UB Soul Friday: Celebrating the Incomparable Erykah Badu

This weeks “UB Soul Friday” spotlights the incomparable Erykah Badu.

This year she will celebrate the 25th Anniversary of her sophomore album release “Mama’s Gun.

“UB Soul Friday,” spotlighting artists, albums, singles and videos that left a mark in R&B and Soul music!

Fresh off of Erykah Badu’s Amazon Livestream “Badu Presents: Echos 19,” last night, we continuing to celebrate Erykah for Black Music Month.

Erykah Badu fuses the jazz, R&B and hip-hop influences of a lifetime, and does so not only with her voice, but with many talents: writing, producing, directing, poetry, dance, drama, and visual art.

Erykah Badu was born on February 26th, 1971 to William and Kollen Wright in Dallas, Texas.

They named her Erica Abi Wright and she was the first of their three children.

She inherited a taste for music from her mother who introduced her to multiple genres of music including; Joni Mitchell, Parliament-Funkadelic, Pink Floyd, Phoebe Snow, and Chaka Khan.

Erykah performed onstage at age four with her mother, a professional actress, and wrote her first song at seven on an old piano her grandmother bought for her.

In adolescence, she was encouraged in voice, dance and art, all the while absorbing the R&B music of the ’60s and ’70s, and the emerging hip-hop culture.

At Booker T. Washington High, an arts-oriented magnet school, she had a regular spot rapping on a local hip-hop radio show, tagged “Apples.”

Then, seizing her own self-hood, she renamed herself entirely, changing her name from Erica Wright to Erykah Badu, – “kah” for the “inner self” and “ba-du,” after the scat singing of the great jazz vocalists.

It wasn’t until her acting debut in the Martin Luther King Jr. Recreational Center’s musical production of “Really Rosie,” directed by her godmother Gwen Hargrove, that Badu realized she was a natural performer. “I played Alligator,” she once stated, “and at 6 years old, I got my first standing ovation. I knew I wanted to bring people to their feet from that point on.”

Erykah Badu stayed true to her artistic leanings and enrolled at Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing Arts in the late ’80s.

Tomboyish and a bit of a class clown, Badu devoted most of her time to perfecting her dance form, studying the techniques of Martha Graham and Katherine Dunham, as well as practicing ballet, tap, and modern dance.

Erykah Badu also sharpened her Hip-Hop skills, freestyling on the Dallas radio station 90.9 FM KNON under the name Apples the Alchemist until she eventually changed the spelling of her name from “Erica Wright” to “Erykah Badu,” “kah” being Kemetic (Egyptian) for a human’s vital energy or “inner-self” and “ba-du” after her favorite jazz scat-sound.

But later, Badu would discover that her chosen name holds a far deeper meaning. In 1989, her senior year of high school, she decided to dedicate her life to a path of holistic wellness and became a vegetarian.

Erykah Badu enrolled at Grambling State University, where she majored in theater and minored in Quantum Physics.

She left in 1993 to pursue music full-time.

During the day, she taught drama and dance at the South Dallas Cultural Center and worked as a coffeehouse waitress. At night, she recorded and performed songs like “Appletree,” produced by her cousin Robert “Free” Bradford.

In 1994, her 19-song demo caught the attention of aspiring record executive Kedar Massenburg by way of the SXSW music festival.

Massenburg signed her to his upstart label Kedar Entertainment. The company eventually merged with Motown/Universal and Badu started opening for D’Angelo, prepping the world for the massive Neo soul movement to come.

“I went with him because he was young, black, very smart, and he had a vision. None of the other labels had a vision. I was afraid I’d get lost in the shuffle of a bigger label,” Erykah Badu explained why she signed with, at the time 32-year-old Kedar Massenburg‘s Kedar Entertainment label.

The New York Times described Erykah Badu’s groundbreaking debut, 1997’s “Baduizm,” as “traditional soul vocals, staccato hip-hop rhythms and laid-back jazzy grooves.”

Yet, hindsight reveals that Erykah’s debut was more than just an album, it was the introduction of a new lifestyle.

The music evoked speakeasies, incense, head wraps, and boho coffee shop culture all in one easy breath.

“While writing and creating this music, I continued to build myself as a person, as a woman and as an African-American,” she said that year. “I wanted to share these experiences with everyone.”

Her love of creativity and her belief in herself were palpable, and these qualities proved to be every bit as irresistibly magnetic as the hit songs that came off the album one by one.

Propelled by the lead single “On & On,” the album went multi-platinum, winning her two Grammys for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance and Best R&B Album.

