Erykah Badu

• Born: February 26, 1971
• Place of Birth: Dallas, Texas

AMERICAN RHYTHM-AND-BLUES VOCALIST

Badu has drawn from jazz and soul in her instrumentals and vocal delivery, and her lyrics are often driven by narrative, in the tradition of blues and folksingers. Expanding her musical vocabulary, she has also embraced rap and hip-hop.

The Life

Erykah Badu (EH-rihk-uh ba-DOO) was born in Dallas, Texas, in 1971. Her mother, Kolleen Wright, was an actor who encouraged her daughter’s interest in performance, and Badu began performing at age four in her mother’s theater company. Later, Badu landed a regular spot on a Dallas-area radio station, where she met future collaborator and trumpeter Roy Hargrove. Her early ambitions focused on dance, which was her concentration at both Booker T. Washington High School, a magnet arts school in Dallas, and Grambling State University, in Louisiana. Around this time, Badu changed her name from Erica Wright, in part to replace her slave name, Wright, and in part to demonstrate her Five Percenter convictions (showing her to be in the population group that is enlightened). Before completing her degree, she left Grambling to pursue a career in music.

After touring with her cousin Robert Bradford and circulating a demo called Country Cousins, Badu landed a record deal with Universal Records and released her debut album, Baduizm, in 1997. Badu took time off from her career to spend with her child, Seven, and in 2000 she returned with the release of Mama’s Gun. Worldwide Underground, The Kabah, Badu, and New Amerykah, Part One (Fourth World War) were released between 2003 and 2008. Critics largely considered New Amerykah to be one of her best records to date.

After touring in 2008 and 2009, Badu released her fifth album, New Amerykah, Part Two (Return of the Ankh), in 2010. A more emotional record than its predecessor, the album reached number four on the Billboard 200 chart. Shortly before the album's release, she had sparked controversy when she stripped off her clothes without warning to people nearby, including children, during the filming of her video for the single "Window Seat," which was shot at the site of President John F. Kennedy's assassination in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. While she then collaborated with other artists such as Flying Lotus on their projects, she did not release any more of her own work until the 2015 mixtape But You Caint Use My Phone, which consists of eleven tracks. From 2015 to 2017, she also served as the host for the BET telecasts of the Soul Train Music Awards. In 2019, Badu appeared in the film What Men Want.

Badu launched her online store, Badu World Market, in 2020. The store featured various product lines, including both apparel and accessories. In 2023, Badu launched That Badu, her own line of cannabis products. In 2024, Badu starred as Lucille in the film The Piano Lesson.

The Music

Badu’s music features a blend of soul and funk instrumentals, and her albums have been mixed to produce a crisp, clean sound heavy in bass and sparse in higher registers. The themes of her albums progressed inward, with Mama’s Gun presenting more intimate lyrics than Baduizm. She won four Grammy Awards: Best Rhythm and Blues album (Baduizm), Best Female Rhythm and Blues Vocal Performance (“On and On”), Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group (“You Got Me,” with the Roots featuring Erykah Badu, from Things Fall Apart), and Best Rhythm and Blues Song (“Love of My Life,” from the Brown Sugar sound track).

“On and On.” Badu’s first commercial hit, “On and On” (from Baduizm), features her signature sound. The instrumental track is a simple combination of drum kit, bass, and guitar, mixed with a slight echo and a bass foreground that drives the song forward. The lyrics reflect Badu’s worldview of enlightenment, including references to numerology.

“Love of My Life.” Subtitled “Ode to Hip-Hop,” the song “Love of My Life,” which Badu performed with Common, is from the sound track for the 2002 film Brown Sugar. It extends a metaphor introduced by Common (with whom Badu was romantically involved) in his 1994 song “I Used to Love H.E.R.,” in which he laments the fate of hip-hop, personifying the musical form as a woman who has been corrupted by worldly pleasure. The music video for “Love of My Life” traces the history of hip-hop through Badu’s life, including scenes that feature famous rap artists. One scene cuts away from the progression of the song to show Badu rapping alongside MC Lyte, one of hip-hop’s first commercially successful female rappers. The instrumental track marries Badu’s usual soul sound with a more traditional drum sample.

“I Want You.” On Worldwide Underground, each song tends to bleed into the next, and in the center is the extended “I Want You.” Like most of Badu’s songs, “I Want You” is driven by the bass line, which throbs along to the words “I” and “you,” which are repeated seven times in each iteration of the chorus’s line “I want you.” The lyrics describe Badu’s effort to ignore her urges, but the music builds toward a climax that finally wears itself out and gasps to a halt just before giving way to a futuristic guitar riff. The song ends with Badu singing almost inaudibly, “Just because I tell you I love you don’t mean I do.” The song’s melody, reminiscent of “Love of My Life,” joins with a heavy soul sound to suggest ambivalence about her former lover.

Musical Legacy

Blending diverse black musical styles, Badu’s work expresses the independent strength of rap and an overt yet closely guarded sexuality. Her musical development has served as a template for emerging soul and rhythm-and-blues singers.

Principal Recordings

ALBUMS: Baduizm, 1997; Mama’s Gun, 2000; Worldwide Underground, 2003; The Kabah, 2007; Badu, 2007; New Amerykah, Part One (Fourth World War), 2008.

Bibliography

Badu, Erykah. "Erykah Badu on Hosting the 2017 Soul Train Music Awards, the 20th Anniversary of Baduizm & Today's Viral Rappers: 'They're Extensions of Me.'" Interview by Carl Lamarre. Billboard, 22 Nov. 2017, www.billboard.com/articles/columns/hip-hop/8046270/erykah-badu-interview-soul-train-awards-2017-baduizm. Accessed 14 Oct. 2024.

Emerson, Rana. “’Where My Girls At?’ Negotiating Black Womanhood in Music Videos.” Gender and Society, vol. 16, no. 1, 2002, pp. 115–35.

"Erykah Badu." Internet Movie Database, 2024, www.imdb.com/name/nm0004721/. Accessed 14 Oct. 2024.

McIver, Joel. Erykah Badu: The First Lady of Neo-Soul. Sanctuary, 2002.

Perry, Imani. “’Who(se) Am I?’ The Identity and Image of Women in Hip-Hop.” Gender, Race, and Class in Media, edited by Gail Dines and Jean McMahon Humez, Sage Publications, 2003.

Stephens, Dionne, and April Few. “The Effects of Images of African American Women in Hip-Hop on Early Adolescents’ Attitudes Toward Physical Attractiveness and Interpersonal Relationships.” Sex Roles, vol. 56, 2007, pp. 251–64.

Thomas, Greg. “Queens of Consciousness and Sex Radicalism in Hip-Hop: On Erykah Badu and the Notorious K.I.M.” The Journal of Pan-African Studies, vol. 1, no. 7, 2007, pp. 23–37.