So what does the Badu curriculum look like? “It’s changed over the years,” she says. That has also meant home-schooling her three children. So I’ve been pregnant or breast-feeding or with a new baby since the very beginning, and I was determined to use my energy to build something and I just take it one moment at a time.” “Baduizm came out in February 1997, I got pregnant in March 1997.
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“I don’t know life without children,” she says. This expanding family unit meant that she had to get inventive while touring. She also has two daughters: Puma, whose father is some-time NWA collaborator DOC, and Mars, whom she had with enigmatic rapper Jay Electronica. In 1997, Badu had a baby boy, Seven, with André Benjamin, AKA André 3000 of OutKast. She went to performing arts college, became enamoured with New York hip-hop and, after her demo came to the attention of Motown records, she turned to music full-time. She says she was given some “home-made supplements”, by which she means the cultural nourishment she found in the house this encouraged her to get on stage for her first performance aged just four. I just think they’re very honest Erykah Badu I think I wrote 20 songs in the first week.” Great artists don’t necessarily have some positive message or a moral message. Just: ‘Here’s a piano.’ And I was able to get up on it and write songs. “My paternal grandfather bought me a piano when I was seven years old. “We had a radio in the bathroom of my maternal grandmother’s house that never went off.” She still lives in Dallas when not on tour. “Music was a big part of my life,” she says.
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She was brought up by her mother, godmother and grandparents. “But I was committed to it, whatever it was, and I’ve continued to evolve.”īorn and raised in Dallas, Badu, 47, (real name Erica Abi Wright) was surrounded by maternal figures. “I don’t know what I was talking about back in 1997,” says Badu, when I ask her what she meant by that. “It’s going through a rebirthing process, and I found myself being one of the midwives.” “Music is kind of sick,” she said, during an appearance on Black Entertainment Television (BET) talkshow Planet Groove, shortly after the release of her first single On and On. Unlike Rihanna or Beyoncé, who took years to shake off pop-industry expectations to make more out-there work, Badu seemed to appear in the public glare a fully formed iconoclast. In the same way that Tupac holds a saintly place in the nave of hip-hop, Badu has become a kind of R&B deity who, despite releasing her last album – the critically adored New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) – more than a decade ago, can still be seen at the top of lineups at festivals such as London’s Field Day, which she headlines next weekend.Ĭlick here to watch On and On by Erykah Badu.īadu first emerged in the late 90s as part of the “neo-soul” scene, along with D’Angelo, Musiq Soulchild, Jill Scott and India.Arie, who collectively rethought and revived the spirit of early 70s acts such as Sly and the Family Stone, Isaac Hayes, Marvin Gaye, Funkadelic and Curtis Mayfield. Amy Winehouse, Rihanna, Beyoncé, Janelle Monáe and even Grimes have all, at some point, referenced or collaborated with her Barack Obama included her on one of his summer 2015 Spotify playlists Givenchy c hose her as the face of its spring-summer 2014 campaign. Name a hugely successful R&B star of the past decade and it’s more than likely there is a touch of Badu in their work. It makes a fitting start to a conversation with one of pop’s most eccentric and influential figures. After a couple more attempts to get through and a few texts, the phone does get picked up. I don’t really do voicemail.” It’s part practical joke, part album skit, part self-deprecating indulgence.
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“If you’re asking for tickets to a show, but know I don’t really fuck with you like that, press six.” And on it goes, ending with: “You should probably send me a text. “If you’re calling to wish Erykah happy MLK day, Kwanzaa or Juneteenth, press one,” it begins. You dial her number, the phone rings through and an extravagant list of options greets you. E veryone should call Erykah Badu at least once, if only to hear her answerphone message.