By the time Big Boi and Andre 3000 were 23 years old, they had already created three classic rap albums.

Each making up one half of the mighty OutKast, they debuted with Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik in 1994 when the pair were both 18 years old. Two years later, the duo elevated their game by releasing ATLiens and followed that up with possibly their best effort in 1998 with Aquemini.

It’s now approaching 20 years since OutKast released Aquemini and 12 years since they graced our ears with a new album.

Since Idlewild, Andre and Big Boi’s paths have diverged. The young men who crafted some of hip-hop’s most lasting albums are now 43 years old, and the “son on the way by the name of Bamboo” just graduated high school. Big Boi has continued to churn out high-quality music with three solo albums in the last decade in addition to teaming up with Phantogram to form “Big Grams” in 2015.

While Big Boi has continued to rap, Andre 3000 has almost separated himself from the genre entirely. Aside from intermittent guest verses, Benjamin hasn’t shown much interest in any form of music, let alone rap. Instead, Andre 3K has tried to build an acting career that included roles in Semi-Pro and a Jimi Hendrix biopic.

However, Andre 3000 finally released new solo music with two new singles on Mother’s Day. The songs weren’t trunk-rattling bangers like “B.O.B.”, or introspective cuts like “Aquemini”, nor swooning mainstream singles like “Hey Ya” or “Ms. Jackson”.

What 3 Stacks gave us were two incredibly personal records that are unlike anything we’ve heard from him before. The first single, “Me&My (To Bury Your Parents)”, is a four-minute ballad in which Andre dives into the pensieve and reflects on the loss of his parents. The other is a 17-minute jazz track absent of any vocals or bars from 3 Stacks.

In a year that has featured some strange and balls-crazy rap stories—includling Kanye West going full MAGA supporter and saying slavery was a choice, Killer Mike going on NRA TV in support of the second amendment, Pusha T becoming an investigative journalist and Kendrick Lamar winning a freaking Pulitzer Prize—Andre 3000’s return to music with a 17-minute jazz venture is pretty tame.

Despite finally releasing fresh music, the new singles are unlikely to satisfy those who just want to hear Andre 3000 rap. But Andre’s departure from hip-hop isn’t a new development. Even as OutKast grew, so did his proclivity to push past rap into different genres of music. On The Love Below and Idlewild, Andre 3000 barely raps at all and only shares a handful of songs with Big Boi.

The prospect of a new OutKast album or a solo project from Andre 3000 still obsesses rap fans. With every Andre 3K guest verse, interview, Gillette commercial or acting role, the hype and demand for new music intensifies and so does the impatience.

The hypothetical OutKast album isn’t quite as elusive as The Winds of Winter, the “forthcoming” sixth instalment of A Song of Ice and Fire, George R.R. Martin’s series of fantasy novels. The long night that began after the release of A Dance With Dragons has extended seven years with no dream of spring in sight.

With Westeros, George R.R. Martin has built a rich and lucrative world. Each chapter of the five novels is filled with excruciating detail and the series has featured some of the most quintessential moments in modern storytelling. Martin has toiled over the forge to craft complex characters that deserve a good ending.

One of the core themes of the novels is the struggle for power. And in an ironic twist, Martin has lost the power to control the ending to his own story. With the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones slated for release in the first half of 2019, the ending to Martin’s story will be told through the show and not the books.

Of course, the show has deviated so much from the source material at this point that the journey towards the end will likely be vastly different. But the main storylines will probably hit the same notes, and the show’s ending will be the first to be remembered.

The long delay of Winds of Winter has drawn ire from hardcore Thrones fans and has also inspired as many theories about the book’s status as the books themselves. Some think Winds is actually finished, while others believe Martin hasn’t even written a page.

George R.R. Martin and Andre 3000 are both stuck with thirsty fan bases that want nothing more than for their thirst to be quenched with new content. However, new content alone won’t quench that thirst—it has to be the right content.

The aforementioned solo releases from Andre 3000 are unlikely to please fans that want him to rap, and one guest verse per year won’t fill that void. The OutKast reunion tour of 2014 was their first in a decade but it still wasn’t new music. Anything other than a new album where Andre 3000 raps will be criticized by a certain segment of fans, regardless of quality.

