Everybody has a theory about why André 3000 stopped making rap records. Nobody has a theory about this one, because as far as I can tell nobody reported it. Recordation V9991D471, recorded 15 July 2021. First party, verbatim: Andre Lauren Benjamin, professionally known as Andre 3000, individually and dba Gnat Booty Music, and Wedontplayevenwhenwebeplayin LLC. Second party: Primary Wave Music IP Fund 3. Roughly 570 compositions. It is publishing rather than masters, and the document is 33 pages for 570 titles, which means it is a short form sitting on top of a long form nobody recorded. The share he actually assigned is not stated anywhere I can see. Now search the other man. Antwan Patton returns 511 hits and 150 recordations, and he is a party to none of them. Every hit is his name appearing as a writer inside somebody else's paperwork. Recording a transfer is optional and plenty of deals never get filed, so the only sentence I can support is that no recorded transfer names him. One of them shows up in the register as a seller. The other shows up only as a name inside other people's documents. Which raises the obvious question: André sold publishing, so why not the records. Because the records were never his to sell. SR0000340520, registered 6 October 2003. Claimant: "© ℗ Arista Records, Inc. (employer for hire)." Two solo albums, two number one singles, one registration. There is no separate registration for The Love Below anywhere. I looked. A sound recording registration follows the claimant's unit of commerce. Arista sold one product, so Arista registered one work. What makes it worth showing you is that the register was perfectly willing to give this catalog two numbers when it wanted to. Stankonia has two registrations. Aquemini has two. Go look at what separates each pair, and it is a profanity. Watch the claimant line move across the catalog. ATLiens 1997, LaFace. Aquemini 1999, Arista, with LaFace named as employer for hire inside the authorship line. Stankonia 2001, back to La Face. The double album 2003, Arista Records Incorporated. The singles in 2004, BMG Music. Idlewild 2006, LaFace Records LLC. Six filings, five versions of the same corporate family, and one thing that never changes. Employer for hire is on every single one. Across every sound recording OutKast ever released, Antwan Patton and André Benjamin appear as claimant exactly zero times. One filing is not like the others. Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik came out in April 1994. It was not registered as a sound recording until 2 February 2018. Twenty four years. And the claimant on that 2018 filing is Arista Records Incorporated, which is strange, because Arista had assigned the whole thing to Sony 9 years earlier. The address on the form is 25 Madison Avenue, 22nd floor, New York, which is Sony's building. Here is how it got to Sony. Recordations V3582D733 and 734, filed 3 September 2009. First party Arista Records LLC, second party Sony Music Entertainment, executed as of 27 December 2008. 734 pages, 1,702 titles. Speakerboxxx/The Love Below is one row in that schedule. The next day, a second document, LaFace Records LLC to Sony, 67 titles, carrying ATLiens. Both executed as of the same December day, because that is a corporate closing date rather than anything to do with music. Last thing, and it is live right now. Section 203 lets an author terminate a grant 35 years on and take the work back. It is how Victor Willis got the Village People songs. Termination notices filed under OutKast, André Benjamin, Antwan Patton: zero. Before you decide that means nothing, I checked whether the system would show me one if it existed. Victor Willis returns 10. LaFace Records returns 3. One of those 3 is Usher. He served his notice on 23 June 2025, on Sony, as successor to LaFace. Same label. Same era. Same successor company. He filed. They have not. Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik turns 35 in 2029. Every document above is free and public.