See Andre 3000 as Jimi Hendrix in Clip From ‘All Is By My Side’ Biopic

The long-awaited Jimi Hendrix biopic Jimi: All Is By My Side won’t see its U.S. premiere until next week at South by Southwest 2014, but Rolling Stone is giving you a first look at Andre 3000 as the guitar god in an exclusive clip today. The video features Hendrix (played by the Outkast’s MC) sitting next to friend Linda Keith (Imogen Poots) in a New York restaurant while future manager Chas Chandler (Andrew Buckley) attempts to convince him to move to London, where guitarists are playing music inspired by the blues.

 “I don’t want to get caught up in those kind of labels, though,” replies Hendrix. “I don’t want it to be, ”˜Well OK, he’s playing the blues,’ or ”˜He’s playing R&B or soul or whatever’.” With the rapper-turned-actor speaking in a rising-and-falling British accent and twisting his afro as he delivers his lines, it’s clear that he was serious when said that he “listened to hours of interviews. I watched films ”“ watched his mannerisms” to understand Hendrix inside-out.

The movie screens on Wednesday, March 12th at Austin’s Paramount Theatre and was written and directed by John Ridley. Accordingly to Ridley, this project began some seven years ago when the Oscar-winning screenwriter behind 12 Years a Slave discovered instrumental rarity “Sending My Love to Linda” and decided to learn more about the woman of the title. Linda, according Ridley’s film, was Linda Keith, a former girlfriend of Keith Richards who became close with Hendrix and encouraged him to work on original material.

Ironically, due to the reluctance of Hendrix’s estate, Jimi: All Is By My Side won’t feature any of the guitarist’s compositions, but it will feature tunes written by Muddy Waters, the Beatles, the Troggs, and a handful of related artists.