The day after she finished her new album at Electric Lady Studios, the West Village recording shrine that Jimi Hendrix built, the multi-platinum R 'n' B singer Erykah Badu was back in her surprisingly modest apartment in Brooklyn, puttering. In the tiny kitchen she poured organic pomegranate juice into a jelly jar, then stretched out on a mattress on the floor as New AmErykah, Part One (4th World War), just released by Universal Motown, played on her laptop. After weeks in the studio, she was so happy to be home that she refused to leave, rescheduling appointments and interviews around her domestic whim and one really, really good bath. (More on that later.)
She patted the spot next to her; why not conduct an interview in bed?
"This is my museum," Badu, 37, said of one-bedroom in Fort Greene where she has lived on and off since coming to New York, demo tape in hand, 11 years ago from her native Dallas, where she was Erica Wright.
"Since I've been here, I've had two children, a few boyfriends, a lot of records," she continued in her slight, girly drawl. "Everyone that comes over here draws on the wall or leaves something. You're looking at my mind when you're looking at these things." Decorating the hallway, for instance, is a 1m-tall ankh; artwork by her 10-year-old son, Seven, underneath a magazine photo of his father, the rapper Andre Benjamin of OutKast; yellow caution tape; dried flowers; protest-style placards; and a metal trash can lid, hung on the wall like an art piece. ("I thought it was cute," she said.)
As idiosyncratic as the memorabilia on her walls, her first full-length album in eight years is a dense, stylistic mash-up. By turns overtly political and intensely personal, with 1970s-groove instrumentation, hip-hop phrasing and a roster of beats and samples from collaborators like the DJ and producer Madlib, it is fierce but weird. And apart from Honey, the bouncy, playful single, it is largely uncommercial. In his review for the New York Times, Ben Ratliff called it "a deep, murky swim in her brain."
After a public bout of writer's block that led to her Frustrated Artist tour in 2003 and 2004, Badu is eager to promote what she calls her magnum opus. New AmErykah is part of a creative torrent that includes a sequel record, due in the summer, and an unrelated retro-minded album, Lowdown Loretta Brown, scheduled for the fall, both on Universal Motown. Badu also plans to start a lifestyle magazine, The Freaq, this summer; the first issue will come with a copy of New AmErykah: Part Two. Both records will also be available on a USB stick for fans to plug into their computers; for added value Badu wants to record a USB commentary track to explain her references and inspiration. A tour will start in May.
"I swear to God, this must be my artistic peak," Badu said in an earlier interview at Electric Lady, where she walked around barefoot, belled anklets jingling above her tiny, manicured feet. "I hope my sexual peak comes soon too," she added, and laughed. Then, switching to bohemian mama mode: "If something happened to me, I would want them to say, 'This is what your mother was about.'"
Badu is "one of those performers that don't necessarily fit in," said Stephen Hill, executive vice president for music talent and programming at BET, which has been aggressively playing the video for Honey. "She creates music as she wants to, and then it's up to the public to decide." He added that the new album was "not like anything that's out there, and that's what makes it exciting," especially when the mainstream music business feels slack.
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