Erykah Badu

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Thanks for coming all the way out.

ERYKAH BADU

Thanks for having me.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

We have a tremendous amount of ground to cover. We could probably focus on a million different things. We have a limited amount of time and you have a lot to say. But I’d like to ask you a bit about South Dallas, where you were born. A musical hotbed in the late ‘60s through the mid-’70s, tremendous amount of talent, much of it unrecognized. Did you grow up surrounded by this musical community?

ERYKAH BADU

Not really. I didn’t really start my musical career until the ‘90s. But there’s a very heavy blues influence in Dallas where I’m from. Muddy Waters, Johnnie Taylor and a lot of blues people came out of Dallas in the early ‘70s, ‘60s. A lot of artists would come through and there was a venue called the Central Forest Theater where a lot of artists would come and perform. The JB’s, Aretha Franklin, John Coltrane. Whoever came through Dallas, that was a central spot for them. I grew up listening to that kind of music. I grew up listening to everything, from Pink Floyd, Joni Mitchell, Deniece Williams, Earth Wind & Fire, so many different genres of things. I’m really a child of the funk. My uncles listened to funk music most of the time, and that’s what I grew up listening to.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Can you elaborate a bit? Some names?

ERYKAH BADU

Bootsy Collins, Parliament-Funkadelic, Zapp and Roger. What else? So many.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

The Meters?

ERYKAH BADU

The Meters, of course. I can’t think of all of them right now. Just so much funk music played in the house. Prince was even considered funk at the time in the ‘70s. Rufus and Chaka Khan. Ohio Players. Y’all know the stuff.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Prior to your arrival here you gave an interview to Fact Magazine in which you said the first hip hop song you heard was “Apache” by the Incredible Bongo Band. I find that interesting because most people wouldn’t consider that a hip-hop song, but you do. Why?

ERYKAH BADU

Actually, it was “Apache” by Soulsonic Force, “Apache (Jump On It).” I think they just wrote the wrong band down [sings “Apache” by Sugarhill Gang].

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Interesting still. Were you aware of any other Dallas talent of your generation,, like Roy Hargrove?

ERYKAH BADU

Yeah, we were in high school, we were in a rap group together. He was the beatbox and I was the MC. We went to a school called Arts Magnet high school, where the genres were music, dance, visual art and... [pause] dance, and music – instrumentation. Edie Brickell graduated from there before me, then later Norah Jones, and some other people along the way.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Roy was obviously already a trumpet player, ‘cause I saw his middle school record from Oliver Wendell Holmes middle school. He’s standing in front of a DeLorean with the trumpet.

ERYKAH BADU

Yeah, he’s incredible. He used to play so hard in junior high, and the teachers used to think he was playing wrong. It was so strong and so hard that they thought he was going to hurt himself. But he knew what he was doing, he already understood the breathing and the control.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Were you playing any instruments?

ERYKAH BADU

Drums. Any kind of percussion. I played a mean tambourine back then. Piano.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

When did you realize that you were going to do music professionally?

ERYKAH BADU

1994, ’95. I was in a group with my cousin Free. We were called Erykah Free. I was an MC first. He went to the Art Institute of Chicago, I went to Grambling State University and he would mail me cassette tapes of beats. I would usually rap over them, but one time I decided to write a song and it was “Apple Tree.” That was ’93, ’94 and we decided we might have something because people liked it and thought it was unique and different. I never really considered myself a vocalist. I was a writer more than a vocalist, a lyricist, but that developed along with it because I had kind of a unique voice. The next song I wrote was “On & On,” that was with Jamal Cantero in Dallas. His name is now Jaborn Jamal, and he produced “On & On.” That was the second song I wrote. I opened for Mobb Deep and Notorious B.I.G. in Dallas and people liked it.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Obviously, that’s a game-changing song for you. Not to backtrack, but it took until the mid-’90s before you realized that you were going to do music professionally. How did you see your life unfolding prior to that?

ERYKAH BADU

I was an artist. My religion is art. From the time when I was a kid, I was either in dance class, theater or making paper doll clothes or doing something pertaining to art. It was where I shined. I did my first performance when I was about six or seven in theater at my elementary school, and I really enjoyed the immediate reaction from the audience. It was a comedy thing. I thought I was going to be a stand-up comedian. They thought I was hilarious as a kid. I just moved into different things. I always danced, ballet and modern. Anything that had to do with art, I could catch on and do it kinda well. I don’t know how to read music, never understood theory, not a great dancer. I’m a cool vocalist, but it just feels really good to me. I like how it feels. It became my therapy and later my job.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Your therapy when you were in your mid-20s?

ERYKAH BADU

All my life. It was how I expressed my anger, pain, joy or fear, or love. You know, through dance or painting or singing, rapping.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

What was it like to perform “On & On” at a Mobb Deep and Notorious B.I.G. show?

ERYKAH BADU

It was great. It was a very rare opportunity. I never thought I’d be doing that. After I did those songs there was a three-song demo with “On & On,” “Apple Tree” and “My Life.” It was over a totally different beat than it is on Mama’s Gun. But we passed a demo around and it got into the hands of a promoter in Dallas. He called me. He didn’t believe it was me singing it, so he asked me to sing it over the phone. So I sang over the phone and he goes, “Well, let’s see what you’ve got. Can you come and open for Mobb Deep and B.I.G.?” It’s like [timid voice] “Yeah.” And this happened, I got started.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Wow. No trepidation when an offer like that came your way? An immediate yes?

ERYKAH BADU

Yeah. After all, I went to a school of arts and was surrounded by artists, I had plenty of practice expressing myself. By that time, the fear had diminished and it was truly therapy to the point where I could just stand in one place with the mic and close my eyes. Never underestimate the audience’s ability to connect with what I’m trying to express.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

You never received any training on the voice, it was just something that came through you?

Erykah Badu

Yeah.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

And obviously “On & On” became a big song. But you had to get signed first, which meant people had to hear it outside of a Mobb Deep show. How did that happen?

ERYKAH BADU

There’s this really huge music festival called in Austin, Texas, called South by Southwest. It’s like a tribal gathering of music, spread all over Austin, different clubs and arenas. I had a demo tape with some pictures and passed it out. Mobb Deep’s manager, Tami Cobbs gave it to this dude named Kedar Massenburg, who was an aspiring record-label owner, and he got a deal with Universal with that music. He was managing D’Angelo at the time and we were his two artists. We got the attention of Universal and other labels, but we decided to roll with Kedar because there were just two of us and we knew that we would get the attention that we needed.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Was this after D’Angelo released “Brown Sugar”?

ERYKAH BADU

After. I was working in a coffee shop when D’Angelo released “Brown Sugar.” I was “frother of the month.” [laughter] I would listen to that CD in the coffee shop and in the meanwhile work on music with my cousin.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

This is in Dallas.

ERYKAH BADU

In Dallas.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

So Kedar negotiates a deal with Universal, but you signed to him, right?

ERYKAH BADU

Right. So basically, I signed a production deal with Kedar and he got a label deal with Universal. And I also had to sign an inducement letter with Universal, meaning if Kedar left or decided to do something else, I would have to stay with Universal. That was the catch.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

And you’ve been with them ever since.

ERYKAH BADU

Yeah. No horror stories, you know. I take my time. They support my art to the best of their ability. The record industry itself is declining because of social networking and our new way of communicating music, but I don’t really have a horror story with it. I just turn in my music when I finish it with all my artwork and packaging, liner notes. If we have to clear samples, we figure out a way to do that in-house at Badu World. They just take the art and put it in the best frame they can put it in. The first year was incredible for me. I’ve never had another year like 1997. That was the year for me where the music was recognized and appreciated. If there was an award show, I was there. I toured for the whole year. It was incredible. The record sales were amazing. Baduizm was that one for me.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

You’re referring to your first record, Baduizm, 1997. Within a couple of years of pulling espresso shots and listening to D’Angelo, you’re on the same stage with him. And you talk about the decline of the industry, but that record was released in what I suppose we would think of as the last great hurrah. Records sold back then.

