André 3000 biography

Around this time, André made some changes to his lifestyle that would help redefine him as a person and as an entertainment figure: He gave up smoking and drinking and became a vegan, and he also began to dress in an eccentric way, all of which helped him gain fresh attention in the media and the public.

In 1998, OutKast's success came back to bite them, as their song "Rosa Parks,

" ignited a lawsuit by Rosa Parks herself. (The suit was dismissed but Parks appealed in 2003.) Emerging from the scandal, OutKast released three more albums heading into the new millennium—ATLiens (1996), Aquimini (1998) and Stankonia (2000)—all of which peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard chart.

In 1997, André and singer Erykah Badu had a son together and named him Seven (the couple would part ways soon after).

The Momentum Builds

Speakerboxxx/The Love Below (2003) was the next album to appear, and it was unique in a couple of ways. First, each member of OutKast claimed one half of the record—The Love Below was André's and Speakerboxxx was Big Boi's (Patton's adopted stage name). The other trait that set this record apart was that it was the first record that OutKast had put out to find its way to No. 1 on the Billboard chart. If that wasn't enough, that same year, OutKast also hit No. 1 on the singles chart with "Hey Ya!" and "The Way You Move"—the former from The Love Below and the latter from Speakerboxxx—and the double album won a Grammy Award for album of the year. The infectiously popular song "Hey Ya!" was later named on Rolling Stone magazine's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list.

Hollywood Calls

André next took on Hollywood, getting out from behind the mic and in front of the camera in the 2003 film Hollywood Homicide, starring Harrison Ford. Two years later he was back on the silver screen with four more films, including Be Cool and Four Brothers. He also joined Quentin Tarantino's production company, A Band Apart, and wrote dozens of songs for movies and TV shows since 1995, from Soul Food, Any Given Sunday and 8 Mile, to Dancing with the Stars and The X Factor.

While he has appeared in several films and TV shows over the course of his career, his 2013 role as Jimi Hendrix in All Is by My Side marks his biggest on-screen performance to date. If André has proven anything in his diverse career, it's that he's always up for something new.

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