Songfacts®:

• "Idlewild Blue (Don'tchu Worry 'Bout Me)" is the fourth track on Outkast's sixth studio album, Idlewild, and the third single released from that album. Idlewild itself has been certified platinum.
  
  As far as this album goes, this is the first song by rapper Andre 3000 (born Andre Lauren Benjamin), who also plays guitar for the number. Yes, that's 12-bar blues on the guitar because, you know, he's kickin' it old-school.
• The song is about a young man wanting to break out on his own, away from the influence of his family and hometown. The video shows Andre performing in an old house which is slowly filling with water during a thunderstorm, which has led some to speculate that it's a metaphor for the Hurricane Katrina disaster and its impact on New Orleans. The end text dedicating the song to "all those trying to stay afloat" also suggests that.
• Andre 3000 also finds time for political and social activism. He's an animal rights advocate for starters; he's a vegan and won PETA's "World's Sexiest Male Vegetarian" award in 2004. Then in 2008 for the US Presidential election, he participated in a startling photo shoot campaign to urge young people to get out and vote, bearing the message, "Only you can silence yourself." The startling part is the theme of mouths being held closed by various devices, including ball gags, duct tape, Hannibal-Lecter-muzzles, and even more painful-looking contraptions. Andre opted for a simple bow tie in the choppers. View the gallery here, if you're not squeamish.
• Where is Idlewild? Nowhere, actually. It's the name of a fictional town in Georgia where the 2006 movie Idlewild takes place. Starring Big Boi and Andre 3000 of Outkast along with Terrence Howard, Cicely Tyson and Ben Vereen, the album serves as the soundtrack to the movie.