ERYKAH BADU

That was the end of the analog era. It was cassette tape at that time. There were no CDs, nobody had a cell phone. It was totally analog, two-inch tape. It was that time when the music was still very warm. You could still hear traces of Innervisions and Graham Central Station in the music because of the way it was recorded.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

That entire process, the entire record, the way it was recorded, songwriting, to the art direction, that was all you?

ERYKAH BADU

Yup.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

And somehow you got it released on Universal / Motown?

ERYKAH BADU

It wasn’t Motown at the time. It was just Universal.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

And it went on to become a tremendous success, and “On & On” was the song from that record. It doesn’t matter who you are, if you were alive in 1997 you know that song. You wanna play it?

ERYKAH BADU

Sure. I mean, they know it, right?

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

How many of you know it? Jeez, maybe we don’t need to play it. Oh, there we go, play it anyway.

ERYKAH BADU

This version is not the original version. The original version was very, very, very raw, very b-girl. The mixing engineer was Bob Power, and Bob felt it needed to be sonically a lot clearer. I like the rawness and at that time I don’t know if they really could appreciate the rawness of an R&B singer, because that’s what I was categorized as. I wish I had the original version. That would be cool to play.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

It’s lost? I mean, you have the tape somewhere.

ERYKAH BADU

It’s on a cassette tape somewhere, in my apartment in Brooklyn somewhere.

(music: Erykah Badu – “On & On” / applause)

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

You say “b-girl.” Does that mean the original version has that little “Top Billin’” thing at the beginning too?

ERYKAH BADU

No, but it was very raw. This version has live bass, live guitar and different things stacked on top of the original loop. The original loop is a lot rawer. You can hear the static and the imperfection of it, and it went very well with my imperfect voice. It was cool. But I’m glad I did it like this, or else it wouldn’t have been this if it hadn’t been done like this.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Did you know of Bob Power’s prowess when he was giving his direction?

ERYKAH BADU

Yeah, I chose Bob because he mixed the Tribe Called Quest records and because of the kind of samples that Quest chose and Dilla chose, Bob’s ear was really attuned to that kind of sonic sound. He knew how to really round out the bass without making it overpowering, and the highs would be perfect. Just where everything sits in the mix of all of those Tribe records is very much part of that feeling. I wanted to feel that with my music too when listening back to it.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

You said your “imperfect voice.” [long pause] Really?

ERYKAH BADU

Yeah, it’s fine, but there’s no Melodyne and no Auto-tuning and all that kind of stuff. It’s a human voice. The original track is very human to me as well.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

It would seem your ability to connect with people came from your imperfect voice. If Auto-tuning had existed, if someone had forced you to Auto-tune your voice, it would’ve been a very different trajectory, don’t you think?

ERYKAH BADU

I don’t know. [long pause]

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

“On & On.” Didn’t you win a Grammy for that?

ERYKAH BADU

I think I got about two or three for that.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

[laughs] Imperfect indeed. So tremendous success very quickly, and you touched upon it briefly a couple moments ago.

ERYKAH BADU

It happened really fast for me. 1997 was a whirlwind year for me. The single came out on February 7, I got pregnant March 1997, so the whole first year of my career, I was pregnant on the road. I had my baby November 18, 1997. My second album came out November 18, 1997, the same day the baby was born, the Live album with “Tyrone” on it.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Wow. Becoming a superstar is probably enough to drive most people crazy.

ERYKAH BADU

I never felt it even once. When it’s moving so fast, you’re not watching the shows and you don’t hear yourself on the radio. You’re actually doing it, you’re performing. I was at every radio show, I performed eight months out of that year. I don’t do any of that shit now, at all. But I worked very, very hard that year, and I didn’t really get to see any of the awards or limo rides or any of that kinda stuff. It was a lot of hard work. I had one employee, one person in my entourage, his name is Big Mike. Big Mike went and got the food, carried me if I was too tired, got the car, drove, would fly the plane if we had to get there. Helped me pack my clothes. It was just me and him. He didn’t ask for no pay for like two years. I didn’t realize I was supposed to be paying him. Somebody told me, ”Do you think Big Mike needs to be paid?” I was like, “Oh, yeah.” He’s here. Where is Big Mike? He stepped out. That’s his son, Little Mike, right there. [points in the audience] But Big Mike just stepped out. The same people I started with are the same people that are still with me now for the past [counts] 16 years or so. It’s like a family. A lot happened in that year.

‘98, I kind of worked that second album, Live. ‘99, I breastfed. 2000, I was breastfeeding. I think Mama’s Gun came out in 2000, so I was kind of home the whole year. I had some DA-88s. Is that what you call it? Two of ’em, I recorded with those, and was making beats with the ASR-10 rack mount, the 88-key little piano. I got into my live instrumentation from Mama’s Gun. I started working with Questlove – he was on the first album too. When I got to New York in ‘95, Baduizm was pretty much finished. But I told Kedar that I needed to go to Philly for a couple of months and when I come back I think I’ll be ready. I went and stayed with the Roots in this house. We came with lots of songs, but we chose “Otherside of the Game” and “Sometimes” to go on Baduizm. After that, Quest introduced me to James Poyser and Pino Palladino. We got in the studio and recorded everything in a room about this big all at the same time. I was on the mic, Quest was on the drums, Pino was standing beside me, James Poyser was on the Rhodes and we recorded a lot of the Mama’s Gun songs like that.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

How did you know to search out the Roots? Quest particularly?

ERYKAH BADU

I just loved them. I loved the jazz aspect of what they were doing. It was a continuum of what A Tribe Called Quest was doing, and I was just into that sound. It was very familiar to me, I felt like we were from the same tribe. Once we met, we all kind of gelled and understood each other.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

I’ve heard you say “tribe” before. Do you look at the musicians you work with as an ever-expanding tribe, people who go off on sojourns and come back?

ERYKAH BADU

Yeah. Absolutely. If you think about what a tribe-based community is, it’s people that eat the same foods and wear the same clothes. People in the tribe that I’m referring to kinda understand the same music sonically. You don’t have to explain anything. It’s just what it is.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

So when you were first hanging out with the Roots, you said Baduizm was completed. It wasn’t out, you weren’t a star, just a person with ideas, a voice. What was it do you think that made them take you so seriously if you spent three months living and working with them?

ERYKAH BADU

I think they just related to my feel. The kind of music I wanted to put out hadn’t been on mainstream radio. It wasn’t like it hadn’t existed, but it was almost like I poked a hole in the dam, allowing all the water to flow through that had the same frequency. We were there, doing music like this, but it wasn’t on mainstream radio, and they related to that. Plus, I had a budget and they knew they were going to be paid too. So that was even more fun.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

You said you were a child of the funk earlier on in this interview, yet there was a moniker developed for this style of music as a marketing tool maybe, neo-soul. Do you remember that?

ERYKAH BADU

I do. Kedar came up with the name for D’Angelo and I because of course as an up-and-coming record label executive, he wanted to create something for himself as well. And that’s what he decided to call the music that he put out. We didn’t really care. Whatever neo-soul is, it’s cool. But me and D’Angelo don’t sound anything alike. Our music sounds nothing alike. But what we had in common is that we were considered brave enough to put out music that hadn’t sounded like that on mainstream radio in America.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

You sound very proud when you say that, that you broke through and you allowed people to express themselves in a very unique, genuine way and also get signed to record companies and make a living doing music.

ERYKAH BADU

It’s an honor to be trusted by people who have the power to put your music out. That’s an honor to be trusted. Kedar trusted that, and a big part of it was his taste. His taste in music was unique.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

So that moniker, has it been a blessing, a curse? Something of the two?

ERYKAH BADU

I don’t know. To me? The moniker of neo-soul?

