158. Erykah Badu, "Mama's Gun"

 


By the time Erykah Badu started working on this album, her relationship with Andre Benjamin - who we will most certainly see here again - had started to break down.  The song "Green Eyes," the last track on the album, which starts out sounding like an old 78 and progresses through a series of jazz inflections as it slowly modernizes, reflects that breakup:

Never knew that love could hurt like this
Never thought I would but I got this
Makes me feel so sad and hurt inside
Feel embarrassed so I want to hide
Silly me I thought your love was true
Change my name to silly e badu
Before I heal it's gonna be a while
I know it's gonna be a while chile

Ouch.  A lot of this album is painfully confessional like that, but it's hard to tell because the music is so beautiful and rapturous that it's hard to fixate on the lyrics.  This record, which I don't think I'd heard before, reminded me so strongly of D'Angelo that I was not surprised to learn that it was recorded around the same time and in the same studio - Electric Ladyland, in New York - as D'Angelo's Voodoo, with some of the same people.  They share the same "neo-soul" label and a lot of the same sound - that slinky, effortless sound.  Badu had linked up with the loose collective known as the Soulquarians by this point, in which Questlove played a major role, and they were trading musical ideas back and forth.  It must have been an amazing thing to be around, just a creative waterfall.

But Badu's voice is really what makes this such a beautiful recording,  It's a lithe instrument, snaking around some notes and really pushing others.  Take track two, "Didn't Cha Know," one of the best songs on the album.  It's based on a jazz-funk sample (from Tarika Blue's 1977 song "Dreamflower"), and Badu's voice bats it around, toying with it, slipping from a soft coo to a wry twang.  (You can see why she got the Billie Holliday comparisons.)

Badu engages with a lot of important shit on this record.  Just below the slinky neo-soul, there are meditations on Western beauty standards ("Cleva") and police brutality ("A.D. 2000") and the lure and dangers of the street ("Penitentiary Philosophy").  The gorgeous music may draw you in, but the message is clear-eyed and steely.  She knows what's up.

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? I think so.

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