Final month, Berklee College of Music announced that André 3000 can be awarded an Honorary Doctorate at the 2025 graduation on Might 10, becoming a member of the ranks of such esteemed artists as Duke Ellington, Missy Elliot, Quincy Jones, Q-Tip, and lots of extra. That ceremony passed off over the weekend, and now you can watch video of his total speech above.

André started his speech expressing a deep gratitude for being invited and an pleasure for the scholars’ future, even when by his personal admission he could not share their technical data. “If somebody have been to stroll as much as me proper now, and say ‘André, I will offer you two billion {dollars} for those who can look at this keyboard and with solely two seconds on the clock level to a key that might play the E-note,’ I’d not be capable to.”

Maybe for that cause, as an artist whose first devices have been drum machines and samplers, André’s tales of how he fell in love together with his music supply a uncommon sort of perception. And as a music business veteran, the speech is not brief on knowledge, both.

“Folks will discuss what you do, good and unhealthy. You’ll really feel good and unhealthy. However none of it issues. Like as soon as it is recorded, as soon as you’ve got accomplished what you need to do, that is the work. The whole lot else is chatter and it doesn’t matter, it would not contribute to what you are doing.

“So at all times hold your unique cause for doing music, that unique feeling that you just acquired whenever you have been a child whenever you heard the track within the first place, at all times hold that unique feeling.”