Badu Revu

Verbal Math's Review of New Amerykah Part Two

Tasteful. The homey RA Washington hit the nail on the head describing Erykah Badu’s artistic attribute. Sure it’s edgy, provocative and progressive, but tastefully so. Badu has certainly pushed hard toward the musical margins at times (2008’s New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) is a remarkable achievement, if an unsettling listen), yet her new album, New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh) finds her squarely in her musical sweet-spot - tasteful soul (shout out to the Main Ingredient) with a revolutionary bent; a damn fine record.

What’s important about Badu’s sense of taste is her ability to construct cohesive albums from disparate producers and her own muddy emotional and political waters. She knows what sounds good, and how to make her musings accessible and populace while still esoteric and spiritual in the most confounding ways. I couldn’t tell you what Badu believes, but she makes it clear how she feels. Something about that resonates, even amidst the Kemetic language and hood politics. That takes a keen sense of tone – and taste.

To be fair, the producers on New Amerykah (Part Two) shouldn’t be described as “disparate.” The degrees of musical separation between Madlib, J-Dilla, Karriem Riggins, Sa-Ra, James Poyser, Ta’Raach and 9th Wonder are so small they don’t exist, with the late J-DIlla playing Kevin Bacon. Dilla either collaborated with or trained every artist listed in his short life, with the exception of 9th Wonder who owes his career to his ability to approximate Dilla’s soulful hip-hop using a poorly regarded computer program. That said, it’s time to shut the door on the posthumous Dilla beats. The Dilla track used for “Love” is easily lapped by the subtle throb of Ta’Raach’s “Gone Baby, Don’t Be Long” and Karriem Riggins’ exuberant “Fall in Love (Your Funeral)” (probably the best song on the album). His apprentices are ably moving forward in his tradition, so let’s let Dilla’s sound rest in peace. Please.

Badu, to her unending credit, selects and steers tracks from all these producers into her mold. Her vision. She’s in control and it comes through in every track, transition and arrangement. We shouldn’t be shocked that Madlib can make a great R&B track, but either Badu selected brilliantly from Madlib’s inconceivable vault of music or directed him toward “Umm Hmm”, a revelatory soul track that extends Madlib’s and Badu’s legend in equal measure. It’s not mind-bending; it’s just damn good in a way that’s not easy to maintain at this stage in either artists’ career. By contrast, Common gets lost in his collaborations (Finding Forever is a Kanye album featuring Common; Universal Mind Control a Pharrell record), while Badu coordinates them. Simply put, Badu gets people to make Badu records.

The sweet, wistful “Window Seat”, a delicate spring-evening track that highlights the able drumming of ?uestlove and the criminally under-acknowledged production of James Poyser is in the same vein, but from a different angle. Here, it’s live music rich with textures of handclaps and the “in the room while they play” feel that’s so hard to capture in this digital age. Of course, Badu uses the meditative slow burn of “Window Seat” to make one of few videos that have mattered in the last 15 years, garnering CNN and MSNBC attention by stripping nude at the site of the JFK assassination for an assassination of her own, complete with blue blood. The resulting firestorm attacks Badu, naturally, for poor taste.

Erykah Badu makes soul music, but as a child of hip-hop she embraces it’s tropes and melds them into soul’s traditions. She samples lyrics like her producers do records; reinterpreting the words to beguiling effect. Check how she turns B.I.G.’s threat to would-be jackers, “there’s gonna be slow singing and flower bringing if my burglar alarm starts ringing” into a warning to a would be lover on “Fall in Love”. Most importantly, she understands that we can’t, and shouldn’t want, to go back to a purer, less ruptured soul music. Badu knows that you can’t sing Sylvia Striplin’s “Can’t Turn Me Away” without referencing the Junior M.A.F.I.A. song that sampled it, and that you can’t make music that matters without celebrating the people that made the music matter in the first place. So yes, you get gutter slang mixed with elegant instrumentals. You get jazz phrasing that plays off of sampled vocals. And you get another great album in an increasingly impressive career. It’s an exotic dish, but a taste well worth acquiring.