Cee Lo Green: 'Andre 3000 suffers from stage fright'

Cee Lo Green has blamed fellow hip-hop star Andre 3000's lengthy hiatus from the music industry on a "severe case of stage fright".

The Forget You hitmaker, who grew up with the rapper in Atlanta, Georgia, claims Andre 3000 worries about living up to the critical acclaim of his last solo material, which was released as part of the Outkast double album Speakerboxxx/The Love Below in 2001.

His publicist recently played down reports suggesting the Hey Ya! star is set to release a new solo album in early 2014, and now Cee Lo has shed some light on why Andre 3000 is taking his time with his music.

Cee Lo tells MTV's Rap Fix Live show, "He just said he had a severe case of stage fright and just kind of been away from the game and didn't know if he could truly live up (to his reputation)... He just said he was bothered by this bar that had been set and maybe he wants to do something different, and he'll always be his worse competition, his worse critic and maybe he don't (sic) want to live up to what people think he should do (sic)."

Andre 3000 has been spending the past few months in Dublin, Ireland filming an upcoming Jimi Hendrix biopic, All Is By My Side, which is set to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in Canada in September (13).