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Let me color that a little bit. It just seemed that for many years this idea that there could be a neo-soul music, soul being a rather young musical form…

ERYKAH BADU

I don’t pay attention to that. As an artist, I never saw it fit to be my job to fit into any kind of category or label. I just have to do things that feel good. My only job is to be honest, because that’s what music is. That’s what I use it for. It’s a platform for me to express how I feel and be honest. That really didn’t matter. I don’t reject it or claim it or anything. I didn’t know what it was, I was just making music that I liked. And I think D’Angelo may feel the same way.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

The follow-up album after the Live album, Mama’s Gun, which we were talking about. You obviously had the budget to make any record you wanted to, and you went deeper down the rabbit hole. It was the first album you worked with Jay Dee, right? Was this a conscious decision that you were going to go all the way, picking out the most talented people, maybe the likes of which wasn’t recognized by conventional record companies at the time?

ERYKAH BADU

The thing is, you don’t know who’s the most talented, it was just what I liked, what felt good to me. It was a conscious decision, yeah, definitely. I knew what I liked, how I wanted the music to sound, what I wanted to rock over. I knew what I wanted to write over, yeah. Because the music comes first for me. I don’t write lyrics and then write music, because to me that’s poetry. It’s music first and then I write to the music. I find a place in that music. I can’t write to any old music, it has to touch me in a very special way.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Can you talk about meeting Jay Dee/Dilla?

ERYKAH BADU

I met him through Common. Common and he were good friends and I went to Detroit because I wanted [Dilla] to be on my album. I didn’t know in what kinda way, but you always hope something works out great and if not, you’ll have a good friendship with the person. I went into his basement and his basement was about this size and every wall from floor to ceiling was records, categorized. He was a scientist. If you opened his refrigerator, all the Coke cans were turned the same way. It looked like a graveyard. Everything was perfect. He was an engineer in school, so there were a lot of mathematical things going around in his mind at all times. But he didn’t talk a lot. But he let me pick out some records and there were a lot of things I’d never heard before in my life. One of them was a Tarika Blue record and I was like, “Wow, this is beautiful,” and it became “Didn’t Cha Know.” Not only did he let me pick the record, he let me pick the spot in the record and taught me how to sample the portion of the song. Very humble. Wasn’t like, “This is my lab.” It was like, “Hey, if you like this, you can probably do it.” And that’s where I got my first sampling lesson, from Dilla.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

What year was this?

ERYKAH BADU

About ‘98 maybe.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Were you aware of the tracks he’d produced, like “Runnin’” for the Pharcyde?

ERYKAH BADU

Absolutely.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

And then you went to meet this guy. He had quite a reputation back then, too. He wasn’t known as the easiest guy to work with.

ERYKAH BADU

To me he was. I think it’s almost the kindred spirit of Madlib. They are so serious about what they are doing to the point where they make beats all day long. That’s what they do. All. Day. Long. Don’t even save them, just put it right to a CD. They give out these CDs, volume one, two, three, four, five, volume 121. And when you pick a track, they don’t know where the sample came from, they don’t know nothing. It’s just beats. That can be the difficult part, not knowing where the sample came from. You don’t want to get sued, so everybody in the record label’s doing research trying to find out where these samples came from. Because this is just what they do. All day.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

And so you’re there in the lab with Dilla, you pick out a record, you pick out the spot on the record and you make the song there?

ERYKAH BADU

Yeah.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Did you record the vocals there too? Did you polish them up later for release elsewhere?

ERYKAH BADU

At Electric Lady studios in Manhattan, that’s where I polished Mama’s Gun. That’s Jimi Hendrix’s studio. I like Electric Lady, they don’t have all the best equipment in the world, but it’s just the vibe of it. It’s a place to go and work and feel at home. You can feel the spirit of what was happening there in the ‘60s and ‘70s. There’s this cat there, his name is Jimi and they claim is the spirit of Jimi Hendrix. And if he likes the music he’ll come in the studio. If he doesn’t, he’ll come in for a minute and then leave.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

How did you fare in that test?

ERYKAH BADU

Sometimes he stayed, sometimes he left. Those songs didn’t make the album. [laughs]

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Could you play “Didn’t Cha Know”?

ERYKAH BADU

Yeah. So I sampled two spots in this record. Live percussion was laid over the sample. What else? Shakers, different things.

(music: Erykah Badu – “Didn’t Cha Know” / applause)

Thank you. I remember during this time, Dilla is very, very shy. Didn’t really talk a lot. He and Madlib, they twins in that kinda way. This is their conversation, “Ooooo!” Or, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ah, yeah, yeah. Ooooh!” [laughter]

Common and I were dating at the time. He was so shy, so I’d play this trick on him. Whenever Common left the room I’d walk up to him real slow and say seductively and be like [low sexy voice], “Now, we’re finally alone. You’re such a sexy guy.” He’d be like [shrinks into the sofa] and Common would come in and I’d pretend like I wasn’t doing it. Common knew I was doing it and he would say, “Don’t do that man like that.” But he was really shy. It was funny to me. It tickled me to do that to him. But he was also a very, very sweet and humble person, generous and giving. Of course, as an artist, when he wants his own space he wants his own space, his headspace. You have to kind of give him that. He didn’t even tell me he was sick, you know, and we were very close. I’m known around my community as the herb lady, the healer lady, the Mama Badu, because it’s mostly me and a bunch of guys all the time. And I’d talk to him and ask him, “I need to come and see you, just talk and hang out.” And he’d say, “No, I can’t right now, because of this, I can’t because of that.” But he was really sick, he had lupus and it had escalated to the point where he was bedridden.

He and Common were roommates at that time. This is after we weren’t dating anymore. Common didn’t tell me he was sick because Dilla told him not to tell. And I didn’t know until the end how sick he was. I knew he had lupus but didn’t know how bad. So he was like that until the very end, making beats and smoking blunts. It was good for the pain. It was a very surreal moment when we heard J Dilla died. The most ironic thing was we were all in Los Angeles recording, we had formed a new supergroup. Me and Questlove, Wendy and Lisa from Prince’s Revolution, Mike Elizondo, who did all the basslines for Dr. Dre, and a guitar player named Doyle Bramhall and Jazzy Jeff. We said we’re going to be a supergroup and we were hanging out in LA and we got that call. It was like, “Wow.” How we express ourselves is through music and that day we recorded this song “Telephone.”

“Telephone” went on my New Amerykah Part One album. It was based on a story Dilla’s mother told me. She said that Dilla would hallucinate often – I don’t know if it was morphine or whatever his painkiller was, but he would be talking to someone. But no one was there. His mom would sit and listen to him talk and she would ask him later, “Who were you talking to?” He said, “Ol’ Dirty Bastard.” And ODB had passed maybe a couple of years earlier. “So what was he saying?” “He was telling me which bus to get on when I cross over. He said, ‘Don’t get on the red bus, get on the white bus. The red bus looks fun, but that’s not the one. Get on the white bus.’” So Dilla’s mother told me that and when we were in the studio the night we heard about his death, his passing, we paid homage to him, resting in beats by writing that song “Telephone.” And “Telephone” says, “It’s Ol’ Dirty, he wants to give you directions home, said it won’t be too long.” Y’all wanna hear that? [audience says “yeah”] OK. I’m not gonna cry.

(music: Erykah Badu – ”Telephone” / applause)

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

We jumped around a little bit there, we just jumped into New Amerykah Part One. You’d obviously done quite a bit in the interim between Mama’s Gun and the release of that record, which was 2008. Was that a conscious choice? Do you want to talk about that era, Worldwide Underground.

