is based on English style - hat's off to English style. America and England have got this cool relationship; it's always back and forth with dress and with music. You do one thing, we do another, you react from that, we react from this. It's a good healthy thing going on.

Talk us through your grooming regime?
Honestly, it's really simple. I go to the barbershop for haircuts but I don't go for facials or anything. It's just not for me - for some people it works because it cleans your pores etc. I've been working with the same plan that's worked sinced high school. I just wash my face with water and every now and then when I feel it needs a clean I use witch hazel, like an oil astringent. I don't have any products or creams that I use - that's it, honest to God. My skin won't take a lot of things and I don't even put lotions or oils on my face.  I don't know whether being a vegan helps. I see beautiful people who eat everything so maybe not!

Describe your worst haircut?
At the time it wasn't bad because it was middle school and everyone thought it was cool. At had what was called a "swoop" - like a pompadour look where the front of your hair looks like a ramp sitting on your head.

What's your key style rule?
No one ever buys me clothes because I know what I like and don't like. It's really hard. It's not dressing by numbers. I like to make it where it doesn't look perfect. You can tell there's been some attention, but not too much attention to it.

Did you meet a lot of morticians to play one in Idlewild?
Hell yeah. I had to sit down with people who embalm dead bodies for a living. I had to look at their lives, the relationships they've had, their take on dead people and the relationships they've had - how women treat them and how people treat them because they know they're morticians. Things of that nature.

Do they have a sense of gallows humour?
Yeah, they're funny people. They do spend a lot of time by themselves, but they're not really creepy  people. It's a job, like anything else. Once you do it enough you get used to it. The only thing that shakes them and makes them feel funny is when they have to do infants and have to do babies. That gets to them.

What was shooting Four Brothers like with Mark Wahlberg and Garrett Hedlund in Canada?
Four Brothers was an ensemble thing. We pulled off a feat because people left the theatre seeing the camaraderie between the brothers. Before we started we had hockey practice as I had to play ice hockey [on screen]. But during that time I was in a vulnerable place because I was out on iceskates like a little baby - I had never ice skated in my life and had to learn how to skate and play hockey in one week. Out on the ice, you're at your most vulnerable point. And everyone started jouncing and ragging and talking about each other, so we became like brothers. It was the coldest ever film to shoot… now I pay attention to what the script says where the location is. I've never been that cold in my life! All tropical movies from now on!

If your former costars John Travolta or Mark Wahlberg came to you and said "I want to start my music career again", what advice would you give them?
What I'd say is "Sure, let's do it, but I would do the music, record it, put it out and shoot a video - but I wouldn't let people know that it was me. If people catch on to the song, then you say 'Hey! I'm John Travolta, that's my song!'" People may hate, they may not want you to do it so you've got to trick 'em as people may only see Saturday Night Fever or Boogie Nights. They may not believe it.

What are your future acting ambitions?
I'm floating whichever way the wind takes me. I go with it. I was an actor before I starting doing music but I never planned to do film. It was kind of just something I did in school and never thought about it. So once I started to get requests from directors and producers to come out, I said "Hey, this is fun". Now I don't have to be the lead, I don't have to have the biggest part, as long as the character is something I can be interested in and the story is really good, I'm with it man. At the end of the day, that's four or five months out of a year, that's four of five months out of your life, and you've got to be dedicated to it. It can't be about vanity at all, you have to be really in it. You have to be a clean slate, you have to be like putty, like clay. Shape whatever that character is. If you're too cool, or too much of a star or too much of whatever you've spent you're whole life creating in the music arena, it takes away from what you gotta be.

What was it like working with Guy Ritchie on Revolver?
It was amazing. He's a great person and we sat around and talked a lot. We played a lot of chess - I'd never played chess before and in the movie I'm a chess player. I had to learn on set. He's a great dude and he has in his mind what he wants to get. It's a different way of working. I just dig his process: he's always splicing and dicing, he does great editing, flashbacks and trickery. It's little titbits instead of long drawn out tracking scenes.

Revolver was shot on the Isle of Man - any advice on visiting?
It's beautiful man. The advice of course depends on the season - it was cold as hell when I went.  I don't have anything bad to say about it. Great food. Maybe find a rental house instead of a hotel.

What was the last book you read?
The Da Vinci Code! Big Boi makes a reference to it in "The Mighty O". I was gripped the whole way through.

What's the best thing you can cook?
I cook the hell out of some spaghetti. It's a vegan spaghetti dish that I absolutely kill. It's textured soi protein meat, your tomato paste, your tomato sauce, mushrooms, green peppers, garlic, a little cayenne pepper to add a little kick, my special spices. I make a hell of a great garlic bread as well - you get a French loaf, you put soy butter on it and garlic pieces. That's it! Put a good salad with it with lots of big olives, some oil and vinegar dressing: you're good! My son loves it. His friends love it.

What's your drink of choice?
I don't really drink alcohol any more. But on the set of Four Brothers  a girl turned me on to ice wine. I don't remember the brand name, but the best ones are made in Canada and in Germany. I like the taste, even though wine drinkers probably laugh at it cause they say it tastes like apple juice. Ice wine is great because they harvest the grapes in the frozen season and they turn out sweeter when they're frozen. Sweet, sweet wine that tastes damn good!

Which song do you never want to sing again?
The Oukast song from the Scooby Doo soundtrack. [laughs] "Land of a Million Drums" - I hated that song!

What's the worst job you've ever done?
It was a good job from the outside looking in, but the worst job I ever did was when I worked at the stadium of the Atlanta Braves, the baseball team. At the arena I would be going up the stands shouting "Popcorn…peanuts…beer". I would sell concessions to people - it wasn't a bad job, but you look at all the jobs I've had, that was probably the worst. Oh, and I was a dish washer at Pizza Hut…

Do you get a discount there now?
I haven't been to Pizza Hut in a while because they don't make anything I can really eat! They don't make a vegan pizza. I hope this might persuade them - they could put soy cheese on it and it would be great.

What's question do I hate being asked?
It's a cool question but I don't like answering, "What lyric do you wish you could have written?" I'm, like, "Damn!"

Have you ever had a recurring dream?
It stopped a while ago but I used to have this dream where I had this trick where I could fly. I would hover and then I would fly over the city, but it would be [made up of a] digital readout - fractal equations that made art. But when I would go to friends and say "I can do this," it wouldn't work. It only worked when it was not trying to do it. I have no idea what it means - maybe stop saying "Hey! I can do this" and just do it?

Originally published on GQ.co.uk in November 2013 (an extract was published in British GQ in October 2006). Read the original here.