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PHOTO: ERYKAH BADU (b. February 26, 1971)
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/erykah-badu-mn0000170770#biography
Erykah Badu
(b. February 26, 1971)
Biography by John Bush
She grew up listening to '70s soul and '80s hip-hop, but Erykah Badu drew more comparisons to Billie Holiday upon her breakout in 1997, after the release of her first album, Baduizm. The grooves and production on the album are bass-heavy R&B, but Badu's languorous, occasionally tortured vocals and delicate phrasing immediately removed her from the legion of cookie-cutter female R&B singers. A singer/songwriter responsible for all but one of the songs on Baduizm, she found a number 12 hit with her first single, "On & On," which pushed the album to number two on the charts.
Born Erica Wright in Dallas in 1971, Badu attended a school of the arts and was working as a teacher and part-time singer when she opened for D'Angelo at a 1994 show. D'Angelo's manager, Kedar Massenburg, was impressed with the performance and hooked her up with the singer to record a cover of the Marvin Gaye/Tammi Terrell duet "Precious Love." He also signed Badu to his recently formed Kedar Entertainment label, and served as producer for Baduizm, which also starred bassist Ron Carter and members of hip-hop avatars the Roots on several tracks. The first single, "On & On," became a number one R&B hit in early 1997, and Baduizm followed it to the top of the R&B album charts by March. Opening for R&B acts as well as rap's Wu-Tang Clan, Erykah Badu stopped just short of number one on the pop album charts in April. Her Live album followed later in the year.
In 2000 she returned with her highly anticipated second studio album, Mama's Gun, which was co-produced by Badu, James Poyser, Bilal, and Jay Dee and contained the hit single "Bag Lady." Worldwide Underground, a loose affair billed as an EP despite being longer than many full-lengths, was released in 2003. Her next step, 2008's New Amerykah, Pt. 1: 4th World War, was a heavy and abstract release featuring collaborations with the members of Sa-Ra and Georgia Anne Muldrow; it reached number two on the Billboard 200 and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Albums charts. New Amerykah, Pt. 2: Return of the Ankh, looser and more playful than Pt. 1, followed in 2010. Appearances on Flying Lotus' Until the Quiet Comes (2011), Robert Glasper's Black Radio (2012), Tyler, The Creator's Wolf and Bonobo's The North Borders (both 2013), brought the artist to 2015, when she released the official mixtape But You Caint Use My Phone on the Motown label.
“This is my museum,” Ms. Badu, 37, said of the rent-controlled one-bedroom in Fort Greene where she has lived on and off since coming to New York, demo tape in hand, 11 years ago from her native Dallas, where she was Erica Wright.
“Since I’ve been here I’ve had two children, a few boyfriends, a lot of records,” she continued in her slight, girly drawl. “Everyone that comes over here draws on the wall or leaves something. You’re looking at my mind when you’re looking at these things.” Decorating the hallway, for instance, is a three-foot-tall ankh; artwork by her 10-year-old son, Seven, underneath a magazine photo of his father, the rapper André Benjamin of OutKast; yellow caution tape; dried flowers; protest-style placards; and a metal trash can lid, hung on the wall like an art piece. (“I thought it was cute,” she said.)
As idiosyncratic as the memorabilia on her walls, her first full-length album in eight years is a dense, stylistic mash-up. By turns overtly political and intensely personal, with 1970s-groove instrumentation, hip-hop phrasing and a roster of beats and samples from collaborators like the D.J. and producer Madlib, it is fierce but weird. And apart from “Honey,” the bouncy, playful single, it is largely uncommercial. In his review for The New York Times, Ben Ratliff called it “a deep, murky swim in her brain.”
But after such a prolonged absence its release still feels like a comeback event. Thanks to Ms. Badu’s appealingly eccentric neo-soul sex goddess/funky earth mama/black power revolutionary persona, her pipe cleaner of a voice, thin and bendy, her sultry delivery and beauty, she’s still a potentially bankable star. (The designer Tom Ford recently named her the face of his forthcoming fragrance.) And with R&B sales down 18 percent last year, the industry seems willing to take a risk on an independent-minded artist, especially one with a following.
“I think Erykah is one of the few artists that truly does have a movement,” said Sylvia Rhone, the president of Universal Motown. “Her music has changed, but she’s been feeding people this creative change all these years, and she’s stayed very connected with her fan base,” through live performances, online groups and other projects like acting in movies. She added that while Janet Jackson’s new record may outsell hers at Best Buy and Target, “Erykah will dominate at the independent record stores.”
After a public bout of writer’s block that led to her “Frustrated Artist” tour in 2003 and 2004, Ms. Badu is eager to promote what she calls her magnum opus. “New AmErykah” is part of a creative torrent that includes a sequel record, due in the summer, and an unrelated retro-minded album, “Lowdown Loretta Brown,” scheduled for the fall, both on Universal Motown. Ms. Badu also plans to start a lifestyle magazine, The Freaq, this summer; the first issue will come with a copy of “New AmErykah: Part Two.” Both records will also be available on a U.S.B. stick for fans to plug into their computers; for added value Ms. Badu wants to record a U.S.B. commentary track to explain her references and inspiration. A tour will start in May.
“I swear to God, this must be my artistic peak,” Ms. Badu said in an earlier interview at Electric Lady, where she walked around barefoot, belled anklets jingling above her tiny manicured feet. “I hope my sexual peak comes soon too,” she added, and laughed. Then, switching to bohemian mama mode: “If something happened to me, I would want them to say, ‘This is what your mother was about.’ ”
Ms. Badu is “one of those performers that don’t necessarily fit in,” said Stephen Hill, executive vice president for music talent and programming at BET, which has been aggressively playing the video for “Honey.” “She creates music as she wants to, and then it’s up to the public to decide.” He added that the new album was “not like anything that’s out there, and that’s what makes it exciting,” especially when the mainstream music business feels slack.
Of course Ms. Badu already had a legacy to build on. Her debut album, “Baduizm,” released in 1997, sold nearly three million copies, winning her two Grammys and comparisons to Billie Holiday, Diana Ross and Chaka Khan. By the time her follow-up, “Mama’s Gun,” was released in 2000, she had earned a title: the queen of neo-soul. And she was part of an era of left-of-center black singer-songwriters like Jill Scott, Angie Stone and Macy Gray; her male counterparts included D’Angelo and Maxwell. Like Ms. Badu many of them struggled to keep their creative momentum, conflicted about their early mainstream success.
“I think most of us went through our psychosomatic, quasi-self-saboteur stage,” said ?uestlove, the drummer for the Philadelphia group the Roots and a member of what he called the Soulquarian scene, which flourished in the late ’90s and included Ms. Badu and other socially conscious acts like Talib Kweli and Common.
“Once we got that first taste of success, I think just the pressure of reacting got to all of us. Some of us released some of the craziest records of our career,” and some, like D’Angelo, retreated altogether, he said. As Ms. Badu’s popularity exploded, there was a backlash, he said. Her hair, her love life, her mystical beliefs all came into question. “Is she real or is she fake, is she pretentious?” he said. “She was thrown off.”
Suffering from writer’s block and plagued by self-doubt — “I felt like a failure,” Ms. Badu said — she soured on being the queen of neo-soul. “I hated that because what if I don’t do that anymore?” she said. “What if I change? Then that puts me in a penitentiary.”
She took time off to care for her two children — she also has a daughter, Puma, 3, with the rapper D.O.C. (Her kids’ beds, mattresses on the floor, are feet away from hers in her Brooklyn living room. The family mostly lives in a house in Dallas.) Meanwhile the music industry entered the digital age, and Ms. Badu, a self-described “analog girl in a digital world,” was in danger of being left behind.
But in 2004 ?uestlove gave her a computer — her first — for Christmas. She chatted online with producer friends like him, Q-Tip and J Dilla, and they began to bombard her with music. “Everybody sending me these things, saying, ‘Erykah, come on, we want you back, we need you to do this,’ ” Ms. Badu said.
Her son introduced her to GarageBand, the music-making program for Macs, and she was off. With the laptop, “I could be here, in my own space, with headphones on, and the kids could be doing what they doing, and I’m cooking dinner still, I’m making juices still, and it’s so easy just to sing,” she said. “You got an idea — boom! Idea, boom!”
In about a year she wrote more than 75 songs, many of which she split among the three albums. Lyrically “New AmErykah” is charged by a rambling political fervor and a level of introspection that were only hinted at in her previous work. There is hard-boiled speechifying laced with Nation of Islam exultations and occasional clarity. (On “Me,” she gives a succinct autobiography: “Had two babies different dudes/ thought for them both my love was true/ that’s just me,” she sings. “Will I escape this vanity/or will I keep on smoking trees?”) Guest musicians include the jazz vibraphonist Roy Ayers and the Mars Volta guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez. Ms. Badu said she did not have a sound in mind for the “New AmErykah” records. “I’m just giving my testimony,” she said.
The inventive video for “Honey” shows her image inserted into more than a dozen classic album covers, from the Beatles’ “Let It Be” to De La Soul’s “3 Feet High and Rising,” with hairstyles to match. (She makes a particularly convincing Grace Jones.) She conceived it herself, she said, a fitting choice for someone with an ever-evolving, outsize style. The bedroom in her apartment serves mostly as a storage space for a tangle of costumes and Afro wigs (her look for the new album). During the two interviews she once wore a pair of Carol Channingesque black glasses (sans lenses) and once had fake freckles drawn on her cheeks, and never looked any less stunning.
“You know, you cannot look Erykah Badu directly in the eye,” Mr. Hill said. “She will suck you in, and you just want to follow her and make sure everything works out for her.”
?uestlove agreed. When Ms. Badu arrived in Philadelphia to record in the late ’90s, “I noticed that our entire community suddenly wanted to pay us a visit,” he said. “It was like everyone she met fell in love with her within five minutes.”
“We thought we was gonna be fighting each other” over her, he added.
Ms. Badu wouldn’t say who she’s dating now, but “I haven’t been single since I was 5,” she said. “Ego has to have a boyfriend.”
As mystical as Ms. Badu’s interests are — ancient Egypt, which she calls Kemet, astrology and the power of positive thinking, á la “The Secret” — she is equally grounded in the realities of the contemporary music business.
“I know Erykah Badu is a brand,” she said. “And I try to make sure that I’m on point with that — every part of me. I’m healthy. I make sure I’m at the meeting. I try to be on time.”
“Try” may be the operative word. Her publicist, working at a computer nearby, looked up skeptically when she said this. “Carla, keep typing,” Ms. Badu said mock-authoritatively. She smiled and added, “Hey, procrastination is living.”
As her publicist no doubt knew, on the morning of the interview Ms. Badu’s procrastination included a Very Important and Much-Delayed Bath. It was so relaxing and emotionally potent — she talked about it in response to a question about finding her spirituality — that it led to the cancellation of a photo shoot and other meetings.
“I hadn’t been away from that studio, girrrl — I was using the funk,” she said. “That’s why you hear it, I was so funky.”
As she floated in the tub (“I always go all the way underneath the water and try to hold my breath a long time,” she said), she had a revelation: “Different thoughts kept coming into my head. The first thought was, ooh, I wonder if my hair gonna be cute when I get out. And then another voice over me said, Ego, we need you, we’re going to need you for our mission. And another voice over my head goes, oh, Willpower, bless your heart, you’re going to be stronger soon. And then another voice — oh Heart, you’re so compassionate, you have to toughen up a little.
“I figured out, like, wow, all of these things in me are fighting to have a space all the time, and it’s like a dialogue going on inside of me all the time.”
Ms. Badu is certain her fans are now ready to hear it. “Being humble is so 2007,” she said. “Trust me.”
