The R&B legend Hayley Williams calls one of her favourites: “She’s such a genius”
There are so many great artists in history, whose presence unveils itself after diving headfirst into a musical rabbit hole. For me, one of those artists was Erykah Badu.
It started with Questlove, who became my de facto custodian of all things soul and hip-hop. Desperate to further understand the genuine culture of those genres, particularly in the 1990s, I consumed everything Questlove had ever performed, written or spoken about in that era, for he was not only a crucial member of it, he felt like a willing student also. He spoke of the era with a brimming sense of excitement that matched my own and so felt like the perfect cultural tour guide.
Through Questlove, I learned about D’Angelo. The neo-soul innovator that Questlove was so desperate to work with, that he hijacked his own show with The Roots just to perform a second-hand audition. Through his record Voodoo, I began to develop an acute understanding of rhythm sections and their arrangements in a soul capacity.
So it was only natural that my next step in this artistic journey would be Erykah Badu. Not just because she was the romantic partner of D’Angelo, but because of how she singlehandedly took these concepts, these genres and the artistic culture around them, and elevated them to a brand new level.
She was, in many ways, the contemporary voice of soul, leading it into modernised unknown territories after many fans wondered what its future held after the heydays of Motown. Her sophomore album Mama’s Gun was a masterclass in this modernised idea of soul, drenching songs like ‘Green Eyes’ in luscious jazz inspired piano arrangements, while stripping hits like ‘Didn’t Cha Know’ into something more sultry and R&B.
Across this album, she represented the different spectrums of soul music but, perhaps more importantly, extended one hand into the past and introduced it to the future. For that genre of music, she connected generations.
But perhaps more importantly for the socio-political landscape of America, was her ability to use that sonic footprint to convey the Black-American experience with complete fidelity. Her music allowed for the likes of a young Hayley Williams, who with Paramore would become a future pop-punk star, to understand the experiences that exist on the other side of the musical coin.
“She’s such a genius and she’s in a different vein; she’s been so impactful,” she explained. “It would appear to me as — I’m a white woman speaking on this so forgive my ignorance — that she’s been hugely, hugely influential on Black culture and people’s recognition of their roots. Again, it’s one of those things when I listen to her, I’m like, “Oh, I know that I don’t get this, but I’ll still appreciate it.”
Specifically on an album like Mama’s Gun, Badu weaved hyper-specific commentary of the Black-American experience with more universal lyrical tropes of hope, faith and resilience. It was the careful marriage of all these styles that allowed her music to be deeply impactful to one community, while simultaneously educating another. All the while, laying it on top of some of the best musicality of her era.
