Andre 3000 Battles Seattle

Ya'll know I love an intellegent hoodlum; And who else would be the epitome of that other than Andre "3000" Benjamin. He's got the street smarts but the swag of the perfect gentleman. What's he been up to lately? He just finished his latest movie "The Battle in Seattle".

No it's not some spin-off of 8-Mile. But when first being handed the script by his agent, That's what Andre thought. "When I saw the title 'Battle in Seattle,' I thought it was catchy," André Benjamin told MTV last week. "I thought, 'Hey, this may be some kind of rap movie.' You know, they want some kind of battle. They want me to do the kind of '8 Mile' battle thing. 'Cause that's the roles they give to rappers anyway. So once I read it, I was like, 'Hey, OK, this is something serious.' And then, the bigger picture, it was something I didn't know about. I knew if I didn't know about it, I knew a lot of people didn't know about it. So I said, 'Let me bring this to the world ... through my people, through people in the rap world.' So at that point, I felt like I was doing a good deed bringing light to it."

The film centers on the 1999 Seattle riots, which started out as peaceful protests against the World Trade Organization and turned into full-scale chaos. Benjamin stars with Ray Liotta, Woody Harrelson and Charlize Theron, among others.

"I was kinda ashamed that I didn't know anything about it," Benjamin explained. "I just felt like me being a part of it would bring a certain audience to it. It's about the riots that took place in '99, when pretty much the whole world protested the WTO. They pulled it off. They were strategic about it. They called it a riot because there were a couple of things that went down that were unfortunate. But pretty much everything was not breaking the law, and they did it smartly.

"I play a protester by the name of Django," he added. "He's pretty much bringing light to the subject. I guess people look at protesting and feel like, of course, it's heavy. You got issues and all this kind of stuff. But my character is the person that keeps everybody on the up-and-up and alive and laughing. Even when we're locked up, I'm always making jokes and trying to keep it together."

"Battle in Seattle" is headed to theaters September 19. Andre 3000's next album is coming to stores on ... well, that's yet to be determined.