“On and On” was a perfect career framing opening shot. The song drew immediate vocal comparisons to Billie Holiday, and the video, a play on scenes from The Color Purple, introduced a visual and personal style so coherent that no one could mistake it for mere packaging, and a sense of dramatic timing so obvious that we felt sure we’d see her on the big screen sometime soon.

She called upon her diverse training in theater, dance and art – as well as her own sociopolitical and philosophical consciousness — to direct the succeeding videos, “Next Lifetime,” and “Other Side of the Game,” with results that were by turns emotional and imaginative, and playful, yet heartfelt.

Her voice resonated universally in a marketplace that had become so severely polarized by age that few records were being heard by both young and old.

Organic and undeniable, “Baduizm” sold a million copies within two months of its February 1997 release, out of an eventual 3 million.

Erykah Badu topped Rolling Stone’s Reader’s poll for Best R&B Artist, and Entertainment Weekly named her Best New Female Singer of 1997.

Just as quickly, her stage impact on the Smokin’ Grooves Tour and Lilith Fair so excited her new following that, within months of “Baduizm‘s” release, Badu followed up with “Live!” also in 1997, selling an astonishing 2 million copies, sparked by a lightning rod of a song, “Tyrone.”

Improvised by Erykah Badu during a swing through London, “Tyrone” demonstrated a screenwriter’s ability to elicit an off-the-hook response from the audience.

Appearing in D’Angelo‘s “Lady” video, and duetting with him on “Your Precious Love” for the High School High soundtrack, Erykah Badu also contributed to the song scores of Eve’s Bayou (“A Child With the Blues”), Hav Plenty (“Ye Yo”) and Bamboozled (Chaka Khan’s “Hollywood,” and a duet with Common, “The Light”).

Duetting with Guru on the track “Plenty” and her and the Roots, “You Got Me,” was the song of spring/summer of 1999, and won her third Grammy, Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group, in 2000.

Erykah Badu‘s commanding on-screen presence, apparent from the first viewing of “On and On,” was repeatedly confirmed by her subsequent acting roles: cameos on the daytime drama “One Life To Live” and “Blues Brothers 2000”, and especially her moving, honest work in “The Cider House Rules.”

Erykah Badu‘s second studio album, “Mama’s Gun,” will celebrate it’s 25th anniversary this year, originally released on November 20th, 2000.

It spawned three singles: “Bag Lady“, which became her first top 10 single on the Billboard Hot 100 peaking at #6, “Didn’t Cha Know?” and “Cleva.”

The album was certified platinum.

Erykah Badu‘s third album, “Worldwide Underground,” was released in 2003.

It generated three singles: “Love of My Life (An Ode to Hip-Hop)”, “Danger” and “Back in the Day (Puff)”, with the first becoming her second song to reach the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #9.

The album was certified gold.

Erykah Badu‘s fourth album, “New Amerykah Part One,” was released in 2008.

It spawned two singles: “Honey” and “Soldier.”

“New Amerykah Part Two” was released in 2010 and fared well both critically and commercially.

The controversial video for that album’s first single, “Window Seat,” featured Erykah Badu completely disrobing while she walked through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, the site of the assassination of U.S. Pres. John F. Kennedy.

In 2003, she founded her non-profit group, B.L.I.N.D. (Beautiful Love Incorporated Non-Profit Development), which is geared toward creating social change through economic, artistic, and cultural development. Among B.L.I.N.D.’s many accomplishments, the organization has provided arts, crafts, and dance classes to children displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

Also in 2004, Erykah Badu’s charitable efforts helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to support the scholarship fund at St. Phillips School and Community Center in Dallas, Texas.

Erykah Badu’s artistic and spiritual contributions to humanity earned her an honorary Doctorate degree in Humanities from Paul Quinn College in 2000.

In 2006 Erykah was certified as a Holistic Health practitioner thru Dr. Laila Africa and she is also a 3rd Degree Reiki Master-Teacher.

In 2015 she released the mixtape “But You Caint Use My Phone,” on which she adapted a variety of songs about phones and communication.

This year Erykah Badu was featured on Rapsody’s “3:AM,” which won a Grammy-Award, marking her fifth win.

Erykah Badu has returned with her first lead single of this decade called “Next To You,” self-executive produced and in collaboration with legendary hip-hop producer The Alchemist.

In honor of Black Music Month, Erykah Badu performed an exclusive livestreamed concert, “Badu Presents: Echos 19,” in her hometown of Dallas, Texas, as part of “Forever in Rotation,” Amazon Music’s Juneteenth celebration.

Self described as a “mother first”, Erykah Badu is a touring artist, DJ, teacher, community activist, vegetarian, recycler, and conscious spirit.

Erykah Badu continues to use her platform as an alter. Her true instrument is the ‘intent,’ with which she sings.