Correction: March 16, 2008 Because of an editing error, an article on March 2 about the singer Erykah Badu misstated the name of the song on her new album whose lyrics offer a succinct autobiography. It is “Me,” not “M.”
The Soul and Science of Erykah Badu
R&B's hippie high priestess blasts off into outer space with New Amerykah Part Two,' her freakiest, funkiest album ever
Erykah Badu
Album: Mama's Gun
Nov 21, 2000From its audacious title through its final note, Erykah Badu's 1997 debut Baduizm announced the arrival of a new force in contemporary R&B. Influenced by hip-hop in attitude but leaning heavily on older traditions, the album found Badu stepping forward to fill a void with aching, earthy bohemianism and a sound that recalled rich jazz and R&B traditions of the past without crossing into Lenny Kravitz-style retro-mimicry. Three years on, Badu has returned to a music scene she helped shape, having paved the way for Macy Gray and others. But if Badu is worried about proving anything, her sophomore album Mama's Gun doesn't let it show. A little grittier and with just the right amount of added ambition, Mama's Gun picks up where Baduizm left off. Badu fiddled with the album's song sequence until the last minute—due to missed deadlines, only the face of the CD itself bears the correct running order—but the results suggest that she got it right. Beginning with the mournful and angry "Penitentiary Philosophy," Gun's songs portray the trials of a willful young woman in a world filled with hardships, unworthy lovers, and soul-stealing temptations. Finding happiness on "Orange Moon" and the Stephen Marley duet "In Love With You," Badu's voice becomes one of the sweetest instruments around. But the innate toughness is always apparent, rising to the surface on "Bag Lady" (an anti-materialism anthem) and "A.D. 2000" (an Amadou Diallo lament) and making clear the grand, spiritual themes at play in Badu's music. Factor in the deceptively simple arrangements, a lovely breakup suite ("Green Eyes"), and near-infinite replay value, and it becomes clear that it'll take at least another three years for the world to catch up with this one, too.
The Survivors: Erykah Badu
In the mid-’90s, a record excutive named Kedar Massenburg coined the term "neo-soul" to describe a new breed of RB artists—particularly D’Angelo, Maxwell, Lauryn Hill, and a certain head-wrapped chanteuse from Dallas—who defined the incense-fogged utopianism of the period. The name stuck, but Erykah Badu, now 40, never loved the label—fortunately she outlasted that moment in music. Or rather, she transcended it. First with the sultry, ballsy "Tyrone," letting her freak flag fly both sonically and follicly, through more than a decade of jams, and into the future with her recent New AmErykah diptych. Badu talks here about growing up in Dallas, getting inspired by Steve Harvey, and learning to keep it real from Mahalia Jackson and her grandmother.
** Erykah Badu: **Artists need some kind of stimulating experience a lot of times, which crystallizes when you sing about it or paint it or sculpt it. You literally mold the experience the way you want. It’s therapy.
GQ: What was the experience that spawned your last two albums, New AmErykah Part One and Part Two?
** Erykah Badu: **I didn’t have a vision for it. I don’t think about that before I start writing. Not until a body of work starts to appear do I think about a concept for it. It’s usually not because of what I’m saying, it’s because of the frequency of the music—it all sounds right together, you know? Certain kinds of music make me write about a certain kind of thing.
GQ: What about when you’re putting a tour together?
** Erykah Badu: **That’s different. When you’re doing an album, you’re perfecting a moment in time that will be like that forever. When you’re performing, you’re creating a moment. It’s a different mindset, you know? You need that immediate feedback from the audience, who have come for the same reason you came. It’s more fun, with less deadlines and pressure, and a lot more freedom.
**GQ: How often do you change your set list? **
** Erykah Badu: **We have a certain set we rehearse, and then, depending on how the audience is feeling, I change it up. Like for [the festival] Rock the Bells, I was supposed to be doing [her 1997 debut album] Baduizm in its entirety and that’s kind of wild. That was not written to be done as a live album.
GQ: What’s it like going back to that record now?
** Erykah Badu: **I do a lot of it in my shows. The whole thing, from beginning to end. It matters to me, where I was at that time, the things I remember going through.
GQ: How are you different now?
** Erykah Badu: **I’m more experienced in certain areas but I have the same me to evolve as I did then.
GQ: Back in 1997, there was a lot of attention being paid to neo-soul. Did you feel a part of that moment?
** Erykah Badu: **It was constructed outside of us. I think titles in music are mainly constructed to categorize things to sell units. If I can speak for a lot of artists who feel the same way I do, it doesn’t really matter. I don’t have one song that sounds like another one in my entire catalog. It only sounds alike because I’m present in all of it.
GQ: Would you change anything about the way you handled the start of your career?
** Erykah Badu: **Nope.
GQ: You’re happy with how everything played out?
** Erykah Badu: **Absolutely. I don’t have a horror story at all.
GQ: How did you get started as a singer?
** Erykah Badu: **I had been a theater major and a dancer for most of my life, from the time I was 4 years old. I liked singing and any kind of art and I knew this love for art and this practicing would be my career at some point. I just didn’t know if it’d be theater or film. I wrote my first song when I was in a group with my cousin, called "Apple Tree." My cousin liked the song; he played it for people and they liked it, and I said, "Alright, another one!"—and on and on, until we had put together a 14-song demo in Dallas in his room. We took a couple of pictures and we were called Erykah Free—his name was Free. But in my heart, I didn’t want to be in a group. I wanted to be a solo artist. I’m a warrior, a lone kind of chick. We separated and I moved to New York and auditioned for many labels and they didn’t really get it. A couple put me into artist development—a Special Ed kind of thing [laughs]. Then I met this guy, Kedar Massenburg, who was managing D’Angelo at the time, and he understood what I was doing. He also understood that what me and D’Angelo had in common was not that we sounded alike, but that we didn’t sound like what was happening [in music at the time]. That’s how Kedar put it. He asked me to open for D’Angelo when he went to Dallas and Kedar really liked what he heard and both of us got a deal at Universal and I’ve been there ever since. I’ve been moved to Motown ’cause they divide you up like cattle in different sections of the system—the machine [laughs]. Anyway, Baduizm came out the way it was as a demo. I added a few songs from The Roots whom I did not know until I moved to New York. "The Other Side of the Game" turned out to be my favorite song to perform live. Period.
GQ: You were a rapper at one point, too. Was there a time when being an MC seemed more likely for you than being a singer?
** Erykah Badu: **That was back when I was in college. I went to [Grambling State] university from 1989 to ’93 to study theater, so I was an actor at that point. It wasn’t my aspiration to be a singer, it was to be an artist. When I was 23 or 24, I was rapping and emceeing a lot with Free, but I was also working at Steve Harvey’s comedy house. He was my boss—the best boss ever. Funny, generous, considerate, and he knew I was an artist. When I started working there I was a waitress, and somehow I became a hostess. When he knew he could trust me, he moved me to the ticket booth. I handled money and helped organize transportation and hotel reservations for the comedians that came in. I noticed Steve didn’t have a stage manager, so I got that job, making sure everybody was taken care of. I love being of service to people—the whole act of it is really great to me. One day Steve was late going onstage, so I went out to the mic and threw out some jokes and stuff. People were laughing and heckling and having fun and Steve came onstage and scolded me in front of everybody. It was so funny. We started doing it every night. _[Laughs] _It felt like, This is where I want to be. Steve was really inspirational in that.
GQ: Do you remember when you first sang in public?
** Erykah Badu: **I was five or something. At school. I was in a Christmas play in kindergarten. There was a part of a little boy who sings "Somebody Snitched on Me," and all the boys in my class were in line auditioning. So I got in line, too. It was acting, and I figured I could act like a boy. The music teacher, Ms. Goodman, who had a big influence on me, encouraged me to do it. The other kids were laughing, but I was like, I’m serious, I can pull this off if you give me the opportunity. That was the first time. I was petrified and at first my voice and hands were shaking, but when I saw people having that look—the look I always look for, the I’m happy for you look—I knew I was doing a good job. I got unscared and, you know, pulled some antics, and that was my first time.
**GQ: When you were making that demo with Free, did you ever imagine you’d end up where you are now? **
** Erykah Badu: **I just knew it felt good and I had a real competitive spirit, just wanting to be accepted among my peers. I didn’t know. I still don’t know. I try to be honest and I keep moving.
GQ: What was Texas like when you were growing up?
** Erykah Badu: **Texas, to me, was my school, home, my Church sometimes, the movies sometimes. My world was in my head—it still is. I didn’t know who was poor or rich. My mom and grandma and everybody just made it a good time all the time. Music was always going. My grandmother was very, very hard, and I saw that, but we would always be laughing. I got two grandmothers and my mother’s mother and father’s mother are both in their 80s and still alive and still—how do I put it?—actively opinionated. [laughs] And I trust them dearly. My grandmother on my father’s side bought me a piano when I was seven. I didn’t know how to read music, so she’d put the charts up, and she don’t know how to read either, so I would pretend. If she hears this interview, then she’ll know that, otherwise she’ll never know! I wrote the first song on that piano and she sang. She has a beautiful voice. It reminds me of [starts singing] Soon I will be done... [stops singing]. What’s that lady’s name? An old gospel singer. Very famous.
GQ: Mahalia Jackson?
** Erykah Badu: **Yes! She was a straitlaced grandmother, very religious. If I had to sing something on the piano, it couldn’t be saying baby or nothing, it had to be Jesus. It had to mean something.
GQ: How did that influence you?
** Erykah Badu: **Greatly! I still carry that with me. Not literally, but I understand the lesson, which is, Make sure it’s real. When you do it, it gotta be real, or that’s not it. That is something I carry with me in my pocket.
GQ: Did your mother encourage you being an artist?
** Erykah Badu: **Hell yeah. She’s my number-one fan, supporter, and everything. I don’t know nothing about failing as a result of what she says to me. "You’re gonna win. You’re the best. Don’t worry about it. You got it. You’re the dopest. They can’t fuck with you." That’s her. All day. That’s, to me, an example of great parenting. Maybe we missed a couple things, some name-brand cookies, but I had everything.
GQ: What did she think of your moving to New York?
** Erykah Badu: **Same thing. She encouraged me. She saw it before me, you know? She knew what was going to happen because she saw how much time I put into my craft. She made it available to me. Instead of going to summer school, go to summer art camp. She would meet people in charge of certain programs, and we’d get in for free—different art programs and things. She knew. She noticed it. My mom is an artist in her own way, not in the same way I am, but she recognized that I had a talent. [long pause] She didn’t push me to do it, or make it something I had to do; I didn’t feel like I was living vicariously through her. She knew what was up, you know? She rarely came to the shows. She had other stuff she needed to do. But I showed her the pictures, what I wore. She knew. We had such a great relationship.
GQ: Your style is like nobody else. Where did that come from?
** Erykah Badu: **That’s just what I was. That’s what I love about Kedar: He didn’t say anything about that. I felt embraced by him. It just so happens that it was something fresh to people. I try to keep it fresh, you know? I enjoy it. It’s art, for me. It’s a functional art.
GQ: What’s next thing for you?
** Erykah Badu: **I’m recording an album right now, with [experimental music producer] Flying Lotus. I’m touring. But things are slowing down now ’cause my children are in school again. [Badu has three children: a son with Andre 3000; a daughter with rapper the D.O.C.; and a daughter with rapper Jay Electronica.] This is the time of year when we all nest in our little home in Dallas and cook breakfast and all those things we been doin’ on tour, just in one place. I’m kind of a recluse when it comes to going outside.
GQ: How did you and Flying Lotus hook up?
