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2016 ONE Musicfest

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Andre 3000 has opened up in an in-depth interview about his parents and his struggles. According to GQ Style, Three Stacks spoke on his mother, saying,

“My mom was everything. I grew up a mama’s boy completely. When I was small, she was like a dictator. I understand it now, but she still went hard. And I think when a male is not there, the woman goes harder. I would wrestle with my mom. Me and her, going at it. And then you go through this ‘Ah, man, I hate my mom’ phase. And then one day–I think it was Mother’s Day or Valentine’s. I was 23 or 24. I took her out to the movies, and I’d left something in the car, and when I walked back to meet her, I looked at her and caught her face in such a way that I thought, ‘Oh, wow, that’s Mom.’ It’s like that moment where she’s not just this person that took care of you. It’s like, Whoa, she’s a woman and she’s my mom. When you’re growing up, your parents are trying to set this great example for you, so they won’t tell you all their sh*t. I think more parents should tell kids their sh*t. It takes a lot of pressure off the kids to realize, Phew, I’m not the only person in the world that can’t get this sh*t completely right.”

He also spoke on his mother’s drug use, saying,

“When I was around 35, my mom pulled me to the side in the kitchen. Out of nowhere, she was like, ‘You know, when you were 5, I used to go and do crack.’ She was like, ‘It was new during that time. I was dating this drug-dealer guy, and he sold cocaine, and we would do cocaine, and that was like a normal thing.’ And she said, ‘Me and that guy broke up, and I had to find something to get high, and there was this new thing called crack.’ So she tried it, and there it was. And the person that she ended up marrying was the guy that used to keep me when she would go do crack…I think it was more that I triggered it, because at that time, I was doing drugs. I wasn’t doing hard drugs–she saw me smoking [weed] all the time, and I think she saw me going down a path. I think she was trying to tell me the story to help me. She said, ‘You know, I left this dude, and I had to get my own apartment at that point, and I was still smoking crack, and when I moved into this apartment, I guess the people that lived there before left a tennis racket in the corner.’ So at the time, she was like, ‘I’m gonna take tennis lessons.’ Two years later she looked up and she hadn’t taken one, ’cause she was doing drugs. The tennis racket was the thing that made her know ‘I missed all that time.’”

3000 spoke on his father’s death, saying,

“When my dad passed away, there was mourning for him dying, but there was a whole ‘nother wave of mourning because I realized, Whoa, he died in his house alone. And I wondered: Had he done everything he wanted to do?…I don’t know [if he died in peace]. I don’t think so. He had all these troubles the last few years. He had to get his heart valve replaced and prostate cancer and colon cancer, and it’s kinda back-to-back-to-back at a certain point. But I think we made amends, and that was a cool thing. I do miss not being able to talk to him about him living alone and not ever being married. I think I would have gotten a lot of great insight. I think he would have told me something. Growing up, I would always see these great women, like, Oh, man, she’s cool. Or, She’s really cool–she has her stuff together, and they have a great chemistry. But for some reason, he kept not making it happen, and that’s always happened with me. I know my son looks at me like, Yeah, man, she was cool. Or, Oh, man, she’s, like, great, beautiful. And it’s always me not going to the next step. So I know my kid sees it the same way.”

It’s a really good article.  You can read the whole thing by clicking here.

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