ERYKAH BADU

That was one of my favorite times in living. 2000, I put out Mama’s Gun. 2001 and 2002, I toured the whole time. I never went home. I toured off the velocity of Mama’s Gun. While I was touring I had a studio on my bus and I decided to record while I was touring. It was called Worldwide Underground because any city I’d go to, if there was an artist I wanted to work with, they would just jump on the bus and we’d do something. It was originally supposed to be an EP, and I’m a perfectionist, so this EP just got longer and longer and the interludes got longer. I remember going to Miami and Lenny Kravitz was in town and he jumped on the bus and played on this song called “Puff” [sings], he played a bit on that. Zap Mama, Caron Wheeler from Soul II Soul got on a song. Um, Queen Latifah, Bahamadia. That’s when we created Freakquency – Freakquency consisted of four producers, myself, Rashad “Tumbling Dice” Smith, RC Williams and James Poyser. We were collectively Freakquency and that whole album was just demo underground kind of stuff. That’s why we called it Worldwide Underground and we really liked it a lot. So when we put it out, it was as an EP, though it was long enough for an album. I really enjoyed that time, traveling on the bus and after every show, we’d have a meet-and-greet with the audience, then we’d go straight to the bus, ride all night and record and laugh and talk. It was a great time.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Do you have a song you want to play from that album?

ERYKAH BADU

Sure. “I Want You” is one of my favorite songs from that album. There’s a lot of good stuff. The Dead Prez stuff with “The Grind,” “Danger.” “Danger,” I think was one of the most sinister songs of my career. “Love of My Life” came from there. I’ll play a bit of “Danger” first.

(music: Erykah Badu – “Danger” / applause)

Thank you. This might be the longest intro in history.

(music: Erykah Badu – “I Want You”)

Let’s 45 it.

[record speeds up / song plays / applause]

Thanks. I’m shy.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Why such a long time between the release of Worldwide Underground and New Amerykah Part One?

ERYKAH BADU

When did that come out?

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

2003.

ERYKAH BADU

Oh, because I had some babies. Those were my projects. I toured from 2003 to 2005 and I started in 2006 working on New Amerykahs Part One and Two. I was breastfeeding and pushing baby strollers and home schooling and wiping tears and putting calamine lotion on poison ivy, you know?

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

How many children do you have?

ERYKAH BADU

Three.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

And you’re still able to keep up this intense schedule?

ERYKAH BADU

Yeah, I have a lot of help, really good help. My mom, my grandmothers, and a really good friend of mine, Sheeka, who my kids really love a lot. They’re in Dallas with her right now. This is the first time that I’ve left my children at home. My youngest is two, she’s just stopped breastfeeding a few months ago. This is the first time in my whole music career that I’ve traveled and I did not have a child with me. I’ve never experienced it like this before. I don’t know what to do with myself. It’s a weird feeling.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

So in between the release of Worldwide Underground and the starting of the process to record New Amerykah Part One, things changed at Motown, right?

ERYKAH BADU

Yeah, Kedar was gone by then. Sylvia Rhone came in, the legendary Sylvia Rhone. She’s the lone black woman in this industry to head a record label, so she’s a legend in our industry. Where a lot of times, the label presidents have A&R or musical backgrounds, she has a marketing/promotion background. That was her lane. By the time I started New Amerykah Part One and Two, I didn’t know if she’d even heard any of my music or anything. We hadn’t really met. I was still using the same formula – do the record wherever I am and turn it in when I’m done. I think that’s OK with her, I wasn’t sure, but that’s just what it was. It was totally different when I did these last two albums, New Amerykah Parts One and Two, because I did it at home in my bed from a laptop on GarageBand, because I was so involved in my children’s school and other things that I really love that I wasn’t leaving the house at all. So Queste, Madlib, Dilla, Karriem Riggins, S1 from Strange Fruit, they were sending me MP3s. I would record it into my telephone’s answering machine. My son told me, “Mom, they got this thing called Garage Band, you can just multi-track it if you want to.” I was like, “Oh, OK.”

So I started doing that and one song turned into 50, 50 turned into 100, 100 turned into 200 songs. I would do this all day, every day, writing songs. Take it to different frequencies, get into the shower to record it. Because I didn’t have a mic, I was just singing into the mic on the computer, I hadn’t got that high-tech yet. I’m an analog girl. I was just impressed with that. This was different vocal effects and sound effects, I would start experimenting with those things. At that time I met Mike Chavarria. Jay Electronica introduced me to him, an engineer who’s incredible, who’s doing some incredible things with the tracks and with my voice. It was just where I wanted to be, I wanted to be in hyperspace. I still wanted to have an analog feel, but I wanted to be in hyperspace. Mike Chav helped me take it there. I would just email him the track I did in GarageBand, and he would tweak it in the studio. All the imperfections and distortion, mic distortion and wrong preamps and everything I was doing, he just kept it like that and added his stuff to it. That’s how New Amerykah Part One and Two were born. I split it into two parts because it was way too long for a 57, 58-minute CD. I just had so much to say, and I wanted to say it all. So we split it into two parts and released it some time apart.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

You said earlier on that when you met Dilla, you went out to Detroit not knowing if you were going to connect musically and spiritually, but there was a good chance you’d have a new friend even if it didn’t work out musically. Was this one of the only times you didn’t actually meet your collaborators and you were just given their music out of context? Or did you meet them all?

ERYKAH BADU

Oh yeah, I know them all.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

You met them all prior to them sending the music to you? 9th Wonder, Sa-Ra…

ERYKAH BADU

Oh yeah, we’re all crate diggers, we’re all DJs. Well, I’m not, but they’re music historians and they all play instruments. We all have similar taste in music and at the same time we bring new things. The joy of iChat was sending someone an MP3 they’d never heard before. We called it treats, like, “I’m gonna send you a treat.” They’d created this turntable that you could just put into the computer, so you could just take random records, turn them into MP3s and send them to each other, send treats. That’s how our relationships got started a lot.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

There must have been a certain amount of trust given because you were altering their music after they’d sent it to you, creating something and sending it back.

ERYKAH BADU

They didn’t care. I think by that time, they trusted my taste and what I wanted to do. They were OK with that.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

To go back to when you first started to work with Dilla, he did quite a few tracks for Mama’s Gun, if I remember correctly. It was a big leap for someone like Dilla who was known as the hip-hop guy, but here he was producing with you, stretching out quite a bit. It seemed as if he came into his own in a lot of ways making those beats and they were on a very successful record.

ERYKAH BADU

What’s funny is the beats Dilla does are strictly mathematical, they’re just right out of his consciousness. But none of the stuff he did with me don’t sound like any of that because it was a collaboration. He allowed me to be a part of it. So this doesn’t sound like anything on Donuts or any of that. You won’t hear the laziness of the snare and the live feel of the hi-hat. It was the kind of stuff I liked, and he was gracious enough to allow me to be a part of it.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Did you feel the same way working with this crop of producers on New Amerykah?

ERYKAH BADU

What do you mean?

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

To use an example, “The Healer.” You were talking about how many beats Madlib makes. So we’re all aware of the tremendous amount he makes and the free form with which he makes them.

ERYKAH BADU

Four hundred a month.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

So he makes a great variety. And you picked this very minimalist, stripped-down track, the likes of which I don’t think many of his collaborators would’ve picked, and all of a sudden it’s a single on Universal/Motown. That blew my mind.

ERYKAH BADU

Did it?

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

I’m sure it blew his mind, too.

ERYKAH BADU

He’s just said... [impersonates Madlib]

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

You do good impersonations. [laughs] You did Dilla, Common and Madlib within 30 seconds and it worked. Do you want to play that track, “The Healer”?

ERYKAH BADU

Yeah, that’s the joint. It’s an anthem.

(music: Erykah Badu – “The Healer” / applause)

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

That’s a gutsy song to make for a lot of reasons, at least to me. First of all, it’s a great departure from what you’ve done before at least on the surface. And you released it on Universal/Motown with a producer who most people buying records on Universal/Motown probably weren’t familiar with. And you say hip-hop is bigger than religion and bigger than the government and dedicating the song to Dilla. That was a very moving moment for me and a lot of other people too, I’m sure, who felt as if we’d found a new champion for a new generation. And it wasn’t just because I work with Madlib. It was because people like Sa-Ra and Georgia and 9th Wonder, they’d been pigeonholed in a lot of ways. And here you were saying, well, I believe in you and I believe in this thing you do, so much so I’m going to say it on wax and put this record out as I believe. Am I reading too much into it?

