Erykah Badu: C /D, S&D

worldwide underground has danger!!!!!! and i want you!!!!!!!!

Plus "Back in the Day" is maybe her most inviting, most comfortable jam ever.

totally

worldwide underground has danger!!!!!! and i want you!!!!!!!!

^^^ + !!!!!!!

yeah, "Danger" is fine.

i want you is masterful

so when you say it is 'irrelevant' what you mean is 'i don't like it'?

there is feeling in it but theres not much craft.

this is otm

It floats out of time and bears no relation to the records bookending it

Not at all. Obv the songwriting isn't as sharp as Mama's Gun or 4th World War, but it's more a record about sounds than anything and a lot of the sonic advancements carry over to 4WW.

OK, you guys won me over. I'll spin it again when I get home. It's really been years.

is 'hollywood' on the us version or was it a euro bonus track? because that is a jam too.

I mean, don't get me wrong, it IS her weakest album of the '00s ones. But so what, et al?

Yeah, the precedent for this one isn't, as advertised, Mama's Gun but instead Worldwide Underground.

this is otm, i totally hear it as WU pt 2 (and i love WU unconditionally).

i think it's easy to think of worldwide underground as, maybe not "irrelevant", but certainly a "mere" curio in the badu canon, not because of its quality but because of its relatively low-key release and reception, particularly her insistence that it wasn't an album, but an ep. an ep with 11 tracks that was album length. ok then erykah.

i fux with WU unconditionally, fwiw, and agree that no album with "danger" and "i want you" on it can ever be irrelevant. to an extent the same.

When all's said and done, the only Badu album I don't really spin much these days is the first one.

and even if a lot of return of the ankh consists of straight-up lifted samples and meandering jams, the same is true with it containing "window seat", "gone baby, don't be long" and "out my mind, just in time" - it's a beautifully paced and sequenced work that's absolutely gorgeous sounding, and almost all of it moves me on some level...and it feels like the right album for her to have made at this point in her career. so while it's not "OMG ALBUM OF DECADE" like 4th world war, it's still exactly what i wanted and almost totally satisfying - i wouldn't play god with it, in other words, apart from making her release the 320 of "jump up in the air (stay there)" in some form.

spun this last night after wondering whether i had missed anything. yeah it is like part two of worldwide underground. badu seems to make one collection of songs that may or may not fit together (WWUG, baduizm) then come up with one thats really focused/mulled over/conceptualised (mamas gun, nu amerykah). she seems to have done this pretty much for all her career. so maybe the next one will feel more vital and gestated. i dont care so much about the samples, just cos even though theoretically i wd prefer someone like badu didnt do so many obv steals, shes made too many great songs of her own using samples/replays (didnt cha know, certainly, etc) for me to complain about it. the thing about this album is just that while it def isnt parody or anything, its just badu doing exactly what youd expect from badu, almost like as close as shes going to get to a 'safe' album, for her anyway. so windowseat is basically like badu in precis. texturally and sonically theres plenty to love on this - obv yeah it is gorgeous... vocally, her phrasing and melodic sense is still sublime, but lyrically and songwriting wise, she doesnt seem to have really focused much or tried very hard - it all feels like a series of first drafts. sometimes thats cool, its nice to sometimes just hear an artist just being totally relaxed, but it means the material is really 'slight' and doesnt reward my returns to it. its a record that doesnt have much invested in it. thats what gives it its casual, nice and easy 'just an average day at the studio' feel, but i would have liked more, and i think theres scope in this material for her to do more with it. in an odd way, i think the fact it IS so gorgeous sonically (though sorry i expect more than just glorious warmth from badu) is what undoes it partially. hearing all the songs/sketches/whatever recorded in such amazing fidelity just seems to highlight that the material isnt as rich as the sonics, whereas if it was all sounded like a series of home demos, it would probably not matter as much. id just think of it as her stopgap/rough draft record. id love to hear her do a record like that actually.

nu amerykah pt 2 may not be as "conceptual" or interesting production-wise, but it has better melodies than pt 1 imo.

i'm not sure i agree w that

Biggest problem with Nu Amerykah pt.2 is that it's...Nu Amerykah pt. 2. There's no way it could stand with pt. 1, which is one of the decade's great album, prolley one of the greatest albums of pop music. She uses the same methodology as she did in pt. 1, but gets rid of all the apocalypticism.