** Erykah Badu: **We were talking to each other on MySpace years ago when MySpace was a thing. Social networking was how we hooked up. I told him I’d be in L.A. and he came over to Steve Wilson’s house—Stevie is a psychedelic guitar player, a great musician. If both of our worlds can meet and we feel good about it, it’s going to be something dope.
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/11562-new-amerykah-part-one-4th-world-war/
Erykah Badu
New Amerykah Part One: 4th World War
Motown, 2008
RATING: 7.8
by Nitsuh Abebe
June 6, 2008
Pitchfork
New Amerykah is the first in a series of pointedly social records from Badu, and "you are me"-- or maybe we are we-- could be its motto, or possibly its intended effect. I don't bring up politics for nothing. That attitude, and a lot of the record's concerns, have their roots in the same era that animates Rev. Wright-- those Civil Rights and post-Civil Rights moments when African-Americans were left with some strange, heavy tasks: sorting out how to have a cultural identity as part of a nation that had, up until very recently, been a dedicated adversary, and sorting out how to clean up the wreckage that had accumulated in the meantime. A lot of the critical love for New Amerykah seems rooted in a love for the music of that period-- a time in which popular black artists made records filled not only with visionary, avant-garde sounds, but with a social expansiveness, a fire and ambition to say something important to and for a community. Reviews put this record in a line with those artists: Sly Stone, Marvin Gaye, Miles Davis, Stevie Wonder, Funkadelic; you could tie it even more easily to a lot of smart-guy late-80s hip-hop digging into the same ideas. Nobody who's been paying attention will be surprised at the thought of that mantle being picked up by a woman.
This album doesn't just have the personal and social ambitions of those old records-- plenty of charmless "nu-soul" records aspire to that-- but some of the sonic ones, too. Big tracks aside, it's an awfully static record, which gives it the kind of high-art "difficulty" that we critics have been known to like. The beats, by hip-hop producers like Madlib, 9th Wonder, and Shafiq Husayn, trail sneakily by, leaving Badu-- without the aid of verses, choruses, or much structure at all-- to scribble all over them in her perfect/imperfect voice. (One track, "My People", is mostly just a repeated mantra; the rest of Badu's vocal scribbling is buried far back in the mix, like an incidental decoration.) These things should pose problems; one of the chief wonders of New Amerykah is that they don't. Instead, they allow for a sense of intimacy and freedom. At the end of one already-great track, there's an offhand doodle that's one of the most amazing pieces of music I've heard all year: It's just Badu, with some chatter in the background, singing her mother's history in unison with a muted trumpet. But you can hear the two musicians working happily to stay in unison, all through a complex jazz run, even trying to match their vibratos; you can imagine the takes where they miss it and laugh a little. It makes a little joke, and it closes on a terrific line about her mother's resilience-- "Even though it was hard, you would never ever know it"-- and in the end I can't think of a nobler use for recording equipment.
It's those personal moments that sell things, even more so than in Badu's back catalog; credit usually goes to her gift of a voice, which she uses impressionistically instead of composing, but it's always been her keen writing about people that gives her tracks much of their shape. The trumpet comes at the end of a track called "Me", which despite the title is more candid than narcissistic-- a gorgeous, sunny, soft-soul beat over which Badu sings about getting older, getting thicker, having two kids with different fathers. That candor is also a lot of what sells Badu's social concerns, which could otherwise sound like a laundry list of black-community struggles: poverty, urban violence, bad policing, AIDS, the psychological hard spot of teenage girls, complacency, and get-mine nihilism versus hope for something else. These things get filtered through Badu's head into real scenery instead of placeholders, and folded in among other things that seem remarkably sincere and personal: mourning for the late producer J Dilla, an earnest belief in hip-hop as a uniting culture, and that we is we attitude. Even the beats wind up feeling earnest. The bulk of them are dark, blunted, woozy, and paranoid; the exceptions are light, breezy, calm. But all of them feel like walking out onto an empty big-city sidewalk in the hours after sunrise, when everything's chilly, dewy, and strange.
There are times, as the album drags on, where that static darkness really does become a problem-- where the record begins to seem indulgent, half-finished, or slapped together. Part of the marvel of it, though, is how she still pulls this off, every bit of it, on sheer...Baduizm: Even when she seems wrong, or dippy, or maybe a little batty, she's still a ridiculously compelling and likable personality. This is something no one should criticize in music: recognizable, complex, three-dimensional character. Neither should we be too skeptical about people inclined to laud this as a strong new flash of old-style, socially engaged r&b: Those ambitions are worth praising, and those eras worth looking back on, so long as it doesn't come along with the mean-spirited, bad-faith complaint that "all" of today's black music is "just about guns/sex/money," or with this free-floating idea that the experiences of black people must always be treated as a socio-political "issue". Badu's difficult and complicated, and not even in a self-absorbed way-- it makes for good, deep records and shows that'll never start on time. ("Time is for white people," she recently joked to Blender, one-upping the old line about running on African Time.) I don't know if we're still voting for public policy based on who we'd rather have a beer with, but it occurs to me that I don't know many people who wouldn't love to grab a drink with Badu.
Godmother of Soul
When Erykah Badu told Zach Witness, an unheralded producer from East Dallas, that she might like to come to his home studio and work on some music, he didn’t dare believe her. Badu, who is forty-five, has lived in Dallas all her life. But she spends a considerable part of every year on the road, as has been her custom since 1997, when she released her début album, “Baduizm,” which sold millions of copies, earned her a pair of Grammys, and made her one of the most celebrated soul singers of the modern era. The word people used back then was “neo-soul,” but nowadays it seems appropriate to omit the “neo”—not because her music has grown more old-fashioned but because it has grown harder to categorize, and maybe even easier to enjoy.
Witness is twenty-three, and he had been a fan of Badu ever since he was five years old, when he saw her surreal appearance on “All That,” a comedy show on the kids’ channel Nickelodeon. “This woman came on with incense, a head wrap, and tea,” he remembers. She was impossibly elegant, intoning lyrics that sounded like a dreamy distant cousin of the blues:
No doubt many Nickelodeon viewers were confused, but Witness was converted, especially once he discovered that the singer was also a local. Badu had come of age in the late nineteen-eighties, in Dallas’s embryonic hip-hop scene; two decades later, as Witness nursed his own obsession with hip-hop, he tried to live up to her example. (As a teen-age d.j. called White Chocolate, he entertained black and Latino crowds at the local skating rink.) Last year, he paid tribute to Badu with a faintly psychedelic remix of one of her best-loved songs, “Bag Lady,” which he posted online, along with a note in which he confessed that he viewed her as “a second mother.”
The remix was just one small sign of Badu’s enduring appeal and influence. Although she sometimes calls herself Analog Girl, she is adept at social media, and when she heard Witness’s remix she responded, on Twitter, with a four-letter word of praise: “Oooh.” Badu and Witness traded messages, and she told him that she had been thinking about recording a version of “Hotline Bling,” the viral hit by Drake, built around a passive-aggressive reminder to an old flame: “You used to call me on my cell phone.” This exchange scarcely prepared Witness for the shock of seeing Badu, a few days later, at the front door of his house—the same house where he had once watched her on television. She took him out for vegan food, and then they got to work.
The first session took about twenty minutes; Badu sang the words a few times, and before she finished warming up Witness had captured what became the final version. With a few lyrical edits, she made the song seem teasing and affectionate, as if she were both taking part in a dating ritual and observing it fondly from afar. While Drake moaned that his ex was “wearing less and going out more,” Badu seemed happy to report that hers was “getting dressed and going out more.” Eventually, she and Witness created a musical diptych, with two versions of “Hotline Bling,” a semitone apart, separated by a spoken interlude, purportedly the outgoing message on Badu’s cell phone:
The joke, if it was a joke, quickly grew more ambitious. Badu thought of other songs about phones: “Mr. Telephone Man,” by New Edition; “U Don’t Have to Call,” by Usher. She and Witness recorded eleven tracks in about as many days, culminating in an inspired reimagining of the Isley Brothers’ “Hello It’s Me,” for which Badu enlisted a special guest: André Benjamin, known as André 3000, from OutKast, who is the father of her oldest child. (Witness remembers trying not to act starstruck when he showed up: “It was literally André fucking 3000 on my porch, like, ‘What’s up, man?’ ”) Badu and Benjamin’s playful duet helped to turn her quirky phone project into a major musical event. She called the collection “But You Caint Use My Phone,” borrowing a line from “Tyrone,” one of her biggest hits. It was not quite an album, but when it arrived on iTunes it leaped to No. 2 on the album chart, behind Adele’s “25.” On music Web sites, Badu was suddenly ubiquitous again.
Some fans were surprised by Badu’s new sound: a singer once known for incense and head wraps had tackled—and possibly improved—an electro-pop hit by Drake. Most were simply happy to have something fresh to listen to, because Badu hadn’t released an album since 2010. “I’m a touring artist, not a recording artist,” she says, and she remains a big draw throughout the world. Her concerts and other appearances, combined with her garrulous presence on social media, have helped to solidify her position as one of the country’s most revered singers: a nineties star whose early hits have aged well and whose later work is both warmer and bolder than the songs that made her famous. She has also become a touchstone for a generation of younger musicians—the cool big sister they always wanted, as well as a self-empowered sex symbol. (“My ass and legs have gotten thick,” she once sang. “Yeah, it’s all me.”) Drake is one of many younger peers who count Badu as a friend and a mentor, a fact that he publicized with one of the most decorous boasts in hip-hop history: “Remember one night, I went to Erykah Badu house—she made tea for me / We talked about love and what life could really be for me.”
On a recent weekend, she had a late-night d.j. gig in Brooklyn, where most of the attendees looked scarcely older than “Baduizm” itself. They were all initiates, none more obviously than the young woman in a head wrap and bejewelled sunglasses who planted herself onstage, in front of the turntables, and sat cross-legged throughout the set, acting as a combination cheerleader and spiritual guardian. When security tried to remove her, Badu intervened, saying, quietly, “Let her go—she all right.” The woman bowed to Badu in appreciation. When the show was over, Badu bowed back.
Over the years, Badu’s onstage persona has come to more closely mirror her offstage personality. “She’s regal—but she’s ghetto at the same time,” as one friend puts it. Her early appearances earned her a reputation for high-mindedness which she is now happy to shed, and, among those who know her best, she is equally noted for her knowledge of herbal medicine and for her tendency to respond to seemingly benign comments with a profoundly corny punch line: “That’s what she said!” As a musician, Badu sometimes seems, gratifyingly, to be aging in reverse, embracing a youthful spirit that didn’t hold as much interest for her when she was young and dignified. “I’m the O.G.,” she says now. “Godmother. Auntie. They keep aging and getting old—and I just stay the same.”
Badu was a rapper before she was a singer, and a dancer before she was either, starting when she was a stubborn, quirky four-year-old, growing up in a working-class neighborhood in South Dallas. She was born Erica Wright, and she didn’t see much of her father, who struggled with drugs and spent time in prison. She was brought up by her mother, Kolleen Wright, along with her godmother and her two grandmothers—four mothers altogether. Or five, Badu says, “if you count Mother Nature.” One of her cousins, Robert (Free) Bradford, described the women around Badu as firm but not uptight. “They were cool—like, soul sisters with a hippie vibe,” he says. Badu bonded with her mother over Chaka Khan records and clashed with her over clothes: she was incorrigibly rumpled, nappy, sockless. Badu was a sensitive girl in a city that could be tough; for her protection, her mother enrolled her in a Catholic school, where Badu learned to think of herself as “weird.” She found a tribe of fellow-weirdos at Booker T. Washington, a performing-arts school that has produced Edie Brickell, Norah Jones, and Roy Hargrove, the trumpeter, who became an occasional collaborator.
