You've got to figure that a dude best known by a number for his surname is a natural for the television animation world, and that pretty much appears to be the case for Andre 3000 (who now uses the number as more of a middle handle in front of birth name Benjamin). The man best known as half of the Grammy-winning duo OutKast of "Hey Ya!" fame serves as co-creator, exec producer (along with Tom Lynch) and lead voice for "Class of 3000," a funky new Cartoon Network series that targets the 8-to-10 set rather than the avant-garde Adult Swim crowd. The visual style is nothing terribly special, but the hues are rich, the writing reasonably clever and the premise a healthy cut above the often lame-o material that passes for creativity in the kiddie toon universe.

Benjamin is said to have poured his heart and soul into this project for the better part of two years, lending it his sweat and focus in addition to his name. He wrote, he did the music, he helped produce -- he did pretty much everything but animate the images. The tone that Benjamin sets here also is commendable, poking fun at his own fame via the semi-autobiographical characterization of the burned-out rock superstar Sunny Bridges.

In the "Class of 3000" story, Bridges had left his Atlanta hometown 10 years before to pursue his tuneful dream. (Benjamin, too, is an Atlanta native.) When the high-end performance academy he attended as a kid finds itself desperately in need of a new music instructor, Bridges -- needing a long break from the business, anyway -- returns to the school to teach kids how to express themselves rhythmically. It's perfect: He gets to reconnect with his roots, and they get a reluctant basket case of a mentor. It's all very light and packed with energy and vitality, with the young Sunny embodied in the precocious swagger of new charge Li'l d (voiced by Small Fire -- probably not his name at birth).
Embodied in the story line of the opening hour (it gets cut to 30 minutes from here) is the none-too-subtle message that music should be about joy and passion and chasing your dream rather than raking in the dough, and we get the feeling that Benjamin is gonna make good and sure that he makes that case every chance he gets. It's a quaintly idealistic little point, and at least early on it's conveyed in smooth fashion.

The only real caveat here in recommending "Class of 3000" to the child in your home might be that the ongoing "I've got the music in me!" story might prove a tad thin for the youth mainstream in that the music biz itself is so consumed with its own creeping obsolescence. How many different plots can you play off of the "School of Rock" dynamic? But say this for Mr. 3000: He delivers a cartoon that at the outset proves surprisingly light on its feet and charming in its execution.