I will say, however, that there is a genuine lazy streak throughout the album that is quite frustrating--the straight up track-jacks, the way that Lost My Mind is Green Eyes warmed over...but E. has already given us two of the greeatest albums of this last decade; I can't stay mad at her too long.

prolley one of the greatest albums of pop music

whoa

no disagreement on my part

That "Green Eyes" is a masterpiece does not automatically mean that "Out My Mind" is not also pretty damned great.

But, yeah, there is a little bit of a lazy streak running throughout the album. Only I'd say "lackadaisical" instead of "lazy."

dont get everyone riding so hard for amerykah pt 1 over pt 2 -- i mean i do to the degree that its a DIFFICULT RECORD (zzz) but yeesh

all i know is i'm pretty sure i've never made it through pt 1 once in one listen, but i've listened to all of pt 2 a bunch of times. admittedly, i am very lazy.

pt 1 speaks to me in a personal way, pt 2 doesn't. simple as that

dont get everyone riding so hard for amerykah pt 1 over pt 2 -- i mean i do to the degree that its a DIFFICULT RECORD (zzz) but yeesh

― NOT FUNNY NEEDS MORE GUCCI (deej), Tuesday, August 24, 2010 1:12 PM (3 hours ago)

get ouuuuta here with this faux-naive bs, you're better than this - it's not "difficult" it just "has songs"

pt 2 doesn't have 'songs' now? that's as bs as suggesting pt 1 is the 'difficult' record

Pt. 1 is the white record, Pt. 2 is the black one.

i'm white btw

Pt. 1 is the white record, Pt. 2 is the black one.

― Gucci Mane hermeneuticist (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, August 24, 2010 6:02 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

LOL

Pt. 1 is the white record, Pt. 2 is the black one.

― Gucci Mane hermeneuticist (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, August 24, 2010 3:02 PM Suggest Ban Permalink
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i realize you state this at least partly in jest, but you have no idea how fucking enraged this statement makes me.

almost just said "fuck you" and left it at that tbh

thought he was talking about Beatles v Metallica tbh

It wasn't even "partly in jest" -- it's totally in jest.

'white' & 'black' are totally the wrong words to describe the differences between the two records but there are totally ideological differences in preferring one over the other imo ... the 1st one is the public enemy record, the 2nd one is the sade record

One is the "Spike Lee" album, the other is the "Bill Cosby" album

pretty sure most everyone itt loves both pe and sade

pretty sure most people not 100% behind this record were into her previous 'sade' moments too

also pretty sure most people itt who are not 100% into this record are like... 85% into this record

65%-75% with reservations

I'm definitely more into this record after having just endured a wobbly tenor sing "Master Blaster" at the karaoke event next door.

pretty sure most everyone itt loves both pe and sade

― king boy swag (The Reverend), Wednesday, August 25, 2010 12:23 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

and most like both records. i think there are difft value systems at work in preferring one over the other

sure. but why is one inherently more valid than the other?

theyre not. id say that one is a lil more critic friendly, tho

which matters why?

bcuz it impacts how ppl talk about the relative values they bring to bear on each record & it helps to interrogate not just what ppl think but why they think that way

i completely disagree that any preference between these two particular albums is "ideological" - i know where deej is coming from w/r/t the value systems at play, but there are plenty of other reasons to prefer one over the other.

i think they complement each other just about perfectly, as they're meant to.

i completely disagree that any preference between these two particular albums is "ideological" - i know where deej is coming from w/r/t the value systems at play, but there are plenty of other reasons to prefer one over the other.

nah i mean basically all judgments are results of value systems. or are your tastes entirely random? might explain some things