André 3000 fans have been waiting for this for years.

André Benjamin, known better by his André 3000 moniker, was one half of the hip hop duo Outkast, which scored a major hit with “Hey Ya” in 2003, but hasn’t done much since he and Big Boi (Antwan André Patton) dissolved the group in 2006. In the intervening years, André has guested on tracks by artists ranging from Beyoncé to Drake to Frank Ocean, but had yet to produce solo music. Until now.

André 3000 announced Tuesday in an interview with NPR that he is releasing a new album, his first solo record, on November 17th. But don’t expect his debut effort to sound anything like Outkast: New Blue Sun is an 87-minute instrumental featuring Benjamin on the woodwinds.

According to a press release, the album is “a celebratory piece of work in the form of a living, breathing, aural organism.” The release goes on to weave the tale of how André 3000 came to make the record.

“Over the past decade, André 3000 has lived without anchors, gently floating in a breeze. Blink and you might miss him: There he is in Japan, flashing a bright smile and a peace sign, his other hand holding a custom wooden flute,” the release states. “There he is again, this time in an airport terminal, playing a few spare notes to pass the time. Wait, is that André in SoHo with a latte? Casually walking around like he’s not who he is?”

André 3000 calls wind the “most essential element” of New Blue Sun, and backs that up by playing a variety of flutes throughout. “I’ve been interested in winds for a long time, so it was just a natural progression for me to go into flutes,” he said in a statement. “I just like messing with instruments and I gravitated mostly toward wind.”

New Blue Sun has some long-running songs to go with his wordy titles. The opening song is a 12 minute long epic called “I Swear, I Really Wanted to Make a Rap Album But This Is Literally the Way the Wind Blew Me This Time.”

According to the NPR interview. percussionist and experimental jazz artist Carlos Niño introduced André to a community of collaborators, including keyboardist Surya Botofasina and guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Nate Mercereau who would end up contributing to New Blue Sun.

They began recording about a year ago, not intending to make an album, just improvising songs with the musicians responding to each other in real time.

The 48-year-old André 3000 hasn’t left behinid the genre he’s best known for,though. In a statement he says, “in my mind, I really would like to make a rap album. So maybe that happens one day, but I got to find a way to say what I want to say in an interesting way that’s appealing to me at this age.”

The album drops Friday, November 17th via Epic Records.