André 3000 Says the Drake and Kendrick Beef Made Him 'a Little Sad'

André 3000 wasn't as enthusiastic about the Drake and Kendrick Lamar beef as everyone else was.

In an interview with Kenan Draughorne for Crack magazine, the OutKast rapper was asked for his thoughts on the biggest story in hip-hop this year and suggested he was a fan of the feud at first but eventually felt differently. "I got a little sad, at a certain point," said Three Stacks, who noted he likes both artists.

"In early rap battles, you had kids in the park rapping against each other," he continued. "But it’s not just people rapping now. You got people with 100 employees. You have livelihoods, empires, companies, deals–all of it can be jeopardized. If you don’t have anything to lose, sure, go for it. But if I already made it, I’m not sure it’s even worth it anymore."

Despite his concerns about the beef, he said he liked Kendrick Lamar's reference to him on "Like That," that song that launched the issues between Drizzy and K Dot into overdrive.

"If he walk around with that stick, it ain't André 3K," Kendrick raps on the track, a double-edged reference to being armed and also André's tendency to be spotted out and about with his flute. "As a 49-year-old rapper, you’re just happy to get a shoutout," he said. "But as a rapper, I’ve noticed myself walking around with this stick. So it was a line for me, too, and I was trying to find a way to use it. But Kendrick used it, so I had to say ‘Yeah, he got it.’"

Elsewhere in the interview, he touched upon his interest in artificial intelligence and described ChatGPT as "the ultimate analyzer." He said that he thinks some AI-assisted or generated art is "interesting," but he understands the concern of artists critical of the rise of the controversial technology.

"Before cameras came into play, a king would hire the best artists to paint a portrait of you and your family,” he said. “The best artists were the ones who could make it look as real as possible. But then cameras came along. So you had all these artists saying, ‘What are we going to do now?’ I think we’re at a similar place now. But what happened was–we got Van Gogh, and we got Impressionists. Doing shit the camera couldn’t do. You gotta find your place to be. That’s the humanness.”

He's not the only figure critical of the beef, as Questlove famously suggested no one "won the war" and "hip-hop is truly dead."