Erykah Badu: C /D, S&D

^^^both those posts cataloguing my exact reactions

I'd like to put in words for "20 Feet Tall" and "Out of My Mind, Just in Time" tho. I have a feeling those are joints I'll be chewing on for a while

looking at the track listing it's only "umm hmm", "love" and "incense" that strike me as remotely skippable, actually

I'd subtract "Incense" and add "Fall in Love", but yeah

"Love" is skippable; "Umm Hmm" is not.

yeah, maybe those will be growers but the middle chunk (umm hmm through fall in love) blends together for me in a mush of dilla-ish drums and love lyrics. i still like it but i've been skipping to the last two tracks.

This isn't an immediate "HOLY SHIT PAY ATTENTION TO ME" album in the vein of 4WW but I've noticed that when I start playing it, I always want to listen to the entire thing; I've had zero desire to cherrypick songs from it, whereas with 4WW I almost immediately zeroed in on "The Healer", "Cell", "Master Teacher" and "My People" and skipped over the other tracks.

yeah, that's my experience.

there is some good spring time shit on here

Pitchfork: Prince and Rick James seem risqué for a 10 year old...

That was my taste. My family had a very open relationship about music and art. Nothing was taboo and everything was up for discussion-- by the time I was 10, I was a genius. I take the same approach with my son now. He listens to King Crimson, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix.

Pitchfork: Prince and Rick James seem risqué for a 10 year old...

okay what kind of puritanical nonsense is this

signed, a dude who first heard Prince at age 8

Also Prince was kind of a big deal when Erykah was a kid in the early '80s! It would've been pretty hard to avoid him.

(OK, maybe in '81 he wasn't quite a superstar yet.)

"I Wanna Be Your Lover" was #1 on the R&B charts and just missed the Billboard top 10 in 1978 and "Let's Work" was a #1 club hit in 1980; he wasn't an ubiquitous superstar but it also wasn't like no one knew who he was, and if Badu's parents were already bumping Rick James, they were almost certainly bumping Prince.

that mid-section is kinda like a lot of the jams on WWU. I might feel like listening to them sometimes, but I don't have to listen to them, nawmean?

wwu hits way harder imo

and if Badu's parents were already bumping Rick James, they were almost certainly bumping Prince.

Yeah -- they even toured together in 1980.

signed, a dude whose first 45 was "Let's Go Crazy."

Don't be silly. If she was listening to the albums and not just the singles then, yeah, who wouldn't consider LPs like "Dirty Mind" or "Controversy" to be risque, especially by 1981 standards? I doubt there were lots of pre-teens singing along to "Sexuality?" "Jack U Off" back then. I mean, Prince became PMRC persona non grata long after the peak of his freakiness.

I doubt there were lots of pre-teens singing along to "Sexuality?"

There was at least one in my home growing up. I had no real idea of what the lyrics meant wrt to sex because it just was not on my radar/in my worldview; songs like "Ronnie Talk To Russia" and "Annie Christian" made a lot more sense to me at the time. (I never played "Jack U Off" because I knew it was dirty and I was convinced my parents would stop letting me play the album if I played it within earshot of them.)

"Annie Christian" still doesn't make sense to me

I didn't say it actually MADE sense, just that it made MORE sense than "Sexuality"

Prince's rant at the end of that one is kind of on the o_O side anyway

"love" : me :: "window seat" : everybody else

Saddened to hear everyone is skipping the hardest and best track on the album.

I haven't skipped it -- I listened to it hard. Now I skip it.

Your ears went flaccid.

The first casualties of living in the new amerykah.

Just because:

The Cell
Soldier
Love
The Healer
Master Teacher
Out My Mind, Just In Time
My People
Gone Baby, Don't Be Long
That Hump
Twinkle
20 Feet Tall
Honey
Agitation
Turn Me Away (Get MuNNY)
Jump Up in the Air (Stay There)
Window Seat
Telephone
Me
You Loving Me
Fall in Love (Your Funeral)
Amerykah Promise
Incense
Umm Hmm

Meh, switch "Incense" and "Umm Hmm" around.

hmmm, wonder what happened to the highlighted tracks

Here is the track list for "Nu AmErykah":

"American Promise"
"The Healer"
"Me"
"My People"
"Speech"
"Soldier 7"
"The Cell"
"Twinkle"
"Love Me"
"Honey"
"Emotions"
"Don't Be Long"
"YPOM"
"Hot Slow Jam"
"Jump Up in the Air"
"Loretta Brown"
"Dirty Dirty"
"The Healer Outro"

"Loretta Brown" is surely slated for volume three. Probably some of the others too, and (finally) "Annie."

wait... there is a part 3?

!!!

Can never keep track of whether the Lowdown Loretta Brown album is going to be part three or is just unrelated.

she says in new york magazine that maybe pt iii's coming together right now. the next one was going to be the loretta brown soul production one i believe. some playback reviews said that it was mostly in the can but i can't imagine hearing that and assuming that it'll be out real soon.

Not when Ankh was originally "supposed to" be released in July 2008.

haha I already wrote in the SOTT book about how I used to run around in my Superman Underoos pretending I was on the cover of Dirty Mind when I was six.

I used to wear old hose as detachable sleeves and pretend I was Ruth Pointer.

Can never keep track of whether the Lowdown Loretta Brown album is going to be part three or is just unrelated.

Unrelated, from what she said at the listening party.

Good. Always preferred diptychs to trilogies.

The Cell
Soldier
Love
The Healer
Master Teacher
Out My Mind, Just In Time
My People
Gone Baby, Don't Be Long
That Hump
Twinkle
20 Feet Tall
Honey
Agitation
Turn Me Away (Get MuNNY)
Jump Up in the Air (Stay There)
Window Seat
Telephone
Me
You Loving Me
Fall in Love (Your Funeral)
Amerykah Promise
Incense
Umm Hmm

Speaks volumes that the bottom 10-11 songs on this list would still make a damn good album.

backwards "Window Seat" vid http://www.erykahbadu.com/

xpost yep, speaks two volumes, in fact

"I don't consider myself the Queen of Neo-Soul. I don't even know what neo-soul is. I'll be the Queen of Neo-Funk, though."

<3

http://www.rap-up.com/2010/04/01/mother-claims-child-was-traumatized-by-erykah-badu-video/

Flash forward 40 years: Woman, once a child, grateful to be able to tell her grandchildren about seeing Erykah Badu naked

lord knows I would be

so last night it was warm out and i was driving around, and i started with 'love' and 'fall in love' and was truly feelin' it. i like the odd phrase length in 'fall in love', it's a nice spin on the sample.

I used to wear old hose as detachable sleeves and pretend I was Ruth Pointer.

uh wait are you gay

Can I just Erykah Badu POX

xpost I thought Ruth Pointer was a really beautiful man.

http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local-beat/Badu-May-Face-Charges-After-All-89799852.html