Erykah Badu is a woman who wears many hats. She has continuously reinvented herself in front of the public eye and not one person questioned it. Badu believes that her ever-changing desire to be a new Erykah comes from authentically being herself.
“I am the franchise of my world and my family,” she explaiend. “I don’t have a boss or anything or no one to tell me to get up at 7 a.m. or do something or make a album or start a tour, create a campaign. So I’m moved and motivated by just the thought of that knowing that there’s no one to, to push me or tell me every single day.”
21Ninety’s Zayna Allen sat down with the multi-hyphenate to talk all about her new tour, inspirations and more. Check it out!
Badu’s Lessons
Many fans often reference Badu’s 1997 “Baduizm” project. At the time she recorded the album, she was pregnant with her eldest son, Seven, whose father is Andre 3000. She has often credited the album to him, saying that she wrote the album for the 90’s babies. She always tells the 90’s babies at her shows that she has been waiting for them to “grow up so we could talk about it.” Now, she says that although she’s given the 90’s babies something, she received much from them in return.
“You’ve [90’s babies] given me improvements on my design, because of the way we’ve communicated very personally,” she explained. “So I can see my growth through you and that keeps me on my A game. It’s t the reason why I take a Janelle Monet on a whole tour or Dej Loaf on a whole tour. The reason I do that is because I am communicating with you, this is for you. I was just born in the seventies. So I imagine that Chaka Khan did the same kind of kind of thing for me.”
As her life progressed, she stepped into the role of becoming a doula. She says that the lessons she learned about birthing has given her a new outlook on life.
“I found out, too, that my actual contract maybe 10 years into the process of being a doula,” she began to explain. “I figured out that my contract was with those babies. Actually, it is to make sure that there’s peace in that house, so they at least have a chance to start off, right. You know, you have a chance with a frequency to start off, right?”
She goes on to explain that babies need a chance to come into the world with peace. With hospitals, she feels as though the babies come out of the womb with anxiety. She aims to be able to create a safe space for newborns to be born with serenity.