Erykah Badu's New Amerykah (Part 1)

by a. Scott galloway

Among Erykah Badu's ever-growing string of aliases is "Analogue Girl in a Digital World." That moniker supremely sums up the black woman who bowed in 1997 with the movement-starting album Baduizm, a U.S. double-platinum-plus seller that introduced us to a free thinking, soul-baring conscious daughter of hip-hop/soul whose spirit cast a spell on music lovers from the 8-track era to the CD era. Now make that the Digital Download era. With her long-awaited fifth project, New Amerykah (Part 1) – Badu's first studio album since 2003's Worldwide Underground – she is making her exciting new music available in some equally exciting new ways.

New Amerykah (Part 1), which, as the subtitle implies, is the first of two albums she intends to drop in 2008, is being released by Universal Motown Records on February 26, the day Badu was born Erica Abi Wright in 1971. In addition to a traditional compact disc release, New Amerykah (Part 1) will simultaneously be released on a very "new school" USB Stick that will not only include the full album but also the amazing video for the first single "Honey" plus access to exclusive web content. More new Web content will be made available via the USB stick to download thereafter on the 26th day of each month. Meanwhile, "old school" heads will also be able to cop a limited collector's edition of pink and purple colored Double Vinyl set that will include the underground tracks "The Healer" and "Real Thang."

In just one decade, Erykah Badu has left an undeniable stamp on the landscape of Black music and culture. She is a multi-platinum-selling artist and a four-time Grammy winner for her debut Baduizm album, "On & On" single and collaborations with rap royalty The Roots ("You Go Me") and Common ("Love of My Life"). Erykah earned three NAACP Awards, a BET Award, an American Music Award, three Soul Train Music Awards, and was the recipient of the latter's coveted Aretha Franklin Entertainer of the Year Award for outstanding career achievement in the field of entertainment 2002-2003. As an actress she was critically acclaimed in 1999's The Cider House Rules. On television, she most recently made a memorable cameo in the landmark black female sitcom Girlfriends performing an exclusive song titled "Vibrate On." And if you've ever seen the woman live [or even live on TV with her slammin' performance of "Back in the Day (Puff)" on Showtime at The Apollo, you know this diva has the voodoo to send you home swingin'.

Now, after a mysterious 5-year wait, she's back with New Amerykah (Part 1). A key conceptual thread for the album is Badu's belief in the unifying power of hip hop music and the need for change for a better tomorrow. To drive this point home, Badu – 37 and the mother of son Seven Sirius and daughter Puma - made the attention-grabbing decision to hold a January 31 press conference concerning the album while in Tel Aviv for a concert in which she shared the stage with Israeli-Arab rap ensemble DAM, and Israeli reggae-soul duo Karolina and Funset. To commemorate her visit, Erykah commissioned a poster featuring a large "hamsa" (a traditional Middle Eastern good luck charm) that appears to be growing out of her hair. At the bottom of the poster, the words for peace in Hebrew and Arabic appear side by side.

This vibe is the core of the track "The Healer," which is set to a hypnotizing mix of xylophone and handclaps."'The Healer' is what the crew around me calls 'the new anthem,'" Badu explained in video interview for MySpace. "It's about hip hop. In the song I subtly discuss how hip hop is bigger than religion, bigger than politics, and bigger than the government because it's everywhere you go. All around the world everybody's noddin' their head to the same beat. In the morning we're praying to the same God and the same being. I thought that was important (to say) for us as a community."

At press time, Badu was scheduled to perform a show in Nigeria on February 17 before returning to America for an invitation-only VH1 Soul taping on 2/19 (air date: tba), followed by a hometown Dallas House of Blues hit on her album release day (2/26).

The 18-track project finds Erykah matching her singular artistry to that of several ace production collaborators. "I had a great time digging into the bottom of my hip hop bag to pull together a team of producers," she recently stated. "Behind every good man stands a good woman. Well, I stand behind 9 or 10 of 'em! It was very important for me to bring this little family together. I don't believe in just doing individual songs. It's a project – a story, a movie and a movement. That's what I believe in putting together. This particular movement of producers worked so well together that we formed an 'unsplittable' atom. I'm quite impressed with the way it's turning out."