ERYKAH BADU

I don’t know. No, that sounds right. It’s just what I like and as my taste evolves, as I get introduced to more and more things, I understand more things – lyrically, musically, sonically. The whole thing. Taking more chances, evolving. I think that’s the main focus of who I am as an individual person. Evolving is very important for me. That’s why I do it. I don’t do it to sell records or have a No. 1 Hot 99 single. It’s a movement for me.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Sylvia Rhone had your back, though.

ERYKAH BADU

Yeah, she tried to. But when it came out – one came out in 2008, one came out in 2010 – that was the beginning of the decline. Everything crashed. She tried to, but although I’m an analog girl, I move around in a digital world very well. So I’ve just started shooting a video for every song that I had, from Baduizm to New Amerykah Part Two. Just keeping it out there, keeping myself motivated, keeping my fan base entertained, my cult following moving. Keeping people interested because I thought what we were doing was very important. Wherever they couldn’t support us, we had our own machine in place. That’s the way I move now. Whenever I decide to put out a video, I put it out no matter what album it is. I put it out because it’s all relevant. I think music is timeless. It shouldn’t have a shelf life, or a disc- life, or a deadline. It’s about a lifeline to me. So whenever I want to bring something back to life, I put a visual to it and put it out for people to enjoy it, give it another face, another turn. That’s why I deal with Sylvia, that was the “Window Seat” video. That was all guerrilla shooting, all that stuff. We just did what we want and put it out. We didn’t go through Motown to do any of that stuff, we didn’t wait for anybody to say “no.” We just did what we felt was right with our music.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

What did she say after you were on every news broadcast in America after the video first came out?

ERYKAH BADU

Honestly? Can I be honest? Should I? I’d never get another video budget after that. I don’t know why. But I’ve had to put out all my own stuff, guerrilla-style, with a Nikon 5D. That’s what I’ve been doing since then.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

On the second part of New Amerykah, you dug so far back into the analog crates that you had to take a Dilla beat off of a cassette, which is the only way it existed. Then to go back to what we were talking about early on, go through what must have been an incredibly frustrating process trying to negotiate the release of the music, find the sample and all that.

ERYKAH BADU

It was frustrating for somebody, but I wasn’t taking no. You’re going to find it, we’re going to put it out because this has to happen. And it did, we found it. One of the samples I had to get cleared via Twitter. They claimed they couldn’t find Paul McCartney. I think they just didn’t want to pay for the sample. But this new kid from LA named Ta’raach did a beat using one of Paul McCartney’s samples, I don’t remember what the name of the song was. That became “Don’t Be Long.” The visual was directed by Flying Lotus, that’s how we met. Flying Lotus took the song and put a visual to it. I showed up at his studio one day as a guest for one of Bilal’s videos and he said, “Just change clothes, let’s shoot on some green screen and stuff.” And we did and then he put that out, “Don’t Be Long.”

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Flying Lotus, who came through this Academy as a participant, are you really working on an album with him?

ERYKAH BADU

Yes.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

It seems like this entire process, this expansion of the tribe, none of it’s calculated, it just happens naturally and if something fits, it fits.

ERYKAH BADU

Right.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

But Flying Lotus makes music that’s far different than everything we’ve heard prior.

ERYKAH BADU

Not really, it’s all the same elements. He just freaks them a lot differently. His airspace is a little higher, frequency-wise. Faster, more percussive, lots more percussive. More drums. He does what Dilla and Madlib do, takes voices and trumpets and samples of things and turns them into instruments. That’s what I love. That’s what I really want to learn to do as a producer, turning these samples into instruments so you don’t even know what sample it is, you don’t know where it came from. But me and Lotus, we’re two peas in a pod. We feel the same way. His aunt is Alice Coltrane, the wife of the late John Coltrane, she also passed away. So he has a very jazz influence, but it comes out like that, he colors it like that. I have a couple of tracks from our album. I can only play a little bit, though.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

I think we’d love to hear them.

ERYKAH BADU

Hope I don’t get in trouble. Real rough versions, I don’t even see them. [searching on her computer] They’re not even coming up, so I can only play them from iTunes. It’s interesting how we mixed together. I’m a blues singer, so I just sing blues over different kinds of music. I don’t know what he’s considered, what his music is considered [to be]. It’s techno, funk, house, abstract, but once we got together, I didn’t know what we were going to do. “I hope this works.” Just hanging out with him, just as a person, gives a really good idea of what we could do together. Once you have a lot in common as people, you figure around all that stuff, the genres and titles and all that kind of stuff. So we’ve got some really good stuff. Thundercat plays on everything that Lotus does. Thundercat’s been my bass player in my band for the past six years. That frequency I’m already very familiar with. It was easy.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

You call yourself a blues singer?

ERYKAH BADU

Yes.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Why?

ERYKAH BADU

I am.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

You mentioned Muddy Waters earlier. Sometime mid-way during his career the people at Cadet decided it would be a good idea for Muddy Waters to do his blues over kidna psychedelic rock music. In doing so, he created a couple of incredible albums, which he hated.

ERYKAH BADU

Jimi Hendrix is a blues singer too. Eric Clapton is a blues singer.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

So with you, not pigeonholing yourself into any kind of genre, you’re creating this music which we can’t easily describe. Yet in doing so you’re saying to anyone else coming up you can make a whole bunch of money putting out music, you can become known for one style of music, and you can flip it up yourself. No one told you to collaborate with Madlib, no one told you to collaborate with 9th Wonder, Flying Lotus. Maybe there were suggestions, someone said, “Hey, maybe listen to this.” But you made the choices all yourself and I find you unique in that regard. Will this new record with Lotus come out through Universal?

ERYKAH BADU

We don’t know that yet. We’re just working on the music right now. The industry is in such a state where you don’t know. We might put it out on our own label because we have a whole new way of selling music now.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

What’s Control Freaq Records?

ERYKAH BADU

That’s my record label.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

And this is the label that produced the New Amerykah albums and distributed through Universal? So there’s a possibility that you might put it out through that?

ERYKAH BADU

Yes.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Why Control Freaq?

ERYKAH BADU

Freaq is spelled F-R-E-A-Q. When you can control the frequency of the music, you have a lot more control over the sheep or the people, the way they think, the way they feel. Because we’re in such a programmed state where programmers play the same six songs all the time, that’s why I called it Control Freaq. We are controlling our own frequency, we are deciding what’s in the airwaves, what it sounds like, what it looks like, what it feels like.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

The radio play you refer to that broke through your first songs, you hinted it yourself, it’s almost irrelevant at this point. You can do whatever you want.

ERYKAH BADU

Say it again.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

If you put together a record with Flying Lotus, it’s not as if you expect the radio stations that played “On & On” to play a record like that. They might, they might not, but it wouldn’t matter, would it?

ERYKAH BADU

They might not, but there’s so many ways to get the music out. I’m a touring artist. I tour for most of my career. I tour more than I record. If they come, they’ll hear it. If they’re checking for us, they’ll hear it. We have our own way of getting records out, our own social networks, our Facebooks and Twitters. Those are huge networks and when we go to record labels now, we come in with those networks, not just as an artist or a brand. We come with a network, a following, a tribe of people who are already in place. If a label cannot pacify the needs of the artist in this day and age, who’s coming with a network, then we don’t need them.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

It seems like your network is pretty strong. When Sylvia departed from Universal/Motown, if I remember correctly, in the early hours it was a tweet that you sent that the major news organizations were covering more than anything. You said Universal / Motown had folded.

