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CDs by Erykah Badu
Baduizm
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Mama’s Gun /
Worldwide Underground
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New Amerykah Part One
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New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh
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New Amerykah Part Two
Return Of The Ankh
by
Erykah Badu
Reviewed by Michael Gonzales
March 24,
2010
Even before the release of her
first record
Baduizm in the winter of 1997,
Erykah Badu was considered something special. Signed
by Kedar Massenburg, who two years prior had a hand
in presenting D’Angelo’s groundbreaking
Brown
Sugar to an appreciative public, Erykah was
introduced as the second coming of Billie Holiday.
While that kind of hyperbole
might be impossible for even the most seasoned
singers to live up to, Badu was ready to tackle the
record company–construed comparisons with vigor. In
a series of showcases staged for tastemakers and
music critics at New York City’s now-defunct Soul
Café a few months the her debut single “On &
On” became inescapable, it was obvious Badu sounded
nothing like Lady Day.
Yet, watching her on stage, where
she was full of sass and soul, showing a personality
that was both granola and ghetto, it was apparent
that Badu had her own thang going. Coming at a time
when “neo-soul” was all the rage, Erykah refused to
get caught up in the trick bag of categories.
Instead, she was just being as jazzy-rock-hip-hop as
she wanted to be.
Unlike other artists of her
generation who failed to live up to their early
hype, Badu is constantly striving to reinvent
herself aurally. On subsequent discs, especially the
monumental
Mama’s Gun
(2000) and
Worldwide Underground (2003), Badu has shown
that she is not afraid to experiment with various
sounds and textures. One minute she might be
backstroking in classic breakbeats, the next she’s
knee-deep in some brand-outer-space-new funk.
Though a bit kooky in her style,
rocking Afro wigs and baldies with the same finesse,
in the studio Badu has always been a maverick artist
who writes, produces and nurtures music into
creation as though it were a baby. Having given
birth to her third child Mars Merkaba last February,
it would be easy to attribute the lovey-dovey vibe
of
New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh
to the joys of motherhood and partnership with her
man, producer/ rapper Jay Electronica.
“Concentrating on my music lover
and my babies,” she sings on the blissful “Window
Seat,” which sounds like it was equally influenced
by Bessie Smith’s blues and Virginia Woolf’s essay
“A Room of One’s Own.” Certainly, Badu is a beast in
the studio, having been compared to everyone from
Alice Coltrane to Bjork, but the real music in her
songs can be heard in the lyrics.
“Looking for the holy ghost,
found it in a missing note,” she sings on the
ambitious “Out My Mind, Just in Time.” Have mercy,
the girl puts together words in a way that would
make both Ntozake Shange and Rakim proud.
While
Return of the Ankh
could be labeled a “love” album (especially when
compared to gritty
There’s a Riot Goin’ On
textures of
New Amerykah Part One) when
you’re talking about Erykah Badu it’s just not that
simple. As the artist herself recently remarked,
“With
Part One, I was standing at an apex,
looking at what was going on around me politically,
socially, and economically. With
Part Two,
I’m hovering over me, looking at what’s
going on inside of me.”
Using “love” as a springboard,
Badu approaches the concept with the skill of a
short-story writer (like 151st Street homegirl Toni
Cade Bambara dropping bombs in
Gorilla, My Love)
crafting meditations on the subject that range from
the waiting on her man sister in “Gone Baby, Don’t
Be Long,” which samples Paul McCartney’s heartbreak
ode “Arrow Through Me,” to the groupie chick bopping
backstage to a Biggie beat on “Turn Me Away (Get
MuNNY).”
Working with her usual posse of
collaborators including the late J. Dilla, Madlib, ?uestlove,
SA-RA Creative Partners, Karriem Riggins and James
Poyser, the woman of the hour comes through in the
name of soul. As she sings on “Love,” a Dilla
produced gem, “…you love me, I like it.”
While Emek’s beautifully rendered
cover portrays Erykah as a cold cyborg (perhaps her
version of the robot girl from Midnight
Marauders), Badu’s splendid
Return of the Ankh is her warmest album in years. Right on,
sister. Write on.
Source:
SoulSummer
posted 25 March 2010
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Erykah Badu broke onto the scene with her
debut album, 1997's
Baduizm, and was instantly hailed as a key figure in nu-soul.
It was widely praised and hit No.2 on the Billboard 200,
eventually selling over three million copies and winning two
Grammy Awards. Her second album was a live album, the
imaginatively titled Live (1997), which went double platinum.
She collaborated with The Roots and took…
Videos:
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On and on |
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02_My_Story,_My_Song.mp3
(24503 KB)
(Kalamu reading "My Story, My Song"
Featuring blues guitarist Walter Wolfman Washington)
Audio:
My Story, My Song (Featuring blues guitarist Walter Wolfman Washington)
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Greenback Planet: How the Dollar Conquered
the World and Threatened Civilization as We Know It
By H. W. Brands
In Greenback Planet, acclaimed historian H. W. Brands charts the dollar's astonishing rise to become the world's principal currency. Telling the story with the verve of a novelist, he recounts key episodes in U.S. monetary history, from the Civil War debate over fiat money (greenbacks) to the recent worldwide financial crisis. Brands explores the dollar's changing relations to gold and silver and to other currencies and cogently explains how America's economic might made the dollar the fundamental standard of value in world finance. He vividly describes the 1869 Black Friday attempt to corner the gold market, banker J. P. Morgan's bailout of the U.S. treasury, the creation of the Federal Reserve, and President Franklin Roosevelt's handling of the bank panic of 1933. Brands shows how lessons learned (and not learned) in the Great Depression have influenced subsequent U.S. monetary policy, and how the dollar's dominance helped transform economies in countries ranging from Germany and Japan after World War II to Russia and China today. He concludes with a sobering dissection of the 2008 world financial debacle, which exposed the power--and the enormous risks--of the dollar's worldwide reign. The Economy |
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Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
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The White Masters of the
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From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
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