Those producers are her crew which she dubs Freaquency (Erykah Badu, James Poyser, Rashad "Tumblin' Dice" Smith and R.C. Williams), as well as longtime friend Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson (leader/drummer of the rap band The Roots), the late J. Dilla, Madlib, Mike "Chav" Chavarria, Kareem Riggins, Shafiq Husayn from the Sa-Ra crew, Los Angeles-based newcomer Turaq, and 9th Wonder who helmed "Honey."

"9th Wonder is a wizard when it comes to the drums and the bass," Erykah stated. "We rolled with 'Honey' as the first single because of appeal is it's a fun feel good track It's about a lover who I'm chasing by the name of Slim who I think is sweet…so sweet that sugar got a long way to catch him."

The funky flirtatiousness of the third verse reads:

"So tell me Slim what you tryin' to do / I'm trynna get me an interview / Look for you all over town / But you gave me the runaround / Fly free baby fine wit me / I need to know if you're feelin' me / Can you stick your pinky finger in my tea / Cause you so sweet ta me"

Leaked late last year, "Honey" has been a slow but steady builder at radio, going Top 20 at Urban AC and Top 40 Urban with digital sales of over 16,000 and steady building ring tone requests. But the real story for "Honey" has been the imaginative video clip that Erykah herself co-directed with Chris Robinson. In the clip, an incognito Badu browses through an old school neighborhood "record shop," flipping through bins of Lps. As she pulls up each gem (humorously re-titled), she becomes one of the artists in the picture. Those iconic images are Badu's idol Chaka Khan (from the juicy back cover of Rufus featuring Chaka Khan's self-titled fourth album that featured "Sweet Thing"), the Ohio Players' Honey, Minnie Riperton's Perfect Angel, Earth, Wind & Fire's Head to the Sky, The Beatles' Let it Be, Eric B & Rakim's Paid in Full, Grace Jones' Nightclubbing, Diana Ross' Blue, Funkadelic's Maggot Brain, De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising, Labelle's Chameleon, NAS' Illmatic, Olivia Newton John's Physical and the magazine cover of Rolling Stone that featured John Lennon & Yoko Ono. Even the "Honey" single lithograph was lifted from the '60s art of R. Crumb. The clip also has a mid-song-segue into another song where - much like Andre' 3000 in OutKast's "Hey Ya" - Erykah rocks out playing all the members of the band, backup singers and lead singer. And at the end, Badu puts an exclamation behind her affection and respect for traditional music retail outlets with the scroll, "Support your local record store!"

The remaining songs are "American Promise," "Me," "My People," "Speech," "Soldier 7," "The Cell," "Twinkle," "Love Me," "Emotions," "Don't Be Long," "YPOM," "Hot Slow Jam," "Jump Up in the Air," "Loretta Brown" (another alias) and "Dirty Dirty."

In e-cards promoting New Amerykah (Part 1)'s release, the prominent slogan is "Freeing the slaves and the slave masters." This line of thinking ties into Badu's consistent belief in Black Empowerment. To this end, the artist aligned her album's street date with Saviour's Day, a holiday of the Nation of Islam celebrating the birth of Master W.D. Fard Muhammad whom the faithful deem to have been "the truth made manifest in-flesh-the Son of Man." During the January 31 Tel Aviv press conference, Badu showed support for the Nation of Islam's Minister Louis Farrakhan, stating that he is "not an anti-Semite. He loves all people."

Erykah Badu is also starting her own label, Control Freaq Records, with a surprise first artist to bow in April. But for now her primary focus is New Amerykah (Part 1) with spot date shows to be announced for March.

Reveling in the raw creativity that went into assembling this album – which reportedly morphed from a 3-disc set into its current two-part release for 2008, Badu muses, "Most of the tracks that I have on the album came from the producers mix tapes. I was huntin' and shufflin' through iTunes looking through all the mix tapes that they've given me over time, finding stuff and putting it all together very carefully." One track sure to get extra exposure is one produced by the deeply lamented J. Dilla, the progressive hip hop master who left us far too soon. Of this track Erykah says simply, "I chose one of Dilla's tracks from 2000. I called it 'Love.' That's exactly how it feels."

"I worked with a lot of very creative, eclectic, insane, genius, scientific, mathematical producers for this project," she concludes. "It was a great lesson for me – a great experience."

To keep up with all things Badu, stay plugged-in to erykahbadu.com, baduworld.com, okayplayer.com and her MySpace page.