Stay Woke: Erykah Badu’s Best

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Not to take anything away from Ms. Lauryn Hill—Miseducation is fearless, timeless, etc.—but seeing her in Berkeley reminded me that she essentially only has three albums of material (and that’s being generous). As much as we all love “Doo Wop (That Thing),” “Nothing Even Matters,” and “Everything Is Everything,” she’s a bit fossilized, and her performances, no matter how vibrant, are exercises in nostalgia.

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Watching her, my mind began to cycle through artists from that era who haven’t succumbed to self-parody, grown creatively stagnant, disappeared for long stretches, or turned their attention to weird sex cults. It’s a short list, and Erykah Badu is near the top. Badu may have peaked commercially in the late ‘90s, but her releases since 2008 (New Amerykah Part One and Part Two and But You Caint Use My Phone) have been more restless, expansive, and experimental than anything she did in the first half of her career.

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‍New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) is arguably the most important album of the 2000s. A woozy, psychedelic, politically prickly, endlessly esoteric album, it ultimately reaffirms the self in face of crippling oppression. Badu’s masterwork remains a singular artifact of the Dubya years, and serves as a precursor to everything from To Pimp a Butterfly to A Seat At The Table. Think you’re woke? Badu (along with underrated soul singer Georgia Anne Muldrow) popularized the term on “Master Teacher.”

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‍But You Caint Use My Phone is similarly mercurial. Putting aside the fact that it’s a mixtape framed as a radio show that feels like a playlist—yeah, all of our definitions for collections of songs are blurred now—it skitters between pointed political commentary, melancholy slow jams, ham-fisted stand-up comedy, and rambling sound sketches—often within the same song.

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Check out “Cel U Lar Device,” her remake of Drake’s “Hotline Bling” that skirts the line between homage and satire, and throws the original’s Caribbean rhythms against her own stilted Kraftwerkian vocals for a cheeky takedown of cell-phone culture. Later in the album, she’ll trot out a Drake impersonator to kick a few bars. It’s all unbelievably awesome, and probably better than anything the 6 God has ever made.

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Of course, her first three albums—1997’s Baduziam, 2000’s Mama’s Gun, and 2003’s Worldwide Underground—are classics of their period. If you know anyone between the ages of 15 and 20, there’s about a 32 percent chance that Badu played some part in their conception.

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But more than just baby-making machines, tracks such as “On & On,” “Didn’t Cha Know,” and “Next Lifetime” redefined R&B, updating Philly and Memphis soul for a new generation, and songs such as “A.D. 2000” (off Mama’s Gun) foreshadow the Alpha Centauri agitprop of her later work. She brought the vibes back to the genre, but, unlike some of her soul contemporaries, Erykah also had songs to cut through the nag champa fragrance. As always, she was in her own lane.