Badu’s high-school years, in the late eighties, coincided with the ascendance of hip-hop, which captivated her and her friends while also making them feel slightly self-conscious about their home town. As some other Southern cities, including Houston and New Orleans, were inventing their own distinctive forms, Dallas was slower to develop. Badu and her friends envied—and sometimes adopted—the sounds and slang of New York hip-hop, which seemed like the epitome of toughness and sophistication. At school, she studied dance and theatre; outside it, she called herself Apples, half of a hip-hop duo, the Def Ones. During college, at Grambling State, in Louisiana, she kept in touch with the Dallas scene, and with her cousin Bradford, who was away at college in Chicago and learning music production. He sent her beats to rap over, but one of them inspired her to sing, instead, and the resulting song became a blueprint for their music. Working as a duo, they put together a demo under the name Erykah Free.
In New York, explorers like Groove Theory and Guru were combining hip-hop beats with R. & B. and jazz, and Erykah Free seemed like part of this new movement. Within a few months, they got an offer, with a catch: a young executive named Kedar Massenburg, who managed a rising singer named D’Angelo, was interested, but he didn’t want a duo. Badu signed a solo deal. “It took a while to get over it,” Bradford says now. Yet he remains close to Badu, and still admires her music. “ ‘Baduizm’ is one of the greatest projects ever,” he says. “So it happened the way it was supposed to.” Badu never doubted that she would find an audience. “I thought I was ahead of my time,” she says. “There was nothing like what I was doing—and they agreed, the music business.”
By signing with Massenburg, Badu acquired not just a major label, Universal, but a cohort: Massenburg arranged for her to record a duet with D’Angelo, and he put her in touch with one of her favorite acts, the Roots, which created hip-hop with a live band. To help market his charges, Massenburg coined the genre name “neo-soul,” which has stuck to both D’Angelo and Badu ever since. The term gestured back to the sound of nineteen-seventies soul, while delivering an implicit critique of contemporary music. Massenburg wanted listeners to understand: “You’re getting a certain level of consciousness that’s not your typical R. & B.” Badu sometimes made this critique explicit. “Music is kind of sick,” she said, incense in hand, during a BET special that served as her coming-out party. “It’s going through a rebirthing process, and I found myself being one of the midwives.”
In retrospect, it’s not clear that the era’s music was in such critical condition. (Look at Billboard’s list of the top R. & B. songs of, say, 1996 and you see one classic after another: Mary J. Blige, “Not Gon’ Cry”; Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, “Tha Crossroads”; Aaliyah, “If Your Girl Only Knew”; BLACKstreet, “No Diggity.”) And though the term “neo-soul” was affixed to a number of performers—including Bilal, Lauryn Hill, Alicia Keys, Maxwell, and Jill Scott—not many of them embraced it. Still, the success of Badu and the others convinced some listeners that a musical reformation was under way. R. & B. had grown more boisterous, under the influence of hip-hop, and Badu’s sophisticated songs provided a pleasant change of pace. Neo-soul spoke to and for an increasingly confident black bohemian culture—politically aware, spiritually minded, middle class. Its exponents took pains to show that mainstream hip-hop videos offered only a partial representation of black life.
Of course, “Baduizm” had its own understated hip-hop swagger. Badu’s willowy voice, softened by vibrato, inspired comparisons to Billie Holiday, but she had a rapper’s sense of rhythm and restraint: she knew how to stack syllables and deploy slang, and she knew when not to smother the beat with extraneous ad-libs. The song that transfixed Zach Witness, “On & On,” became the first neo-soul single to reach the top of Billboard’s R. & B. chart. Though it was almost smooth enough to be a slow jam, its lyrics more closely resembled a hip-hop freestyle. “On and on, and on and on / My cipher keeps moving like a rolling stone,” Badu sang, and in this context “cipher” might refer to a group of rappers standing in a circle, trading rhymes.
Her second studio album, “Mama’s Gun,” was even craftier than her début and, in Badu’s view, even better. It was anchored by a weighty hip-hop thump, and by lyrics that hinted at militance. (Massenburg says that some Universal executives were initially nervous about releasing an album with “gun” in the title.) Coming from a different singer, its lead single, “Bag Lady,” a cautionary tale for women too preoccupied to find love, might have sounded mean-spirited. “When they see you coming / Niggas take off running,” she sang. But Badu dispensed her hard truths gently, delivering two words of advice—“Pack light”—while encouraging listeners to hear her as someone who needed help at least as much as they did.
“Mama’s Gun” was recorded with a crew of musicians known as the Soulquarians, led by Ahmir (Questlove) Thompson, from the Roots; around the same time, they were also working on “Voodoo,” by D’Angelo, another of the great neo-soul albums. But, after “Voodoo,” D’Angelo retreated into his own world, while Badu’s world kept expanding. Unlike some of her contemporaries, she has never been content merely to resurrect an earlier musical era, which may explain why she has turned out a more engrossing body of work than any of the other acts associated with neo-soul. In the years since “Mama’s Gun,” Badu has grown less interested in establishing her independence—which no one, in any case, could doubt—and more interested in finding ways to connect. She calls herself “super mutable,” and part of the intrigue in following her career has been watching her form unlikely alliances. She was one of the most vocal supporters of Tyler, the Creator, when he was at his most antisocial, and she made an unexpected appearance on a Rick Ross album, singing the hook to a particularly sleek ode to conspicuous consumption. “Money and clothes, they gon’ come and go,” she sighed, while Ross and his collaborators explained the particulars of this process.
These days, one of Badu’s favorite young rappers is D.R.A.M., an inventive Virginian with a tuneful flow. He and Badu have been exchanging ideas, and a few weeks ago she dropped by Witness’s house to add her part to a song that D.R.A.M. had sent her, possibly for release on his upcoming mixtape. “I love this,” she said, laughing, as Witness hit play. “This kid has my heart.” The microphone was set up a few feet from the computer—Badu avoids vocal booths, because she finds the isolation inhibiting. She laid down her verse in two takes and then moved on to the chorus, nimbly matching D.R.A.M.’s delivery. “We on the clock / All the time / All the time / We on the clock,” she murmured. “Even when we make no moves / Father Time don’t never stop.”
“You’ve been practicing,” Witness said. “Before, you were having trouble keeping up with the rhythm.”
“I’ve been listening to it every day,” Badu said, satisfied. “Can I ride to that?” She wanted Witness to give her a copy of the song, and a few minutes later she was gone, disappearing down a quiet East Dallas street in her everyday car, a black Porsche Panamera with sky-blue rims and a license plate that reads “SHE ILL.”
The first major purchase that Badu made when she got famous was a house for her mother. The second was a house for herself, on White Rock Lake, in North Dallas, where she has lived ever since. The house was small, but as she toured she saved enough money to build new bedrooms and guest rooms, and found enough objects to fill them all. From the street, it looks like a tidy gingerbread house, glowing with multicolored lights; from within, it resembles a vintage shop with no room to grow, packed with statues and crystals and beads and candles and incense. The house is the nucleus of Badu’s extended nuclear family, and the décor provides an exhaustive record of her interests and accomplishments. The walls are full of paintings of Badu, donated by fans, and photographs of her friends and peers; on a table, an MTV Video Music Award sits snugly between a sewing machine and a golden pig statue wearing pearls.
On a cloudy recent afternoon, Badu was dressed down, in loose jeans and a baggy denim shirt, made baggier by a tear that ran from the hem nearly up to one armpit. This modification may have been accidental, but on her it looked like evidence of a trend that the rest of the world hadn’t yet caught up with. She was reminiscing about 1997, the year of her triumphant début. “You know how you get to pick groupies out of the audience, and stuff like that?” she said. “I didn’t get to do any of that.” She had met André Benjamin at a club in New York, and their son, Seven, was conceived in the chaotic weeks after “Baduizm” was released. “Me and Erykah actually had to sit down and figure if we were going to keep this child,” Benjamin says. The couple toured through the pregnancy. “She would hit the stage, I would hit the stage, then we would go back to the hotel and I would be putting shea butter on her stomach,” he says. Badu threw herself into research, learning enough about Reiki to become an instructor and earning certification as a holistic-health practitioner.
Seven Benjamin was born at Badu’s house in 1997, on the same day her record company released “Live,” a CD meant to satisfy the demand of fans who loved “Baduizm” and wanted more. The back cover was dominated by an image of Badu’s swollen belly, and motherhood became a central part of her public persona. “I breast-fed onstage, in the limo, backstage at the Soul Train awards,” she says. A few years later, her friend Afya Ibomu (the wife of STIC, from the hip-hop duo Dead Prez) was due to give birth, and Badu flew to New York to help. “Her labor was fifty-two hours—all natural, no anesthesia,” she says. “We walked it out, we bounced it out, we talked, we sang, we danced, we drank oil, we threw up, we took a bath. All kind of things.” Inspired by the experience, Badu got some formal training, and she has assisted in dozens of births since then; on Twitter, she calls herself Erykah Badoula.
From the beginning, Badu’s fans have looked for connections between her lyrics and her evolving family life. Her defining song might be “Tyrone,” in which she tells a deadbeat boyfriend to ask his friend for a ride home: “You better call Tyrone.” But she denied that it was about Benjamin, although Benjamin admits that “Ms. Jackson”—an OutKast track apologizing to a girlfriend’s mother, released after the couple had publicly split—was inspired by Badu. Unlike most R. & B. singers, Badu isn’t particularly drawn to lyrics about romantic love. But then there is “Green Eyes,” the ten-minute song that ends “Mama’s Gun,” which is an extraordinarily plainspoken evocation of the frustration and humiliation of a slow-motion breakup:
A few years later, on an autobiographical track, Benjamin put the matter more succinctly: “We’re young, in love—in short, we had fun / No regrets, no abortion, had a son.”
In the years after Seven was born, Badu reconnected with an old friend: Tracy Curry, also known as the D.O.C., or Doc, the most renowned rapper Dallas has ever produced. He moved to Los Angeles in the late nineteen-eighties, and became a ghostwriter for N.W.A.; his celebrated début album, “No One Can Do It Better,” came out in 1989. A few months after that, Curry was in a gruesome car accident that reduced his booming voice to a whisper. (The film “Straight Outta Compton” depicts Dr. Dre rushing to his hospital bed and asking, “Is he paralyzed?”) Struggling to accept that his hip-hop career was effectively over, Curry spent more than a decade drunk and high and rootless, before coming home to Dallas. He began spending time with Badu and gradually became her boyfriend, a position that enabled him to put his newfound humility into practice. “I needed to be able to forget about me for a minute and enjoy her—enjoy what I missed, through her success,” he says now, in his famous rasp. “If she needed her bag carried, or her foot rubbed, or whatever the hell that she may have needed, I couldn’t wait to do it.” They had a daughter, Puma, in 2004, and stayed close even after they split up, a few years later. Curry is now engaged, and his fiancée is pregnant; they are planning a water birth, with Badu as their doula.
“I have an interesting life,” Badu says. “I couldn’t have planned it this way—who would?” In 2009, she gave birth to a third child, a precocious girl named Mars, whose father, like the other two, is a prominent rapper: Jay Electronica, a cult favorite from New Orleans. “I’m nowhere near a single mom,” she says. “I mean, I am, but the fathers are always here.” All three fathers live much of the year in Dallas, and they have formed a tight community, which has Badu’s lakefront house—built, like her family, through accretion—as its hub. All three children were homeschooled through second grade, with Badu holding forth in her converted rec room or, when necessary, on her tour bus. Now they are enrolled in local schools; Seven is headed to college in the fall.
One afternoon, Badu was talking about Curry as she pulled into her driveway with Mars, who had something on her mind.
“How did Doc lose his voice?” she said.
