Badu, Erykah

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ERYKAH BADU

Born: Erykah Wright; Dallas, Texas, 26 February 1972

Genre: R&B

Best-selling album since 1990: Baduizm (1997)

Hit songs since 1990: "On & On," "Tyrone"

With her towering headdresses, dignified stance, and a vocal style that echoes that of a jazz legend, Erykah Badu emerged in the mid-1990s as the voice of a new breed of rhythm and blues singer steeped in the smooth soul sounds of the 1970s yet thoroughly versed in the attitudes of 1990s hip-hop music.

Born in Dallas, Texas, and raised in a single-parent home, Badu attended Booker T. Washington High School of the Arts as a child and began her performing career at age four, when she shared the stage with her mother, the actress Kolleen Wright. Trained as a dancer and known in Dallas for her cameos on a local hip-hop radio show under the pseudonym MC Apples, Badu studied theater at Louisiana's Grambling State University. After dropping out to focus on her music career, she was discovered while working as a schoolteacher and part-time dance and drama teacher in Dallas.

In 1994 the singer—who had taken the name Badu as an homage to jazzy, scat phraseology—got her break when she opened for a fellow new soul crooner, D'Angelo, at a Dallas show. D'Angelo's manager, Kedar Massenberg, was impressed with her talent and signed Badu to his newly

formed label, Kedar Entertainment, and paired her with D'Angelo for a cover of the Marvin Gaye/Tammi Terrell duet "Your Precious Love" for the High School High (1996) soundtrack.

When Badu's debut album, Baduizm, was released the next year, it was hailed as a breath of fresh air in the rhythm and blues world for its innovative mix of jazzy vocals, vintage soul, rap-influenced beats and language, and positive, conscious message. With a supple, sultry voice and mellifluous phrasing, Badu could not avoid comparisons to the jazz great Billie Holiday. Her work with the pioneering, instrument-playing Philadelphia rap group the Roots helped place Badu at the forefront of the Philadelphia-based "neo-soul" movement, a loose aggregation of singers, producers, session players, and rappers centered in the Philadelphia area who looked to classic 1970s soul for inspiration.

Such tracks as "Next Lifetime" and the album's breakthrough hit, "On & On," mix bass-thumping funk and hip-hop-style beats and lyrics with Badu's signature personal mysticism, which touches on aspects of pacifism, Afrocentrism, and Egyptian iconography. Often, Badu, who wrote all but one of the songs on the album, mixes these influences within the span of just a few lines, such as in "On & On," when she languidly sings, "My cipher keeps movin' like a rollin' stone / On & on and on & on / Alright 'til the break of dawn / I go on & on and on & on."

A Live Album Quickly Follows

Badu did not waste time following up the chart success of Baduizm, giving birth to both a live album and her first child, Seven, on the same day, just nine months after the February 1997 release of her debut album. In addition to revisiting a number of songs from Baduizm, the live album introduces two new tracks, most notably the show-stopper "Tyrone," which Badu is said to have improvised during a London show. An audience favorite, the sassy slow-jam soul song is a tirade against an unkind lover who cannot seem to find quality time for his mate. "I just want it to be you and me / Like it used to be, baby / But you don't know how to act," Badu sings, suggesting her time-pressed beau call his friend Tyrone to help him collect his possessions—but not on her phone.

Paying homage to her idols, Badu also covers classic soul songs by Roy Ayers ("Searching") and Rufus and Chaka Khan ("Stay") on the album, which again mixes her earthy, conscious attitude with a streetwise flair. In addition to solid sales, Badu reaped critical awards in 1998, taking home honors at the American Music Awards, the Soul Train Lady of Soul Awards, the NAACP Image Awards, Soul Train Music Awards, and the Grammys.

Badu's versatility allowed her to tour with both hard-core hip-hop group the Wu-Tang Clan and the female-centric Lilith Fair. Badu also filmed a cameo for Blues Brothers 2000 and a well-received supporting part in the film The Cider House Rules. In early 2000, Badu won another Grammy for her collaboration with the Roots on their song, "You Got Me."

While appearing as a guest on a host of albums from rap artists (Guru, Outkast, Rahzel, the Roots), Badu continued work on her second studio effort, Mama's Gun (2000). The album is an artistic leap for Badu, retaining her jazzy, soulful flavor while incorporating elements of hard-edge funk and psychedelic rock on songs such as the album opener, "Penitentiary Philosophy." With credits that read like a who's who of neo-soul, Mama's Gun finds Badu weaving her tales of self-reliance and strength with a more clear-eyed view of the world. "If you're looking for a free ride, you better run chile / Or you sure won't get too far/ You'd better dance a dance / To make the rain come down/ If you want to be a star," she sings on the bouncy jazz/soul song "My Life." The album's full, vivid funk sound is enriched further by the presence of the legendary jazz vibra-phone player Roy Ayers and the jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove, who plays on the slinky homage to Badu's sexual wiles, "Booty."

From the 1990s and into the new millennium, Erykah Badu was instrumental in sparking a renewed interest in introspective, socially conscious soul music.