ERYKAH BADU

I just said Motown folded. I thought everybody knew though, because I don’t keep up with what’s going on in the news. [laughs] I got an email from an attorney up there describing what was happening. All I heard was “Motown folded,” so I tweeted that because I thought it was not news. Then they started denying it. Motown, I think they were going to become a catalog label playing all the old Motown things, including all the late-’90s stuff. They could make a lot of money off that because there’s a lot of great music, Motown is a legendary label. But I think they want to resurrect the modern Motown. I’m not really sure what’s happening right now, so I don’t want to say the wrong thing again.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

But did that instance make you think about your influence and how quickly something you say or do is picked up on? That and the video we were talking about?

ERYKAH BADU

Yeah, I know I’m on the FBI list, so I’m careful with the things I say and project to people when I’m on there. At the same time, during PMS, I just express myself. Twitter is picked up by the Library of Congress and it’s history from now until the end of time. A lot of artists on there are under the radar, especially on those gossip blogs because they’ll taste blood and go for the jugular. Anything you tweet, they’ll turn it into something. I remember one time Solange said she had too much NyQuil and passed out at the airport. They said something about she overdosed. They’re taking it into entertainment, our lives is entertainment to them, it’s funny. Yeah, I pay attention to it and I think at one time, we even timed to see how fast something would go onto the blogs.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

So in the same regard, do you think about the platform for up-and-coming producers that you collaborate with?

ERYKAH BADU

What do you mean?

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

You could work with any producer you want, yet you choose to give an opportunity to up-and-coming producers.

ERYKAH BADU

I don’t think I’m giving an opportunity to them. I think it’s just what I like. No matter how famous or not famous, it’s just what I genuinely like. That never mattered to me how many hits they had out, it’s just what I like, what feels good to me, what I can write a song to. It’s generally what I like.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

And it just so happens that the people on the other side of that reap great rewards.

ERYKAH BADU

Yeah. Sometimes, depending on the budget. I’m sure there are other rewards, too. But the reward is mine, really. I feel honored. Madlib? I mean, he’s a legend. Dilla, Karriem Riggins, these guys are very, very brilliant musicians. A lot of the times, they’re not on top of the list as far as hitmakers, because people don’t relate to it because it doesn’t sound like what everything else sounds like on the radio. It doesn’t fit the cookie-cutter format. But it’s dope to me. It’s ill. It’s very good music with a very good understanding of what music is, no matter what instrument they’re working with.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

It’s interesting you say that about Karriem Riggins. Sometimes people use the word legend lightly, but you do refer to him. How many people know the name Karriem Riggins, the drummer? This is a legendary cat, and probably most people who know him know him as a jazz drummer. But you gave him an opportunity to produce on New Amerykah Part One.

ERYKAH BADU

I call him the clean Dilla. Dilla is very dirty and the frequency has a certain bottom velocity to it. Karriem has the same thing, but it’s real clean and neat and he dresses so neat; he’s a real neat guy. The tracks are really wonderful. He did “Soldier” on New Amerykah Part Part One, “Fall in Love” on New Amerykah Part Two.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Will you continue to release records, actually release albums? Might you give them away for free? We’ve talked throughout this hour and a half about how the industry has changed and I get the feeling – maybe I’m wrong – that the process of creating an album has been the same for you, regardless of whether it went on to sell millions or hundreds of thousands or whatever. But will you continue to record release albums or might things change?

ERYKAH BADU

Yeah. To me, an album is not just about the music but also the artwork, the liner notes, the lyrics, the whole package. That’s what I grew up seeing. There was no video, you just saw the album cover. If you’re looking at a picture of this band Con Funk Shun, that’s all you know, this picture. Those elements are very important because it’s a project. It’s not just for the singles or for the hits, what radio gravitates towards. It’s a project, where a person is at that time. If people were to ask my children about who their mother was, I’d hope they could give them Mama’s Gun or New Amerykah and say, “This is who she is, who she was.”

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

So you actually want to create the artifact, the album, the 12” single, something like that.

ERYKAH BADU

12” single?

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

To go back to New Amerykah Part One, if I recall correctly there was a gatefold 12” single released ahead of the album.

ERYKAH BADU

Yeah, we did a few of those and some Serato flipsides, because the DJ is the pioneer of hip-hop. That’s the conductor. So a lot of things I do are for the DJs. When I mix things, I make sure that bottom is real heavy, so it knocks in the club. Because that’s where the people feel it and get it for the most part.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

From my vantage point, when I saw the gatefold 12” come through for New Amerykah Part One, it seemed as if it was a bigger statement than that. It seemed as if, in an era when music is freely distributed and people not only don’t care about liner notes and only care about artwork in thumbnail form, here you were selling music in the most archaic form that our generation knows, the LP form. But it was a very beautiful looking record and it felt good and it seemed like a bigger statement than just “this would look nice in a DJ record bag.”

ERYKAH BADU

I’ve been working with very talented artists for these last seven years. Are y’all, hot?

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Told you it gets warm in here.

ERYKAH BADU

Thank you for hanging out, though. His name is Emek, they call him the thinking man’s artist. He did the painting for New Amerykah Part One and Part Two, “The Healer,” every poster I have for every show. If you google Emek you can go to his site and see his work. His work is traditionally silkscreen posters, rock posters. I like that feel because that’s what I remember seeing growing up. That goes along with the music, you’ve got to have a good piece of art. He’s great, he finishes my sentences visually.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

You’re going to perform here in Madrid and there are two former Academy participants who are going to support you. They’re the “and friends” of the “Erykah Badu and friends,” James [Woon] and Hudson Mohawke. How did you pick them?

ERYKAH BADU

I didn’t pick them. [to Paul] Did I pick them, Paul? Did I pick ’em? OK, I picked them. [laughter] I just like them. I told Paul who I liked and they told the Academy and they picked them. It’s who I was feeling at the time.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Interesting that they both were sitting on chairs – not so fluorescent maybe – at a previous Academy, and now here they are performing with you on stage in Madrid.

ERYKAH BADU

Red Bull got good taste. That’s not a commercial. [laughter]

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Well, we could open it up for a few questions at this point. I’m sure there’s quite a few. There’s going to be a microphone passed around.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

I had a question about Jay Dee. I’m pretty sure you have a lot of cassettes and CDs still left with enormous amounts of beats that no one has ever heard. Are you occasionally going back to check them for new music to write to?

ERYKAH BADU

Yeah, all the time. I write in the car, I plug in the MP3 player in and ride around and sing and write. And I use those all the time.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

So basically every time you start a new album, is that a traditional thing to do, to check out Jay Dee beats?

ERYKAH BADU

That’s the process. Some things I’ve written to a Jay Dee beat and it’s somewhere else now. But it’s always a good template, Dilla beats.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Are there any other producers like Dilla or Madlib that are part of the standard?

ERYKAH BADU

Yeah, 9th Wonder, S1, Q-Tip, RC Williams, Jaborn. All the same people from Baduizm ‘till now. I love their evolution, how they’re evolving and we seem to be evolving together. And new producers too. I like 40 a lot, Drake’s producer. I like Hudson Mohawke. Jay Electronica got the heat too.

SpeakerParticipant

Definitely. And I have one more question about a song you did with Lil Wayne. How did that happen? It’s not the most logical thing you would expect from two artists. I’m not trying to place nobody in a corner, but how did that happen?

