Rare is the artist who can marvel both her fans as well as her contemporaries – and leave both entities dumbfounded with her beautiful unorthodoxy. It’s rarer still for the musical artist to completely spellbound you, and yet not even harmonize a single note.
Erykah Badu is a musical and cultural iconoclast without trying to be a nonconformist. That she appear to rebel against society’s norms is just an incidental output of her wondrous mind and unique outlook. She is the rare artist who is always interesting to listen to even when when she has no new music to offer.
“An iconoclast. I don’t know. I don’t consider myself anything really. My job is to be totally honest. I believe half the good they say about me and half the bad things.”
If you want to know how she is feeling or how far advanced Badu is on her spiritual journey, then carefully look at her album covers or check out the clothes she wears onstage.
In Badu’s latest recording, New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh, she is a delicious blend of contradictions. Only such a woman as Badu can strip naked in a video — in public to boot — then turn around and share her concerns about certain female artists who become overly-sexual in their videos. You pretty much know who’s she’s talking about.
“I look at some other videos. I’m not naming names, because I don’t want that to be mentioned. There is the thing with sexuality. I’m naked for 13 seconds, and these people are naked the whole time and gyrating and saying come “lick on my lollipop,” and “suck on my cinnamon roll,” and, you know, suggesting sex. People are uncomfortable with sexuality that’s not for male consumption. [It] could be ‘cause I did it in public too. Do you think people would have been complaining if I had on high-heel shoes?
Badu classifies her “Window Seat” video as being in a different category than others who revel in hypersexual videos like Beyonce, Lady Gaga and Nicki Minaj.
“People in this society have a problem with the female sexuality, if it is not packaged for the consumption of male entertainment. They don’t recognize it. It has to be explained. If I was in France it would be just performance art, because that’s exactly what it was. It’s to strike up dialogue about a particular subject.
“Like, for example, that you won’t leave a man necessarily just because he’s been with another woman.
“No. Infidelity is not a deal-breaker for me. We’re all born sexual beings,” Badu says, who has had boyfriends nonstop since age five. “I myself am not someone with a very high libido. I don’t require sex for happiness I need companionship. I need a partner I can depend on, that I can love and grow with. But I do understand the nature of these men I’ve been with, and men in general. They have a need to chase.”
How many females would you hear say this? But then again, her perspective on life coupled with her talent and versatility that garners her the utmost respect in the industry.
“She most definitely is a super talented individual,” Rick Ross said. “Of course she’s extremely beautiful. It’s hard to look into her eyes for too long. She’s so sweet. Just to see her creativity. The entire process of her writing her entire album all the way down to directing her videos and editing. For me to be sitting here while she’s [filming the video], doing what she’s doing, … And she’s also checking the angles. It was like wow, I never knew that. I knew she was super talented and so hands-on and in charge of her entire project.”
In fact, she is such a brilliant artist and engaging thinker, as well as one who is completely clothed and covered in her unique outfits that most had no clue that she had an hourglass figure beneath those clothes.
“I have been telling dudes for years what she looked like,” slobbered super-producer Pharell Williams. “But no one believed me. When the video dropped, [men] were calling me Noah, because I told them that there was a mothership of love in that woman.” –terry shropshire