Meanwhile, George R.R. Martin has been busy since A Dance With Dragons was released in 2011. He wrote an episode in each of the first four seasons of Game of Thrones, collaborated to release The World of Ice and Fire, and is set to release a detailed history of the Targaryen kings in the fall. But while the supplementary Thrones content was interesting, none of it was Winds of Winter.

What angers fans most, perhaps, is that neither Benjamin or Martin seem to be rushing to provide their base with what they want.

Martin can’t enjoy the spoils of the wars he created without his Twitter mentions turning into a King’s Landing mutiny. Big Boi or Andre 3000 can’t do an interview without being asked about a new OutKast project.

While quenching the thirst would make the fans happy, doing so is exactly what would make Martin and 3000 least happy.

If anything has been made clear since the early days of OutKast, it’s that Andre 3000 is not the same person he was when he made some of the greatest hip-hop albums ever. He may not have lost interest in hip-hop, but he’s certainly lost interest in making hip-hop. At the dawn of his rapping success, Andre 3000 was just a teenager. Now, he’s an adult with a kid and different interests.

While still supporting up-and-comers and providing guest verses for the new generation of hip-hop talent, Andre has almost given up on creating more music himself.

The most telling information on Andre 3000’s future came in a sweeping GQ profile from 2017.

“If you try to point out that André 3000 has already mastered a very specific musical discipline (namely: rapping), he will deflect and say he’s never felt like a strong rapper at all,” writes Will Welch. “At age 42, André doesn’t feel like playing dress-up. Gone are the days of him wearing chaps and football shoulder pads—he just wants to be himself.”

Andre’s eagerness to be himself is the reason the 2014 OutKast reunion tour came as more of a shock than a new album. Despite the gigantic cheques that came from touring, Andre 3000’s anxiety towards performing has been well-documented.

“Because the more you run from it, the worse it gets. You don’t want to explain it, because you don’t want to be a weak link around your friends. I never told my crew for a long time, so I just started getting to myself. Spending more time with myself and stopped touring. And it felt great for me to do that, because it’s like, Phew, I don’t like that life, I don’t like that confrontation.”

In a guest verse on T.I.’s “Sorry”, 3K vents about being an absent member of OutKast on tour.

“And this the type of shit that’ll make you call your rap partner
And say, “I’m sorry I’m awkward, my fault for fuckin’ up the tours”
I hated all the attention so I ran from it (ran from it)”

For the OutKast shows in 2014, Andre had to pretend to be the same 23-year-old that created the hits fans coveted to hear when it’s clear he’s far from that person anymore. The urge to create new music has also dissipated for Andre.

“Actually, I hate going to the studio. So what’s got me going once again is me being excited about other artists. I’ve been working on producing a few artists. A couple projects. But here’s the crazy thing: I don’t have the pulse anymore. Rhythms change every generation. The intensity and the drums change. And I’m not on the pulse. I can’t pretend. It’s kinda like watching your uncle dance. So the only thing I can do is this kind of novelty, off thing for them.”

Meanwhile, George R.R. Martin began writing the Ice and Fire novels in his early 40s and has since built a following that earned his legacy. But that following has also made his later life more stressful.

He’s now far-flung from his 40s, and at a stage in his life when most would be enjoying retirement. But he’s stuck writing a series that will be finished on television by someone else, unable to fully enjoy other aspects of his life without enduring the pestering of fans.

Whether it’s other writing projects, attending conventions or producing other television shows, Martin has been limited in his ability to branch out. There’s also the speculation about Martin’s health and ticking clock on his death that the fan base hasn’t had the grace to leave unspoken.

At best, the most satisfaction 3 Stacks and Martin could gain from giving the people what they want is the relief.

However, like most characters in Ice and Fire, that relief would be short-lived. Conversations around new albums don’t last long in today’s music landscape, with new options available daily. The demand for a new project starts soon after one is released. Once Winds is finally released, the countdown will immediately start for A Dream of Spring and the conclusion of the series.

The cost of creating great and lasting art is that it defines expectations for the future. For Andre Benjamin and George R.R. Martin, their legacy is inescapable. No matter what either of them does, unless it’s a new rap album or The Winds of Winter, they’ll be told to get to work.

Reckoning with the conflicting interests of artists and their fans can be unpleasant, especially when you want artists like Martin and Andre 3000 to be happy. If there’s any comfort to be found, it can come from “Aquemini”: nothing is for sure, nothing is for certain, and nothing lasts forever—not even long waits.