“He had a car accident,” Badu said quietly. “He didn’t have a seat belt on, and he got threw into a tree. They operated on him, and when he woke up he didn’t have a voice.”
Mars seemed skeptical. “He told you?”
“Yeah,” Badu said. “He told me. And it was on the news. Everyone knows. He was a big star—one of the greatest of all time.”
Mars considered this. “Not greater than my daddy,” she said.
Badu erupted in laughter. “Ho-o-o-o-o! ” she shouted. “That’s what Seven says, too.”
Neither Badu’s blended family nor her string of relationships with prominent musicians has gone unnoticed by fans. Years ago, on Okayplayer, a Web site co-founded by Questlove, Badu defended herself against criticism:
To make sure that no one misunderstood, she included a blunt valediction:
More often, though, Badu’s love life has inspired curiosity, along with jokes about her supposedly mystical power over men. During an interview on BET, she acknowledged the chatter: “There’s an urban legend that says, If you get involved with Erykah Badu, you’ll change gods, wear crocheted pants, and all this other stuff.” (“Crocheted pants” was a reference to the rapper Common, whose music and outfits grew notably more outré when he dated Badu, in the early aughts. He has admitted that she did buy him a pair of knitted trousers, but insists that the ill-fated decision to wear them for a photo shoot was his alone.) Badu once wrote a song called “Fall in Love (Your Funeral),” in which she uses the rumors to create a negative-psychology pickup line. “See, you don’t wanna fall in love with me,” she coos, while sending precisely the opposite message: of course you do.
Badu is that rare veteran musician who claims to harbor no ill feelings toward the music industry. But she concedes that she has sometimes been disappointed by the reaction to her later albums, none of which have had as big an impact as her début. “I thought ‘Mama’s Gun’ was my apex,” she said. “Nobody else thought so.” In fact, critics loved it, but it sold about half as many copies as “Baduizm.” With “Worldwide Underground,” her funky and digressive 2003 album, sales dropped by half again.
In musical terms, though, “Worldwide Underground” was a new beginning: Badu, once known for her meticulous recordings, was adopting a looser, more spontaneous approach. Her songs typically start as grooves, which inspire her to hum along, and then mumble along; she fits words to the melody by transcribing her own mumbles, using a method that she can’t quite explain. James Poyser, a producer and a keyboardist who is one of Badu’s closest collaborators, describes her as a canny and sometimes mysterious editor. As they record, she might discard a promising session without explanation, or suddenly get excited about an old musical sketch that Poyser doesn’t even remember. He has learned that her judgments tend to be correct. During the sessions for “Worldwide,” Badu often recorded him when he was just fooling around. When he hears his parts of the album now, he wants to fix them. “Part of me cringes,” he says. “But it’s just raw, and it works.”
Her evolving recordings doubtless reflect her evolving live show, which has grown markedly less solemn in the years since she first brought her incense sticks to Nickelodeon. On her 1997 live album, she paused to explain one of her oversized rings to the crowd. “This is an ankh—an ankh is an ancient Kemetic symbol,” she said. “The word ‘Kemet’ is the original name for Egypt.” Nowadays, she wears her esoteric knowledge more lightly, and often she prefers teasing to teaching. She might interrupt her own songs with electronic noises, or stop and start her musicians over and over, mimicking an old-school bandleader. (“One time!”) Years ago, during a show at the Apollo Theatre, she tarried so long at a theremin that the crowd grew puzzled, then amused, then annoyed, and then finally resigned—willing to wait for as long as it took for Badu to do whatever she was doing. In 2014, she opened for the comedian Dave Chappelle at Radio City Music Hall—or, rather, closed for him, since her performance didn’t start until half an hour after his gig was finished. Just about everyone stayed, including Chappelle, who watched from the wings for an hour as she and her band stitched together earthy funk and otherworldly pop.
It is important for a singer—especially one with a beloved back catalogue, an unhurried record-release schedule, and a family to support—to keep touring without turning her concerts into jukebox revues. At big festivals, Badu happily plays the hits, but at her own concerts she has more room to maneuver. When she emerged, in 1997, she was embraced by all the venerable African-American publications (Jet, Ebony, Essence), which encouraged readers to claim her as one of their own—an eccentric niece, perhaps, long before she was an eccentric auntie. At her concerts now, young hipsters might sit side by side with loyal R. & B. fans who grew up listening to the same Chaka Khan records that she did.
During a recent edition of “Black Girls Rock,” an awards ceremony broadcast on BET, she delivered a performance fierce enough to convert any unsuspecting five-year-olds who may have caught it. Badu’s fashion sense, like her music, has grown less predictable over the years, and on this night she was wearing a painted knee-length robe over denim overalls and about a cubic foot of beads hanging from her neck; in place of the head wraps of two decades ago, she wore a tall black hat with a rounded crown and a flat brim, precisely cocked. She was singing “Soldier,” a call-and-response protest song, which sounded especially militant in the polite context of an awards show:
Michelle Obama was in the audience, and cameras caught her closing her eyes and nodding to the beat. Janelle Monáe, a younger R. & B. singer who is both a friend and a fan of Badu, stood and sang along.
The song came from “New Amerykah Part One: 4th World War,” released in 2008. The recording sessions for the album had been open-ended, leaving Badu with twice as much material as she needed, so she divided the songs by theme and set half of them aside. The ones she selected—peopled by crooked cops and wicked scientists, healers and teachers—evoke a mood of political protest. Although Badu describes herself as “not very political,” her skepticism of politics owes something to a tradition of black nationalism that urges African-Americans to be self-reliant—wary of a political system that is untrustworthy by design. One of the teachers she hailed on “4th World War” was Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam. But even her most overt calls to arms tend to turn inward: “As sure as all and all is one, we all shall grow before it’s done / So I salute you, Farrakhan, yes, cuz you are me.”
Another song, “Master Teacher,” returned again and again to a vague but resolute pledge to keep struggling: “I stay woke.” In 2014, as the Black Lives Matter movement gained momentum, Badu’s pledge was revived on Twitter, where the refrain became “#staywoke,” a prescriptive hashtag, or sometimes just “woke,” a description of anyone who is socially aware, or purports to be. “They probably don’t even know where they got it from,” Badu says, sounding more proud than offended.
One evening, Badu was in her kitchen, making dinner for the family. In one pan, she boiled collard greens with nutritional yeast and Bragg Liquid Aminos; in another, she fried some faux chicken. Badu distinguishes between the vegan life style, which strikes her as off-puttingly “hardcore” (with its proscriptions, for instance, against leather clothing), and a vegan diet, which she views as a matter of common sense. “It’s pretty healthy for certain blood types and bodies,” she says. “Mine happens to be one of them.”
After dinner, Badu had to help her daughter Puma and a friend get ready for a school talent show: they were planning to sing and dance their way through “Beautiful Liar,” a duet by Beyoncé and Shakira. Curry was nearby, but Puma insisted that he stay out of sight while she rehearsed, ostensibly because she wanted the routine to be a surprise to him, though possibly also because he is known to have strong opinions that he doesn’t mind sharing. “You see how they do me?” he said, smiling and shaking his head as he padded down the hall in his socks.
Badu turned up the track. “You know, I’ve never listened to the lyrics before,” she said. “These are two beautiful girls who have realized—”
“They just got pla-a-ayed! ” Puma shouted. She and her friend were having fun: messing up, laughing, taking breaks to field phone calls. But Badu’s relaxed manner can be deceptive. To her, there is nothing casual about putting on a show.
“Whenever you get near the stage, that means you are focussed on your performance,” she told them. “You’re not fidgeting, you’re making eye contact, you’re serious—got it? If you got it, say, ‘Got it!’ ”
“Got it!” the girls said, and Badu took up a position a few feet away, so she could see for herself.
Badu thinks a lot about presentation, which contributes to her judiciousness in releasing new music. Two years after “4th World War,” she delivered the sequel, “New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh,” which she describes as “creative, artistic, flowing, watery, feminine.” In other words, it was a counterpart to her protest album, and possibly also a remedy for it. The strange, wry compositions were love songs, as conceived by a singer fully aware of the absurdity of falling in love and falling out again. It is her subtlest, most playful album, and possibly her best. Its lead single, “Window Seat,” is remembered for its video, in which Badu walked through Dallas, slowly disrobing and finally lying down, naked, in Dealey Plaza, where John F. Kennedy was assassinated. News outlets dutifully covered—which is to say, created—the ensuing controversy. But attentive listeners noticed an undercurrent of self-incrimination. As she walked, Badu pondered the joys and sorrows of solitude, in a plaint that could have been addressed to a partner or to an audience: “I need your attention, yes / I need you next to me / I need someone to clap for me.”
Badu remembers the subsequent tour as an abbreviated version of the rock-star life she had missed the first time around. “My midlife crisis was, like, a party period,” she says. For the first—and, so far, last—time in her life, she became a drinker, draining bottles of plum wine and tequila with the virtuoso bassist known as Thundercat, who was playing in her band. “I had a great time,” she says. “But there’s only so long a mind like mine can do something like that.” So she got back to work, even if what she produced was not always what fans expected.
In interviews, Badu sometimes refers to tantalizing projects that fail to appear, like a concept album about the Harlem Renaissance, or a rhythm-driven collection inspired by drum sounds she has gathered from Africa, South America, and Australia. “This was going to be my new album—it was going to start with drums,” she says. But then she got distracted by “But You Caint Use My Phone,” and now she isn’t sure when she will return to the drum recordings. She is in no rush to release another album, and for someone like her, who is both a mid-career artist and a perfectionist, an album might not bring in enough money to justify the years it would take to record. “I have to actually steal time to write albums,” she says. “I have to shoot hooky. My team has to be looking for me. ‘Where are you?’ ‘I’m writing a album!’ ‘What you doing that for?’ ”
In the meantime, she is responding to the complicated incentive structure of the modern music industry, in which the most reliable paychecks often come from miscellaneous engagements, and in which veteran acts must find ways to remind fans that they exist. She has recently moved to resume a long-dormant acting career. In 1999, she played Rose Rose, the abused daughter in “The Cider House Rules”; earlier this year, she turned up at Sundance to promote her role in an independent film called “The Land,” about families in a tough Cleveland neighborhood. And last week she sparked a worldwide Twitter conflagration by suggesting that a New Zealand high school was right to ban short skirts, “so male teachers are not distracted.”
She has also nurtured a side career in fashion; in 2014, Riccardo Tisci selected her to be the new face of Givenchy. During the spring Fashion Week in New York, she served as a stylist for her friend Kerby Jean-Raymond, the founder of an upstart label called Pyer Moss. The collection’s theme was “double bind,” a theory of mental conflict that Jean-Raymond linked to depression. To illustrate the concept, Badu wrapped the models’ ankles in masking tape, while adorning their hats with bright buttons advertising various drugs: “XANAX,” “MOLLY,” “BOOZE,” “PROZAC.” When the models had walked and Jean-Raymond had taken his bow, Badu headed backstage, where the rapper Wale was waiting patiently to greet her. A male model, shirtless, asked her, “How do you feel, Ms. Badu?”
She beamed. “I feel awesome,” she said.
If Badu is bothered by the motley nature of the projects currently occupying her time, she doesn’t show it. She has spent much of the past few months working on the music for “Legends of Chamberlain Heights,” an animated series scheduled to make its début on Comedy Central this fall. She had a personal reason to take the job: one of the consulting producers of the show is Carl Jones, a former producer of “The Boondocks,” whom Badu is currently dating. “I had to interview alongside all these other composers,” she says. “Talked all kinds of shit. ‘Deadlines? No problem!’ ” But the network had every reason to hire her. Instead of paying exorbitant fees to license old recordings, it could simply hire a Grammy-winning, chart-topping singer to make some new ones.
