For someone who’s juggling multiple projects—both your own personal projects and projects with other people—how do you organize your creative life? Are you always working according to a tight schedule?

"Recording is truly a never-ending process. When I’m not on the road, I’m in the studio. I have my own studio and I’m there every single day. Even if I’m not working towards a specific deadline or working on a specific project, I try and keep a stash of music, vibes, and ideas that I can always come back to. You try to get all of your ideas down in some form, so when you have the time to sit down and finally try to put something together, you always have a lot to pull from. If you always keep adding to that stash of ideas, then you’re really never at a loss. There’s always something there to be worked on."

Has your working process in the studio changed a lot over the years? Do you have a pretty set way you like to go about doing things?

"When we first started we were working off tape machines and things like that, so it was very time consuming to record, because you had to record to tape. Now with Pro Tools it’s just so fast, that’s why you see these guys with Pro Tools set ups in their bathrooms and living rooms, because really you can cut anything at any time. So I guess that took a lot of time out of it. Recording itself has become easier and faster thanks to technology, but a lot of the time and hard work is really spent sitting at a desk writing. That’s the heaviest load of them all."

Someone once told me that every time they wrote a poem it was almost like reinventing the wheel each time… and that each time they sat down to do it, there was this slight twinge of fear that maybe they wouldn’t be able to do it again. Do you ever experience that?

"There’s definitely no fear, but the challenge is to reinvent and to evolve every time you make a song. Even after recording so many songs over the years, I still never want to sound the same way I sounded on an older record. That means you’re really trying to do something differently than you’ve done maybe hundreds or even a thousand times before. So to sound different, that’s the push, you know? I want to always try to discover my voice in a new way, and to say things differently.

I know there’s nothing new under the sun and I could easily sit down and mimic anything I’ve done in the past and just kind of cruise by that way, but that’s not how you find new things, that’s not how you tap into new territory, that’s not how you grow… and growing and changing is what I’ve always been about. It’s the big bang theory—boom!—you start from scratch. There’s always gonna be an awareness of what you’ve done before, but you can’t lean on that. You try to erase that out of your mind and start from scratch. That’s how you come up with new stuff, man. And that’s how I’ve been able to be here for 20+ years, because I don’t settle, I don’t conform, and I’m always trying to stretch and look for something else to do other than what I’ve already done."

One of the thing I always thought was cool about you, especially in the early days of OutKast, was that you were pulling from such a wide variety of influences. The sonic palette you guys were working from just seemed so much more broad than other people’s.

"Growing up, we were listening to all genres of music, and appreciating all kinds of artists. There are no boundaries, there are no lines that cannot be crossed, and there is nothing that you cannot experiment with. That gives you a lot of tools to make something special. Why be just locked into one category or genre? That didn’t make sense to me. I listened to everything from Kate Bush, to NWA, to Janis Joplin, to Neil Young, to the Pharcyde, Geto Boys, Bob Marley, I could go on and on. I mean, it just depends on how you feel that day. You absorb all of that stuff, and eventually those influences come out in the work in all kinds of different ways."

You’ve collaborated with all different kinds of people in a variety of different genres. Is there a kind of record that you’d like to make but still haven’t been able to? Or some kind of music that you still think, “Maybe I should try doing that?”

"I’m still trying to do some records with Kate Bush. That’s about it. I’ve worked with everybody under the sun, you know what I mean? Kate Bush is the only person I haven’t worked with that I wanna work with. Her and maybe Sade."

You’ve experienced tremendous success with OutKast. That kind of success—and the expectations it creates—can often play with people’s minds. Some might find that kind of success creatively stifling—as in, how can you possibly follow that?—but I could see how it could also be liberating. Having made one of the biggest pop songs of all time with “Hey Ya,” now you can basically just do whatever you want.

"Exactly, you hit the nail on the head exactly. I mean, after you’ve done it all, won Album of the Year at the Grammy’s, gathered up countless Grammy’s and AMA’s and MTV Moon Men, and BET awards, sold this many records worldwide, there’s really nothing else to prove. Right now music is recreational for me. I love it; it gives me life. And as long as people support me, I’m gonna keep on making it. But I don’t need to spend time thinking about how to top something I did in the past. That wouldn’t be healthy or productive."