ERYKAH BADU

We think alike. I think he’s really creative, extraordinarily talented and fearless. He had a song called “A Milli” [sings it] and in the song he said “Andre 3000 where is Erykah Badu at?” Here I am! [sticks arm in the air] And I picked the track “Jump Up In the Air and Stay There.” Who did that track? Frequency did that track. And I asked him to be on it, and he did. He’s cool. I love beats and rhymes, I love MCing, I love good verses. The name of the song is “Jump Up In the Air and Stay There” and in his verse he says “On the ceiling I’m stuck like a handful of dust, like a fistful of bucks I’m spinning like crazy”… is that what he said? “On the ceiling I’m stuck like a fan full of dust, like handful of bucks.” Yeah, he’s just incredible. And he comes up with it right then and there. He doesn’t write on paper. He goes into the booth and then he comes out and he’s done. And it refers to the song, too, not like some pre-written stuff he had. He’s an incredible artist, super-, super-talented, ‘cause if he wasn’t he wouldn’t be getting this much bad press. That’s how you know you’re real good.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Earlier on, you were talking about having children just as your career kick-started. There’s going to be a lot of girls watching this on the internet, so what advice can you offer? What problems did you encounter? ‘Cause it’s still quite an issue for women in music. What advice can you offer?

ERYKAH BADU

It’s just what we are, so we are what we do. I started having babies at 27 years old. Sometimes they say when you’re a career woman, you’re late having children because of the ambition in college and all these things. But this is what we do and it’s just part of it. So follow your heart and don’t miss a beat. They become part of what it is. My children grew up on the road and home for them is wherever I am. It’s easy. They’ve got a box on a bus, I homeschool them, we cook food on the bus and after the show they try to stay up and we sing and play. The little one has to be disciplined more than the others. She’s two, she’s rough. That’s Jay Electronica’s daughter, that’s 3rd Ward, New Orleans. But it just becomes a part of it. If you decide to have a baby, it doesn’t interfere with your career at all. If anything, it becomes an enhancement because if it enhances your life – and your music is your life – it definitely enhances your music. And help comes. It doesn’t matter how much money you have. It’s easy, it’s really easy, especially when you like your kids.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Can I follow that up with a quick question that touches upon something you said earlier? You were talking about when Dilla got sick and how you found yourself working with a lot of guys and you called yourself Mama Badu or something like that. And this goes back to the story you talked about you and Dilla and Common, and Common leaving the room and you putting Dilla off his sure footing for a moment, he didn’t know what to expect. Have you had to work hard to work amongst all these men who accept you, not as a, “Oh yeah, there’s Erykah, she’s a woman”? It’s not like that, at least not the people I know who’ve worked with you. It’s just a continuum. It doesn’t have to do with gender, yet you just told this story where put this guy Dilla…

ERYKAH BADU

But that only works with Dilla, though, ‘cause he’s not gonna do nothing. [laughter] You can’t do that with everybody, with all the dudes.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

So it’s not awkward? There are no moments where you felt…

ERYKAH BADU

No, because I’ve been a chain monogamous person my whole career. Long relationships with one partner, and generally the one partner it’s like a marriage and we have a child and we have a home and we have a commitment and there’s a lot of things sacred. And I’m committed to that relationship. My whole career I’ve been in relationships, so there’s really no room. And the people around me are my brothers and they respect it. I work with my lovers in their careers and they work with me in their careers; it’s always been that way. So I’ve never been single where there was an opportunity for someone to be attracted to me or me to them. I’ve always been somebody’s wifey. That’s how it works out, I guess.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

I want to ask about your transition into DJing. Is it something you’ve been thinking about for a long time, or was it just natural, you woke up one day and decided to do shows as a DJ?

ERYKAH BADU

I’ve been doing them after a lot of shows, but it’s been getting a lot of press now. Once one media outlet says something then it’s news, but it’s something I’ve always done. I started doing shows in high school. I’ve always loved the stuff that the guys did so I would stay around and watch and figure it out, because I’m moved by beats. I’m moved by mixing and DJing and scratching and producing and the hi-hat and the snare and quantizing. It’s fascinating to me, you know. And it comes naturally to me as a drummer, as a percussionist.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Where do you draw your inspirations from? Your life gives you inspiration, but do you do anything extra to get more inspiration? Any place you visit or any friends you would go out and talk to and have a special conversation with?

ERYKAH BADU

Yeah, I get inspiration from everything. Fred Flinstone, the Carol Burnett Show, an argument, a broken heart. It all inspires me because my music is therapy and it’s a means for me to express how I feel immediately. I’m inspired by a lot of things.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Torsten.

Audience Memeber

Hello. I guess every artist likes to touch other people’s lives. What does it feel like to know pretty safely that wherever you go in the world and enter a room like this one, and it it’s pretty safe to say that about every person has been there at a moment when your music was present in a personal or intimate surrounding?

ERYKAH BADU

What was the question?

Audience Member

Well, everyone likes to touch people’s lives, and wherever you go in the world you walk into a room and must think, “Yeah, I’ve been in their life before and probably in a very personal situation.”

ERYKAH BADU

What was the question? [laughter]

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

The question is how does that make you feel?

ERYKAH BADU

Good. It makes me feel good that I can sometimes be a person’s voice or sometimes be that relatable thing that helps them solve some problem or evolve or get angry or whatever they need to do. That makes me feel good because that’s what the music I listen to did for me. And if it’s doing that, that’s good, ‘cause it’s creating some energy in people, some movement. That’s good.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Hi, big fan.

ERYKAH BADU

Thank you.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

You said music is timeless, yet every time you make an album there’s loads of innovation, it’s extremely related to current trends in different scenes, and re-twisted up in your own way. And I’m very, very grateful for that, but I ask you this out of curiosity because I struggle with this question myself. Why are you changing and evolving and creating new stuff? What is it that drives you forward to create a new Erykah Badu every time you make an album somehow?

ERYKAH BADU

I think because that’s where I am. I don’t know what it is that drives us to do that, but it’s definitely something. I desire to evolve in every part of my life. I just desire that and then it comes naturally. I don’t think anybody is in the same place they were in 1997 in this room; some of you probably weren’t even born. But the earth is changing, the world is changing, the weather is changing, people’s emotions are changing. The time is more urgent. Everything is changing. It’s quite natural to me to evolve with that – what the people need, I need it too. That’s a good question, thank you.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

We talk about music all the time, but how often do you seek for silence actually?

ERYKAH BADU

I listen a lot more than I record.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Can we have some together now?

ERYKAH BADU

What?

SpeakerParticipant

Silence.

ERYKAH BADU

Yes.

[laughter / silence]

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Thank you.

ERYKAH BADU

Thank you.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

How do you feel about remixing, all the producers remixing your music or how that works?

ERYKAH BADU

I think it’s cool.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

But how does it work? Someone has to approach you?

ERYKAH BADU

No, they can do whatever they want. Once I do the music, it doesn’t belong to me anymore. It belongs to the world. However they want to interpret it or change it, it doesn’t bother... I like it. It’s a different face the music has. It’s cool. I think J. Cole sampled “Didn’t Cha Know,” that was great. That’s how I knew how old I was, ‘cause people don’t sample your music when you’re new. I thought it was real cool that he did that. He reached out to me afterwards too, to see how I felt about it. It was great. It’s a good feeling because there’s probably a generation of people who’ve never heard that Dilla and Badu collaboration, don’t know what that means or what it feels like. And he gave them an opportunity to hear that, so that’s cool. I want some more silence. [laughter] No, go ahead.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

I’m just curious about your writing process. Does it come naturally? Does it take you a week? How quickly does a song come to you?

ERYKAH BADU

Sometimes, I’m like an MC, where I’m just freestyling onstage. Like “Tyrone,” that was just made up right then. And it was a joke, that was funny to me. And sometimes it takes like 17 months to get an idea across. A lot of the songs I write I don’t know how to sing it. I know how it’s supposed to sound, but I don’t know how to sing it, to breathe and get the melody. It just doesn’t sound right with my voice. So I have to wait until my voice and breathing matures to a point where I can get the point across. Sometimes it takes a long time, years.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

So sometimes the melody comes before the words?