So it was that Badu showed up, one afternoon, at a low-slung house in Dallas belonging to her friend Richard Escobedo, a producer also known as Picnictyme. She had invited a local keyboard player to come along; together, they were scheduled to record half a dozen snippets of music, each meant to evoke a specific mood—or, in some cases, a specific record that the producers didn’t want to pay for. The session was loose and laid-back, and Badu couldn’t help getting inspired to make each snippet better than it needed to be. As a rough cut of the cartoon played on the computer monitor for reference, Badu grew more interested in the beat, an old-fashioned hip-hop boom-bap, padded with a slouchy bass line. It reminded her of “My Block,” a classic track by the Houston rapper Scarface, so she FaceTimed him. He looked delighted to hear from her. “Get yo’ soup-can ass off my phone,” he exclaimed.
“Get yo’ gator-mouth ass off my phone,” she replied.
After a few minutes, they got back to work, although she had a hard time sticking to her assignment. The beat was starting to sound like the beginning of a song, and now Badu thought she might want to keep it for herself, perhaps for the album that she can never quite refrain from working on. “I like it,” she said. “I don’t think we should give it to them.”
She put on headphones, took off her sneakers, and inched closer to the computer, nodding at Escobedo. “Open up the mike,” she said. “Let’s see what happens.” ♦
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14095-new-amerykah-part-two-return-of-the-ankh/
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Erykah Badu
New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh
Motown, 2009
RATING: 8.0
by Mike Powell
April 6, 2010
Pitchfork
Most of the lyrics here dwell on relationships, which Badu handles with a confidence and informality that most of square-ass, tax-filing society just hasn't caught up to and probably never will. ("Had two babies, different dudes," she sang on 2008's "Me"-- "and for them both my love is true.") Badu wants a window seat and nobody sitting next to her. Badu is fucking your friends and laughs about it. There's satire, too-- "Turn Me Away (Get Munny)", where she plays a vapid nag who just decided she really, really loves you. There's a song actually called "Fall in Love (Your Funeral)". But despite the breadth of attitudes toward love, there's no angst, which makes it an uplifting experience-- it's like Badu is actually convinced that life goes on.
There's stuff here that is empty excess-- about three minutes of "Love", for example, or the drowsy instrumental "Incense" (basically a collaboration between Madlib and harpist Kirsten Agnesta). But for the most part I appreciate the ease of the album-- it's really the first time I feel like I'm understanding her, actually. Her art is her life, and her life-- like anyone's-- is too messy and varied to contain. Whether or not it's her responsibility to distill and make sense of it all is beside the point. To invoke Badu logic, Part Two just is what it is-- a coherent expression of a big, scattered personality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erykah_Badu
Erykah Badu
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Erica Abi Wright (born February 26, 1971),[3] known professionally as Erykah Badu (/ˈɛrɪkə bɑːˈduː/), is an American singer and songwriter. Influenced by R&B, soul, and hip hop,[3] Badu rose to prominence in the late 1990s when her debut album Baduizm (1997), placed her at the forefront of the neo soul movement, earning her the nickname "Queen of Neo Soul" by music critics.
Badu's career began after she opened a show for D'Angelo in 1994 in Fort Worth, leading to record label executive Kedar Massenburg signing her to Kedar Entertainment.[3] Her first album, Baduizm, was released in February 1997.[4] It spawned four singles: "On & On", "Appletree", "Next Lifetime" and "Otherside of the Game". The album was certified triple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).[5] Her first live album, Live, was released in November 1997 and was certified double platinum by the RIAA.[5]
Her second studio album, Mama's Gun, was released in 2000.[6] It spawned three singles: "Bag Lady", which became her first top 10 single on the Billboard Hot 100 peaking at #6, "Didn't Cha Know?" and "Cleva". The album was certified platinum by the RIAA.[5] Badu's third album, Worldwide Underground, was released in 2003.[7] It generated three singles: "Love of My Life (An Ode to Hip-Hop)", "Danger" and "Back in the Day (Puff)", with the first becoming her second song to reach the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #9. The album was certified gold by the RIAA.[5] Badu's fourth album, New Amerykah Part One, was released in 2008.[8] It spawned two singles: "Honey" and "Soldier". New Amerykah Part Two was released in 2010 and fared well both critically and commercially. It contained the album's lead single "Window Seat", which led to controversy.
Badu's voice has been compared to jazz singer Billie Holiday.[9][10][11] Early in her career, Badu was recognizable for her eccentric style, which often included wearing very large and colorful headwraps. She was a core member of the Soulquarians. As an actress, she has played a number of supporting roles in movies including Blues Brothers 2000, The Cider House Rules and House of D. She also has appeared in the documentaries Before the Music Dies and The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975.
Early life
Erica Abi Wright was born in Dallas. Her mother raised her, her brother Eevin, and her sister alone after separating from their father, William Wright Jr. The children's maternal and paternal grandmothers often helped look after them. Badu had her first taste of show business at the age of four, singing and dancing at the Dallas Theater Center and The Black Academy of Arts and Letters (TBAAL) under the guidance of her godmother, Gwen Hargrove, and uncle TBAAL founder Curtis King.
By the age of 14, Badu was freestyling for a local radio station alongside such talent as Roy Hargrove. In her youth, she had decided to change the spelling of her first name from Erica to Erykah, as she believed her original name was a "slave name". The term "kah" signifies the inner self. She adopted the surname "Badu" because it is her favorite jazz scat sound; also, among the Akan people in Ghana, it is the term for the 10th-born child.[12]
After graduating from Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, Badu went on to study theater at Grambling State University, a historically black university. She left the university in 1993 before graduating, to focus more fully on music. During this time, Badu took several minimum-wage jobs to support herself. She taught drama and dance to children at the South Dallas Cultural Center. Working and touring with her cousin, Robert "Free" Bradford, she recorded a 19-song demo, Country Cousins, which attracted the attention of Kedar Massenburg. He set Badu up to record a duet with D'Angelo, "Your Precious Love", and eventually signed her to a record deal with Universal Records.[12]
Career
1997–1999: Baduizm and Live
Baduizm, Badu's debut album, was released in early 1997. The album met with critical and commercial success, debuting at number two on the Billboard charts and number one on the US Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums.[13][14] Baduizm's commercial and critical success helped establish Badu as one of the emerging neo soul genre's leading artists.[15] Her particular style of singing drew many comparisons to Billie Holiday.[16] Baduizm was certified three times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America, Gold by the British Phonographic Industry and the Canadian Recording Industry Association.[5][17][18]
The album produced four singles; the lead single "On & On" was released in December 1996,[19] and reached number 12 on the US Billboard Hot 100 charts and the UK Singles Charts, as well as making an appearance on the New Zealand charts.[20] The album and lead single also gave Badu her first nomination and win at the Grammy Awards, where "On & On" won Best Female R&B Vocal Performance and the album won Best R&B Album.[21][22]
Badu recorded her first live album, Live, while pregnant with Seven, and the release of the recording coincided with his birth.[23] The album was released on November 18, 1997 and reached number four on the US Billboard 200[24] and number one on the US Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums.[25][26] The album was certified two times platinum by RIAA for shipments of over two million copies.[5] The album's lead single, "Tyrone", was released in October 1997 and became another R&B hit single. "Tyrone", lyrically, is a song chiding a selfish, cheap, and inattentive boyfriend.[27] Badu also collaborated with the Roots (who had previously handled production duties on a number of tracks on Baduizm) on their breakthrough 1999 release Things Fall Apart. She was featured on the song "You Got Me", by The Roots and American women rapper Eve. Co-written by Jill Scott, the song peaked at 39 in the US and 31 in the UK. The song went on to win The Roots and Badu a Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group in 1999.[28]
2000–2006: Mama's Gun and Worldwide Underground
After taking some time off to raise her child, Badu returned in 2000 with Mama's Gun. The album was characterized as more organic in sound than her previous studio album, and primarily produced by the Soulquarians and noted bassist Pino Palladino. A remix of one of the album's songs, "Bag Lady", was issued as the first single and topped the R&B charts for seven weeks. The album was well-received, with the lyrical content winning notices from many publications. Reviewers found some of her lyrics hard to decipher on her initial releases.[29] Despite not charting as high as her first two albums, Mama's Gun was another platinum-selling success, and "Bag Lady" was nominated for a Grammy Award.
By 2000, Badu was in a romantic relationship with fellow Soulquarian Common. The two released "Love of My Life (An Ode to Hip-Hop)" as a collaboration on the Brown Sugar soundtrack. "Love of My Life" hit #9 on the pop charts, topped the R&B listings, and in 2003 Badu was awarded her fourth Grammy Award for it.[30] In 2001 Badu embarked on the Mama's Gun World Tour. The tour started in North America on February 10 in Cleveland, Ohio at the Allen Theatre.[31] After the release of Mama's Gun and "Love of My Life", Badu suffered writer's block.[32]
On September 16, 2003, she released her third studio album, Worldwide Underground. The album was more jam-oriented than any of her prior releases, and Badu said that the album was designed to be "one continuous groove."[33] Upon its release Worldwide Underground met with some criticism for its loose, unconventional structure and songwriting, but the album received generally positive reviews from critics.[34] Commercially the album fared well and debuted at number three on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart in the week of October 4, 2003,[35] selling 143,561 copies in its first week.[36] Ultimately spending 11 weeks on the Billboard 200, it also entered at number two on Billboard's Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums and spent 30 weeks on the chart.[37] By December 2003, the album had sold 394,000 copies domestically.[38] On October 28, 2003, Worldwide Underground was certified gold in sales by the Recording Industry Association of America, following sales in excess of 500,000 copies in the United States.[39] According to Nielsen SoundScan, the album has sold 609,000 copies in the United States.[40]
Its first single, "Love of My Life (An Ode to Hip Hop)", peaked at number nine on the Billboard Hot 100 and at number one on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart.[41] The second single "Danger" reached number 82 on the Hot 100 and number 27 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs,[42] while the third single "Back in the Day (Puff)" peaked at number 62 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart.[43] Badu received four further Grammy nominations for the album. She also contributed to Zap Mama's album Ancestry in Progress (2004), adding her vocals to the track "Bandy Bandy." Badu embarked on the "Worldwide Underground Tour" in 2004.[44] The U.S. trek kicked off February 3 in New Orleans and ran through the winter and spring with supporting act Floetry joining the tour February 5 in Houston.[45] The Roots made a special opening act appearance at the February 11 show in Los Angeles. Badu resumed the tour during the fall with additional dates in America and Europe.
