As he readies his new solo album, the Outkast star talks of his love for Kate Bush and reveals his plan to rent his infamous Boom Boom Room to Marvel’s stable of superheroes

Antwan André “Big Boi” Patton is telling me that he and his sometime partner in Outkast, Andre “3000” Benjamin, are two of the greatest rappers of all time. “Nobody can rate what’s not on the scale, man. We’re in a whole other dimension. We’re musicians, artists, producers, we do everything, you know? But we’re MCs first and we’re very deadly. Two of the best, absolutely.”

This all comes as something of a surprise. Not the high regard in which Patton holds his own talent but the fact that he’s mentioned Outkast, a topic his management have quite strenuously suggested I consider avoiding, and which, in fairness, you can see why Patton might be sick of talking about.

He’s here promoting his latest solo album, Boomiverse, a work that reunites him with Organized Noize, the celebrated production team instrumental in the rise of southern hip-hop who Patton describes as “the Jedi masters”: “they brought us in at a young age and taught us to be lyrical assassins, they were the guys who made us run round the block reciting our rhymes so that we would learn breath control ready for the stage.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Big Boi teams up with Organized Noize on Boomiverse. Photograph: Amy Sussman/Invision/AP

It is the latest instalment in a post-Outkast career that’s proved nothing if not fascinatingly eclectic. Quite aside from projects ranging from indie rock to ballet – of which more later – he discovered and guided the career of singer Janelle Monáe; signed Killer Mike, now of Run The Jewels, to his label and pursued an acting career (not long ago, he says, he narrowly missed out on a role in Netflix sensation Stranger Things).

And yet, the question of whether or not the 25m-selling duo in which he made his name will ever release more music invariably crops up, not least since they reunited in 2014 for a lucrative 20th anniversary tour. No, he says, he doesn’t feel like the duo hangs over him. It’s just that if he mentions them, journalists have a habit “of taking one thing I say and sensationalising it”. Last month, he casually suggested that he and Andre had vaguely discussed making a biopic, and the next thing he knew, the story was everywhere, replete with suggestions of who might be directing and which actors might be involved. “Someone just took it and ran with it,” he says wearily. “It’s not even in motion.”

In fact, warnings of topics to avoid or not, Patton turns out to be thoughtful and voluble on pretty much every subject, from the necessity of toning down the political references in his music – a former libertarian turned Bernie Sanders supporter, whose new album touches on “the police brutality in their interaction with people”, he nevertheless thinks “you need to sprinkle it … everybody’s talking about politics, people are engaged now more than ever, so perhaps music could be more like an escape” – to canine genetics: he owns a 40-acre dog breeding facility back home in Atlanta that specialises in pitbulls.

During Outkast’s heyday, the popular image was of Andre 3000 as a kind of far-out flower child given to informing interviewers that Jimi Hendrix had appeared to him in a dream, a vegetarian yoga enthusiast who collected antique silk scarves and thought nothing of appearing in promotional photographs wearing a dress. By contrast, Patton was viewed as a substantially earthier figure in the more traditional hip-hop mode; fond of cigars, the aforementioned pitbulls and strip clubs. This was not, it has to be said, an image that Patton exactly went out of his way to dispel. When the TV crew from MTV Cribs turned up, he led them to the part of his house known as the Boom Boom Room, which in addition to a fully equipped wet bar and usual array of expensive boys’ toys, also featured a stage with a stripper’s pole on it.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest With Andre 3000 in Outkast. Photograph: Sony

But the truth was always more complicated than that said image suggested. For one thing, among the plethora of pals in the Boom Boom Room was Andre 3000, wearing an expression that strongly implied he hadn’t come there to practise his asanas. For another, there were always suggestions that a rather more sensitive soul lurked behind Patton’s robust playa facade, not least his obsession with the music of Kate Bush.

“That was my Uncle Russ, the eclectic guy in the family,” he says, “he turned me onto Kate Bush when I was in sixth grade, and I used to ride my bike to school and listen to her albums and feel like I was in a fucking Mary Poppins movie. They were like the best bike rides to school in history”. Said obsession subsequently flowered into a friendship with one of rock’s most elusive figures. He flew in from Atlanta to hang out with her during her run of shows at the Hammersmith Apollo – “I bought every piece of merchandise on the stall, then went backstage and talked with her and drank some wine and it was just fucking incredible” – and talks about one day collaborating with her.

And his post-Outkast career has continued to give the lie to that image. On the one hand, he has a “dope” DJ residency at the Wynn hotel in Las Vegas, but on the other, his choice of collaborators is thick with artists whose work one suspects seldom graces the PA of an Atlanta strip club: preternaturally weedy emo electronic act Owl Service; indie band Modest Mouse; dreamy synth-poppers Phantogram. The dog-breeding aside, his extra-musical business activities seem to mark him out as a very singular figure in the world of hip-hop: most rappers tend to opt for endorsing sportswear or their own brands of booze, Patton has a range of socks and dog shampoo that apparently leaves your four-legged friend “smelling like cotton candy for three or four days afterwards”. And then there was the ballet, Big, a collaboration with the venerable Atlanta Ballet company.

“The first rap artist to do that,” he beams. “It just made the music look so beautiful, the softness and agility of the dancing. Class personified.”

He thinks he might have mellowed with time. These days, he tests out his new material by playing it to his children – “I’ll be taking my boys to football practice and they’re like ‘hey dad, put that song on with Killer Mike!’ and I just take a little note here and a little note there and they’ve kind of been helping me out big time, man” It seems a marked difference to the days when he used to try out new Outkast tracks by taking them to the local strip club. “If you do something for so long, it kind of just gets burnt out on it,” he shrugs. “We still go to strip clubs, but we just don’t go six days a week, it might be more like … well, it depends.”

There follows a brief discussion as to how often it’s permissible for a happily-married man to visit a strip club: I’m fairly certain the answer is “never”, but Patton isn’t so sure. “Maybe once a month, once every couple of months?” he suggests. “But like I said, we were going there six days a week for at least seven years straight.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Big and Bobbi dog shampoo range. Photograph: Big Boi and Bobbi

Moreover, his mother has, improbably enough, inherited the Boom Boom Room. “It’s called the Den-Den now,” he nods. “I gave my mom that house, and everything has changed. The walls aren’t red anymore, they’re like the colour of this room, it all just looks like a regular room, except for the pole. The pole is still there. My mom kept the pole. We eat Thanksgiving dinner there now.”

I don’t mean to sound prudish, but does it not feel a bit peculiar eating Thanksgiving dinner with your mum in a room with a stripper’s pole in it?” He smiles. “It’s one of the wonders of the world, man! It’s like a family heirloom, keep it in the family. A lot of memories, a lot of songs came out of there. My mom wants to move to a high-rise, so I’m going to get the house back from her and put her in a high rise close to where I am, and I’m going to AirBnB the Boom Boom Room.”

I laugh, but he keeps talking, and I can see the business brain that already gave the world Left Foot By Big Boi socks and Big Boi And Bobbi Tough And Swanky Shampoo whirring into action: he seems to have hit upon a potential market for a multiple Fayetteville residence with its own stripper’s pole. “You know, Georgia’s like the southern Hollywood these days,” he says. “They get tax credits, so like the new Avengers movie, the Black Panther movie, all the superhero movies, they shoot them in Atlanta. The movie studios are out there. That,” he announces triumphantly, “is why I’m going to AirBnB the Boom Boom Room.”

Boomiverse is released on 16 June