ERYKAH BADU

The melody always comes first. This is the order: Music, melody, rhythm, words. Music bed. Then melody [sings a tune], then rhythm. Then I decode what I’m trying to say. Whatever words fit in there, that’s what I go with.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Throughout your career, you’ve worked with some of the greatest producers who have ever lived and are still alive and some of the best musicians. It’s kind of a gimmicky question, but I’d be curious to know, irrelevant of any decade and whether you’ve ever set foot in the room with them, who would be your dream performers? For example, Bootsy on bass, Quest on drums and, I don’t know, Michael McDonald on backing vocals or something. It’s a tricky one, like what would your last meal be?

ERYKAH BADU

Right. Elmo soup. Maybe Bernard Purdie on the drums, Oscar Peterson on piano, Ron Carter on upright bass and Funk Brothers on the tambourine. From Motown – it was all about the tambourine in the Motown era. I name those artists because you know how Dilla produced? They played like that; they all laid back. It would probably be interesting, real interesting.

Audience Member

Dilla on the desk?

ERYKAH BADU

Dilla on the desk.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Just to interject something real quickly before we jump over there. He was talking about a dream team of folks, and you said earlier you’d assembled a dream team of musicians. I remember during the recordings of Common’s Electric Circusco album. I remember the vibe of you, Common, Dilla, Quest, James Poyser, and of all people Alan Leeds, James Brown’s old road manager. And Russ Elevado, of course, who’s lectured here at Red Bull Music Academy. And I think back to the crazy environments I’ve found myself in over the past 13, 14 years, and that was one of them because that was the dream team.

ERYKAH BADU

D’Angelo.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

I didn’t see him, that would’ve just made it crazier. Talking about a dream team and that was just a natural assembly. Wow.

ERYKAH BADU

Yeah, that was great, but we didn’t see us as that. We were just trying to eat. It felt good together. That’s one of the most incredible albums I’ve ever heard, the Electric Circus album. Musically, it could just be an instrumental album. It’s a journey. I had fun being a part of that.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

You sang on “Jimi Was a Rock Star.”

ERYKAH BADU

I wrote that, I wrote that. In Dallas. Yeah, Common came to Dallas and we sat in a little hole-in-the-wall studio and wrote that. He already had a lot of words and metaphors and things he wanted to use, but he didn’t consider himself a singer and he was so wrong. Like I said, no Melodyne or no voice correction or anything, and he sang the bottom and I sang the top. He sounded really good. It was interesting. It really was.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

If I remember that session correctly, Dilla wasn’t on the decks, but he was playing cassettes in Electric Lady.

ERYKAH BADU

DATs.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Maybe it was a DAT. That would make more sense. He was playing Silver Apples, that kick-started that song, so Dilla was certainly part of the dream team in that session.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

You’ve had a couple of children with musicians.

ERYKAH BADU

Three.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Are any of them into music and if so what?

ERYKAH BADU

They all are. It’s all they know; they’re a captive audience. Seven plays the bass, Puma plays piano, Mars can play any kind of percussion. She’s incredible, she’s just two years old and her rhythm is impeccable, she’s really good. They all naturally have that kind of groove. The Hip-Hop Incredibles, I’m going to put ’em out. I don’t know what they’re going to do, but they have that part of them. It’s natural too. Not forced at all, just a very natural thing and they enjoy playing around with that right now. They’re really young, 14, seven and two. So we just don’t know what’s going to happen.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Can I ask one more thing? The Central Forest Theatre in South Dallas, are you still working as a steward for that theater?

ERYKAH BADU

No, I have a non-profit organization called Blind. That’s a good name for it for many reasons, because I spent all of my money – all of mine, Seven, Puma and Mars’ money in five years – putting it into this non-profit organization. When I say all of it, I mean all of it. And I didn’t understand how you could use corporate sponsorship. I wanted it to happen right now. I wanted the community to have a community center, right now. I wanted to have drumming and capoeira and DJing and producing today. I wanted them to have it right then because the community I grew up in was dilapidating right before my eyes. Crack and drugs and liquor stores and prostitution, it was just a really bad thing to see. But those children still had life. I wanted them to feel it.

But no, I don’t have it right now, I had to reboot. But you ain’t no boss till you take a loss. So next year I’m going to start again with a little bit more help and a few more years wiser. We still have the organization but just don’t have that building. The building is a historic landmark in Dallas where all the musicians would come and play. We have a DJ camp. When school starts, next year, January. And a producing camp, where children can learn how to DJ and produce using an MP. A1 is one of the instructors and we have a lot of different master teachers. Jazzy Jeff is going to come through and teach the children and young adults how to DJ as a means of survival. Because they need it. We still do stuff, but we don’t have the theater anymore unfortunately. Because it’s dilapidated right now. There’s nobody in there, it’s boarded up. It seemed like the city didn’t want it to be utilized.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

It’s a historic building that served the community, not just in putting on shows. I was really inspired when I found out you’d attempted to preserve it because you’d done it so quietly, and had obviously put so much effort and energy and your spirit into it. I hope it works out.

ERYKAH BADU

I still see the remnants of what it is. We had a marquee and we were so proud of that marquee, ’cause we were able to put messages up on the marquee in the community. I think one of the messages that made the newspaper was, “They bring drugs into our community and all for some rims.” I don’t remember what it was, but it was one of the volunteers. It would change every week and it was really important to the community to see that as they’re passing through. “Don’t give up.” Or just anything. I think that was more helpful than almost anything, those mantras.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Can you speak about how “Honey” came about and how 9th Wonder fits into the legacy of what you were talking about with Dilla and Madlib?

ERYKAH BADU

9th Wonder was one of the homeys who was sending me MP3s via iChat. He sent me that, “Marlena’s Smile,” “The Wonder Years,” a lot of different tracks and I gravitated towards “Honey.” I just started writing to it in GarageBand. He’s one of those people, too, one of those beatsmiths that is a DJ, is a crate-digger, is a historian, is a scientist in what he does. I can hear it in the music, and I like it. I called 9th Wonder and told him I found the track and he was like, “Cool.” And I said I want it to be my first single. He was like, “Super cool.” Generally, when I write the song, I write the video treatment, ‘cause I can see it in my mind, what I want people to see and feel. 9th was in the studio, Ike Turner-ing me. “No, you’ve gotta sing it from your gut, let’s do it again. I don’t like it, let’s go home and start over.” I like that, when a producer is able to really get involved, and he’s one of those people who really gets involved and make sure the music turns out the way he hears it. So that’s my buddy.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

How did the last record you did with Dilla’s music measure up to the ones you did with him while he was alive? Obviously, you didn’t have his input for “Love,” whereas with all the music you recorded prior, I’m assuming it was a very close collaboration.

ERYKAH BADU

Oh, but I did have his input. I felt it a lot. Listening to old Slum [Village] albums, Dilla is also an incredible MC and listening to those songs, I tried to flow how he would flow over a song. But I really don’t compare any of those songs. It’s a feeling. It’s not a right or wrong, a better or worse, it’s just a feeling. But I always liked that track, since the ‘90s, and I just decided to put it on New Amerykah Part Two, because it fit in with the rest of the stuff, sequence-wise. That’s how a song makes the album, by the way. It has to fit into the sequence and be the same kind of feeling and the same kind of message. I like putting albums together, not just a collection of songs. There has to be a feel to the piece.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

You started off listening to “Brown Sugar.” Voodoo was a really important album for me, but do you know what D’Angelo is up to these days?

ERYKAH BADU

Yeah, he’s studying quantum physics. [laughter] He’s working on his music still. We talk a couple of times a week and the music is… you’re going to shit on yourself. [laughter]

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Do you know if he has any imminent release plans?

ERYKAH BADU

I don’t, I really don’t. Because he takes his time. He’s one of those musicians who’s, “I am a musician, that’s what I am.” He’s from the church, his mama’s a pastor and he plays at church. But he’s a musician and he’s just, “This is what I do, and if I put out an album, cool.” This is just what he does. He’s not a big fan of rushing anything, as you know. I’m waiting on it like you, because I think we need that. The world needs that voice.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Anyone else? Well, thank you, Erykah Badu.

[applause]