In 2005, she was a judge for the 4th Annual Independent Music Awards, to support independent artists' careers. Badu co-founded the Sugar Water Festival with Queen Latifah and Jill Scott. The trek played to amphitheaters and arenas in the United States during the summer of 2005 and 2006. It began in 2005 as an event to bring awareness to health issues to African-American women. British duo Floetry opened shows during the 2005 run. The festival was relaunched briefly in 2006 with Kelis opening the show and comedian Mo'Nique hosting the festival.[46] 2006 was its final year. The festival had plans to expand into Europe and Asia, but this did not come to fruition. The Summer Tour was a concert tour in 2006 by Badu. The tour started on June 10, in Knoxville, TN, with three shows in the U.S., and resumed in July for several shows in Europe. Badu co-headlined on dates in August with Jill Scott and Queen Latifah at the Sugar Water Festival.[47]
2007–2009: New Amerykah Part One
After receiving her first computer as a Christmas gift, Badu began communicating with and receiving music from Questlove, Q-Tip and J Dilla, among others. She later began to use her laptop as a mini recording studio to construct various backing tracks for songs, which led to the album's primary recording sessions at Electric Lady Studios in New York City.[48][49] In 2007 Badu was said to have three albums in the works for release during 2007 and 2008. "Honey", a new single produced by 9th Wonder, was leaked online in November 2007. The fourth studio album, New Amerykah Part One, was released by Universal Motown Records,[50] in the United States on February 26, 2008, Badu's 37th birthday.[51] It was released in European countries on February 29,[52] in Australia and the United Kingdom on March 3,[53][54] and in Japan on March 12.[55] Both Japanese and Australian editions contain the bonus track "Real Thang".[55] The album's digital release on the iTunes Store featured the song's "Tumbling Dice Remix" as a bonus track.[56] New Amerykah Part One was also released as a double vinyl LP on March 11,[57] and on USB stick format.[58]
The album's lead single, "Honey", was released on December 11, 2007.[59] It reached number 88 on the US Billboard Hot 100, on which it spent three weeks.[60] The song also charted at number 22 and spent 17 weeks on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs.[60] Upon release New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) received universal acclaim from critics.[50] In the United States, the album debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 chart, selling 125,000 copies in its first week.[61] It was Badu's best opening week since her debut album Baduizm in 1997. It also entered at number two on the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums.[62] According to Nielsen Soundscan, New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) sold 359,000 copies in the United States by early 2010.[63]
Erykah Badu performed at the 10th annual Voodoo Experience in New Orleans the weekend before Halloween 2008.[64] In the United Kingdom, the album charted at number 55 on the UK Albums Chart, on which it spent one week.[65] In France, it debuted at number 49 and spent 11 weeks on the French Albums Chart.[66] In Switzerland, it debuted at number 10 and spent six weeks on the Swiss Albums Top 100.[52] In the Netherlands, the album entered at number 25 and spent seven weeks on the Mega Album Top 100.[67] In Poland, it reached number nine and spent eight weeks on the Polish Albums Chart.[68] The album's highest international charting was number five in Sweden, where it charted for seven weeks.[52]
During 2008 and 2009, Badu embarked on two world tours. The Vortex Tour (2008) was a tour in support of New Amerykah Part One.[69] The U.S. tour kicked off May 4 in Detroit, MI, ending on June 15 in Albuquerque, NM.[70] The second leg of tour reached Europe on June 25, in Copenhagen, Denmark. Badu toured across Europe playing shows that included an itinerary for the month of July. Several more shows were added throughout August in the U.S. The Jam Tour was a summer music concert tour in 2009. The tour started in March; Badu played dates across North America twice and Europe, and the tour ended in Dallas, Texas on October 16. During the second U.S. leg, Badu was featured as a special guest co-headliner on hip-hop artist Mos Def's "Ecstatic Tour"[71] on select September dates.[72]
2010–2014: New Amerykah Part Two and Window Seat controversy
"New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh)", Badu's fifth studio album, was released March 30, 2010, on Universal Motown in the United States.[73] It was released in Japan on April 14, 2010.[74] Upon release the album was met with general acclaim from critics.[75] The album debuted at number four on the US Billboard 200 chart, selling 110,000 copies in its first week.[76] It also entered at number two on Billboard's R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart.[61] In the United Kingdom, New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh) debuted at number 56 on the UK Albums Chart and at number nine on the R&B Albums Chart.[77][78] In Canada, the album debuted at number 36 on the Top 100 and at number five on the R&B Top 50 chart.[79][80] New Amerykah Part Two achieved moderate chart success in international markets, peaking within the top 50 in several countries, including Norway, Poland, Switzerland, Sweden, and Denmark.[77]
During March 2010, Badu promoted the album through television performances on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, The Wendy Williams Show, Chelsea Lately, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and Good Day New York.[81] She also appeared on the April issue cover of EQ magazine and was featured in issues of Nylon, Playboy, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, Time Out New York, Spin, Vibe, Paste, and People, among others.[81] Badu performed at a surprise midnight show on March 31, 2010 at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles.[82]
The internet-only promotional single "Jump up in the Air (Stay There)", featuring Lil Wayne and Bilal, was released on Badu's official website in January 2010. RC Williams, Badu's musical director, said that a music video for the track was shot in Dallas.[83] The album's first official single, "Window Seat", was released by Badu through a downloadable link on her Twitter page.[84] The song peaked at number 16 on Billboard R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart.[37] The album's second single, "Turn Me Away (Get MuNNY)", was released March 24, 2010 by Badu as a free download online.[85][86] It spent three weeks on the R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, peaking at number 87.[37] On Wednesday, February 9, 2011, Vimeo.com released a new video for "Gone Baby, Don't Be Long", directed by Flying Lotus. The video was tweeted by Badu herself and friend and associated music act Questlove from the Roots.[87]
On March 13, 2010,[88] Badu filmed the video for her song "Window Seat", at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, the site of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. She wrote on her Twitter feed that the video "was shot guerrilla style, no crew, 1 take, no closed set, no warning, 2 min., Downtown Dallas, then ran like hell."[89] The team did not acquire permission or permits from the city. In the video, Badu shed her clothes as she walked along a Dallas sidewalk until she was nude at the site where Kennedy was shot. A shot rang out as the song ended, Badu's head jerked back, and she fell to the ground. Children with their families could be seen nearby as Badu stripped.[90] When asked about stripping nude in the presence of minors, Badu said, "I didn't think about them until I saw them, and in my mind I tried to telepathically communicate my good intent to them. That's all I could do, and I hoped they wouldn't be traumatized."[88][91]
.JPG)
Badu said on The Wanda Sykes Show on April 3, 2010, that it was not her intention to insult the memory of the late President John F. Kennedy (JFK): "My point was grossly misunderstood all over America. JFK is one of my heroes, one of the nation's heroes. John F. Kennedy was a revolutionary; he was not afraid to butt heads with America, and I was not afraid to show America my butt-naked truth."[92] Coodie and Chike, directors of the "Window Seat" video, said they had bail money ready during filming in case Badu was arrested.[92] Badu said the video was a protest against "groupthink" and was inspired by Matt and Kim's music video "Lessons Learned." Badu has also said she has "no regrets".[88]
In 2011 Badu appeared on Flying Lotus's fourth album, Until the Quiet Comes.[93] Badu appeared on the debut album by the supergroup Rocketjuice and The Moon, which was released in March 2012[94] and the album Black Radio by Robert Glasper. In 2013, Badu appeared on "Treehome95" from Tyler, The Creator's second studio album, Wolf as well as on the song "Heaven for the Sinner" from Bonobo's album The North Borders.[95] Badu featured on Janelle Monáe's first single from her second studio album, The Electric Lady, "Q.U.E.E.N." The song premiered on SoundCloud and was made available for download purchase at the iTunes Store on April 23, 2013.[96] The song peaked at 47 on the US Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs charts.
2015–2019: Touring and mixtapes
In May 2013, Badu announced she was writing her next project, but not placing a time constraint on it.[97] In July 2014, Badu revealed she was still working on the album and had been recording in April in Africa where she was "laying down drum tracks". Badu also said that prior to her trip to Africa she would have meetings with her record label to set a deadline for the album.[98] Later that year Badu expanded on the album, stating she was working with producer Flying Lotus, who she met via MySpace years ago; they later met in L.A. at guitarist Steve Wilson's house.[99]
In 2015, Badu appeared on "Rememory", a song from Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment's album Surf.[100] In July 2015, Badu released a free mixtape of her favorite recordings, describing the set as "carefully and lovingly selected high frequency tones for the soul." The mixtape features mostly vintage funk, soul and jazz songs.[101] On March 26, 2015, Erykah Badu performed at The Bomb Factory in her hometown, Dallas, Texas, for the Deep Ellum venue's grand opening. The sold-out show also featured fellow Dallas native, singer-songwriter Sarah Jaffe.[102]
In early October, Badu released a remix of Drake's single "Hotline Bling",[103] and later released a mixtape, But You Caint Use My Phone, on November 27, 2015, making it available for digital download and streaming exclusively through Apple Music.[104] After one week of exclusive release on iTunes, But You Caint Use My Phone was released to other digital retailers and streaming services on December 4, 2015.[105] The mixtape was released without the knowledge of her label Universal, due to Badu sending the record straight to iTunes. It also marked Badu's first release under her own record label, Control Freaq.[106] But You Caint Use My Phone received generally positive reviews from critics and debuted at number 14 on the Billboard 200, selling 35,000 equivalent album units in its first week.[107][108] Badu also hosted the 2015, 2016 and the 2017 Soul Train Music Awards.[109]
Within two months of the release of But You Caint Use My Phone in 2016, Badu announced a follow-up mixtape titled This $hit Too Easy was to be released; however, this mixtape hasn't surfaced. The same year, Badu released new three tracks on SoundCloud, including Trill Friends, Thru It All and Come See Badu. On January 24, 2018, she announced a release of a new mixtape, but like the aforementioned mixtape, remains unreleased. In a publication on Vulture, Badu announced she was slowly making progress on her sixth studio album.
Badu held her annual "Still Boomin'" sold-out birthday bash concert at The Bomb Factory on February 26, 2016, marking her second performance at the venue since its grand opening 11 months earlier. The event was hosted by Badu's close friend Dave Chappelle and featured a surprise appearance by André 3000 of the duo Outkast. Badu enlisted Dallas' local hip hop acts Zach Witness and Cameron McCloud as her supporting acts, after collaborating with Witness earlier that year at his home studio.[110][111] In 2016, Badu also starred as Turquoise in the film The Land. For the film, Badu also released the title track The Land, which featured rapper Nas.
On August 15, 2018, the NPR video series Tiny Desk Concerts, released a new episode featuring Erykah Badu and her band performing live.[112] The same day, NPR released the What's Good with Stretch & Bobbito podcast episode featuring a fresh interview with Erykah Badu where she spoke of being a certified Doula, her inherited sense of humor from her mother, stand-up comedy, her avoidance of print interviews after her 2008 experience being misquoted, and Prince.[113] On November 7, while hosting NTS series Sound of Color Badu debuted a studio recording of a previously unreleased and untitled song that has been dubbed Money Can't Buy Me Love by fans.
On June 2, 2019, Badu teased the release of a new song which she performed live at Barcelona's Primavera Sound Festival, tentatively titled The Work (The Way She Sees). The following day on June 3, 2019, Badu released a new single titled Tempted, a cover of Tempted by Squeeze in collaboration with instrumentalist James Poyser. This song marks her first official single since Phone Down in 2015. In September, Badu confirmed her plans to release her sixth studio album "soon" via a comment to a fan on Instagram.
2020–present: Contributions and features
In May 2020, she featured on a single titled "Beehoove" alongside D'Angelo on Slingbaum's vinyl-only release debut studio album, Slingbaum One. On June 19, 2020 Badu featured on the song "Lowkey" by singer Teyana Taylor. In August 2020, Badu contributed to the live streamed recording of Bilal's EP VOYAGE-19, created remotely during the COVID-19 lockdowns. It was released the following month with proceeds from its sales going to participating musicians in financial hardship from the pandemic.[114] In December 2022, she featured on a track titled "Yun" on RM's debut studio album Indigo.[115]
Musical style
Badu's work draws from R&B, 1970s soul, and 1980s hip hop,[3] and became associated with the neo soul subgenre in the 1990s along with artists like D'Angelo.[116] For her musical sensibilities, she has often been compared[9] to jazz great Billie Holiday.[10][11] Badu's has been described as an experimental R&B singer,[117][118] and her work explores contemporary forms of soul and hip hop. Mama's Gun is a neo soul album, that incorporates funk, soul, and jazz styles.[119] The album has been viewed by critics as a women companion to neo soul artist D'Angelo's second album Voodoo (2000), which features a similar musical style and direction.[120][121][122] Worldwide Underground followed in the same vein as Badu's previous efforts: the album is neo-soul and prominently incorporates hip hop and funk elements, while also featuring an unconventional musical structure. New Amerykah Part One has a dense[123] stylistic amalgam that primarily incorporates funk, soul, and hip hop genres,[48][124][125] as well as jazz and electronica.[126] In contrast to its predecessor, New Amerykah Part One (2008), which was digitally produced and political in tone, New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh) incorporates sampling and live instrumentation.[127][128]
The majority of Badu's music is greatly influenced by her beliefs of the Nation of Gods and Earths and her exploration of her African heritage.[129] The songs in her album Baduizm express her personal take on life. Her philosophy is influenced by African ideology, African-centered and Five Percent theologies, and Southern African-American folk traditions. Mama's Gun has a confessional lyrical theme, covering themes of insecurity, social issues, and personal relationships. Worldwide Underground contains minimalist songwriting concerning hip hop culture, love, ghetto life, and gang culture.[130][131][132][133] New Amerykah Part One is an esoteric concept album with sociopolitical themes and mostly downbeat subject matter,[134][135] featuring more impersonal topics and social commentary than on Badu's previous work.[51] Its subject matter deals with social concerns and struggles within the African-American community, exploring topics such as institutional racism, religion, poverty, urban violence, the abuse of power, complacency, cultural identity, drug addiction, and nihilism.[136][137] Badu has said that the album discusses "religion, [...] poor families, the undermining of the working class, the so-called minority",[138] Lyrically, New Amerykah Part Two is more personal than its predecessor, focusing on themes of romance and relationships.[127][128] Badu has described its sound as "very analog".[139]
Badu is inspired by "stimulating" experiences. She was also influenced greatly by her music teacher Ms. Goodman,[140] who encouraged her to take up music.[140] Badu also takes influence from her grandmother and her religious views which Erykah described as a lesson saying "When you do it, it gotta be real, or that's not it."[140]
Accolades
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In 1997, Badu received twenty nominations and won three, Favorite Female Solo Single for "On & On", Favorite Female Solo Album for Baduizm and Best R&B/Soul or Rap Song of the Year for "On & On" at the Soul Train Lady of Soul Awards.[141][142] In 1998, Badu received fourteen nominations and won eight, including Favorite R&B/Soul or Rap New Artist at the American Music Awards; Best Female R&B Vocal Performance for "On & On" and Best R&B Album for Baduizm at the Grammy Awards; Outstanding New Artist and Outstanding Female Artist at the NAACP Image Awards; Favorite Female Soul/R&B Single for "On & On", Favorite Female Soul/R&B Album for Baduizm and Favorite New R&B/Soul or Rap New Artist for "On & On" at the Soul Train Music Awards.[21][22][143][144][145][146]
In 2000, Badu received two nominations and won one, Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group at the Grammy Awards.[147] In 2003, Badu received twelve nominations and won two, including Video of the Year for "Love of My Life (An Ode to Hip-Hop)" at the BET Awards and Best Urban/Alternative Performance for "Love of My Life (An Ode to Hip-Hop)" at the Grammy Awards.[148][149] In 2008, Badu received eleven nominations and won two, including Best Director for "Honey" at the BET Awards and Best Direction in a Video for "Honey" at the MTV Video Music Awards. Overall, Badu has won 16 awards from 59 nominations.[150][151][152]
Impact and legacy
Although she disputes the term, Erykah Badu has been dubbed "the first lady of neo-soul" and "the queen of neo-soul".[124][153][154][155] Baduizm's commercial and critical success earned Erykah Badu popularity at the time and helped establish her as one of the emerging neo soul genre's leading artists.[15] Along with D'Angelo's Brown Sugar (1995) and Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite (1996), the album has been recognized by music writers for beginning neo soul's popularity and helping the genre obtain commercial visibility at the time.[156][157][158]
Erykah Badu's song "Master Teacher" popularized the expression stay woke in the meaning of to continue to be "self-aware, questioning the dominant paradigm and striving for something better."[159]
In 2023, Rolling Stone ranked Badu at number 115 on its list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time.[160]
Other ventures
Badu has also ventured into acting. She made her debut as a supporting role in the 1998 film Blues Brothers 2000, playing Queen Mousette.[citation needed] The film gained mostly mixed to negative reviews from film critics and was considered a commercial failure.[161][162] Badu made her second appearances in The Cider House Rules (1999), where she played the character of Rose Rose.[citation needed] The film fared well both critically and commercially,[163] with Badu receiving numerous awards and nominations including a win at the 2000 Black Reel Awards for best supporting actress as well as nominations for Screen Actors Guild Awards and Satellite Awards.[citation needed]
In 2004, Badu returned to the screen playing Lady/Bernadette in House of D.[citation needed] Badu also had small roles in Before the Music Dies (2005), and Dave Chappelle's Block Party (2006). She is reported to have a leading role alongside Mos Def in the upcoming indie film, Bobby Zero, which tells a story of a struggling couple, who hit rock bottom after Mos Def's character gives up his artistic dream to pursue an advertising corporate job to live on.[164] She also appeared in scenes of the music video of Miko Marks' 2006 recording "Mama" and Common's video for "The Light," as well as making a special appearance on the sitcom Girlfriends.
In 2008, Badu became the face of fashion designer Tom Ford White Patchouli fragrance. Ford, longtime friends with Badu, considered her the best choice for the campaign. "I have always considered her a true beauty ... she just fits", says Ford.[165] In late December 2013, it was announced that Badu would become the face of Givenchy's 2014 Spring collection.[166] Badu made her New York Fashion Week debut alongside designer Kerby Jean-Raymond in 2016, styling for his Pyer Moss collection titled "Double Bind." Erykah Badu and Kerby Jean-Raymond titled this collection after Gregory Bateson's idea Double bind. Badu called this collection a "movement" against issues including depression, racism, and hatred.[167]
Badu also remains an activist in her hometown of South Dallas.[168] In Nation19 Magazine Badu talked about why she set up her own charity organization, titled Beautiful Love Incorporated Non Profit Development (B.L.I.N.D. 501c3).[169] The charity was established in 1997 and aims to provide "community-driven development for inner-city youth" through the use of music, dance, theater and visual arts.[170] The organization's first endeavor was to establish a base of operations. Erykah chose to renovate and reopen the Black Forest Theater in South Dallas.[170] The Black Forest serves as a community center, bringing people together in order to celebrate the art and culture of south Dallas.[170] The Black Forest's stage is equipped for shows and performances, and has hosted both free and fundraising concerts by music artists including Prince, Snoop Dogg, Jill Scott, Musiq Soulchild, Dead Prez, Talib Kweli and Questlove from The Roots.[170] All of the artists volunteered their time to help with the charity.[170] As an outreach for B.L.I.N.D., Erykah traveled to Africa in February 2003, where she worked with children affected by AIDS and poverty. Badu has also received the Key to the City of Dallas and been recognized in Philanthropy Magazine for her efforts in community service.[170]
On February 20, 2020, Badu opened an online store named Badu World Market.[171] Badu World Market features bespoke clothing, apothecary goods, musical merchandise, clothing accessories, and more. She also began selling a line of incense; one scent is named "Badu Pussy" because Badu claimed she "took lots of pairs of [her] panties, cut them up into little pieces and burned them."[172]
Badu launched her own cannabis line, That Badu, in partnership with the Cookies cannabis brand in 2023.[173] She also founded a company Apple Trees in 2020 that sells cannabis-related accessories.[174]
Personal life
Badu became a vegan in 2006: "Vegan food is soul food in its truest form. Soul food means to feed the soul. And to me, your soul is your intent. If your intent is pure, you are pure."[175] Badu splits her time between her hometown and Fort Greene, New York.[176]
In 1996, Badu became involved with rapper André 3000 of OutKast, with whom she had her first child, a son named Seven Sirius Benjamin, on November 18, 1997.[177] Their relationship ended in 1999. In late 2000, OutKast released the song "Ms. Jackson", which was inspired by André 3000's then relationship with Badu and her mother. The song reached number one on Billboard Hot 100 and would go on to win a Grammy Award.
On July 5, 2004, Badu gave birth to a daughter, Puma Sabti Curry; Puma's father is Texas-based rapper The D.O.C. On February 1, 2009, Badu gave birth to her third child, a girl named Mars Merkaba Thedford, with her boyfriend of five years, rapper Jay Electronica.[178]
For the 2014 Okayplayer platform and web television OkayAfrica TV, Badu had her DNA tested, and genealogists researched her family ancestry. It was revealed that Badu's mitochondrial DNA traced to the Bamileke people of Cameroon in Central Africa.[179][180]
Discography
Studio albums
- Baduizm (1997)
- Mama's Gun (2000)
- Worldwide Underground (2003)
- New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) (2008)
- New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh) (2010)
Live albums
- Live (1997)
Mixtape
- Feel Better World! ... Love, Ms. Badu (various artists) (2015)
- But You Caint Use My Phone (2015)[193]
Tours
- Baduizm World Tour (1997–98)
- Mama's Gun World Tour (2001–02)
- Frustrated Artist Tour (2003)
- Worldwide Underground Tour (2004)
- Sugar Water Festival (2005)
- Summer Tour (2006)
- Dave Chappelle/Badu tour (2007)
- The Vortex World Tour (2008)
- Jam Tour (2009)
- Out My Mind, Just in Time World Tour (2010)
- Live from Badubotron Tour (2021–22)
- Unfollow Me Tour (2023)
Filmography
Television
See also
External links
Media from Commons
Quotations from Wikiquote
Data from Wikidata
The Roots and Erykah Badu Live Concert Roots Picnic Philly 2015--(This concert is smoking!):
Erykah Badu "Honey" Live:
Mix - Erykah Badu - "Other Side Of The Game":
Music video by Erykah Badu performing Other Side Of The Game. (C) 1997 Kedar Entertainment / Universal Records Inc.
Erykah Badu - "Bag Lady":
Erykah Badu - "Honey":
Erykah Badu - "On & On" (1997):
3:AM: A Conversation With Erykah Badu:
May 10, 2024
#Rapsody #ErykahBadu #3AM
3:AM: A Conversation With Erykah Badu
'Please Don't Cry' Out Now :: https://Rapsody.lnk.to/PleaseDontCry
Erykah Badu - Full Concert - [Improved audio!]- at the 2001 North Sea Jazz Festival:
This is a new STEREO version of the concert!
Updated April 30, 2024.
Erykah Badu – Live in concert at North Sea Jazz Festival 2001
Setlist:
1. 'Rimshot (Intro)’ 0:00
2. 'Otherside of the Game' 6:38
3. 'Penitentiary Philosophy' 13:07
4. 'Didn't Cha Know/My Life' 17:08
5. 'On & On/& On' 25:54
7. 'Cleva' 31:01
8. ‘Kiss Me on My Neck (Hesi)' 36:00
9. ‘A.D. 2000’ 42:35
10. 'Liberation' 50:08
11. 'Orange Moon' 54:37
12. ‘Tyrone’ 58:26
13. 'Green Eyes' 1:12:40
14. 'Bag Lady' 1:24:24
Date & Venue: SUNDAY 15 JULY 2001 • STATENHAL • Ahoy Hall – Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Erica Abi Wright (born February 26, 1971), known professionally as Erykah Badu, is an American singer and songwriter. Influenced by R&B, soul, and hip hop, Badu rose to prominence in the late 1990s when her debut album Baduizm (1997), placed her at the forefront of the neo soul movement, earning her the nickname "Queen of Neo Soul" by music critics.
Erykah Badu "20 Feet Tall" Live at Java Jazz Festival 2012:
January 28, 2013
Erykah Badu "20 Feet Tall" Live at Java Jazz Festival 2012Erykah Badu: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert:
