Erykah Badu

Lead single "Honey" and the delicate "Telephone" hint at the loose neo-soul of Erykah's early work, but much of the album exists in a smoky haze of French horns, synth squiggles and vaguely political chants. Think Sly Stone's There's a Riot Goin' On filtered through the lens of left-field hip-hop, played at a Hindu death procession and recycled for a malfunctioning video game about an Afrofuturist apocalypse. It's a beautiful and strange album that announces a new dawn for psychedelic soul.

Erykah Badu has embarked on one of the more ambitious projects in recent R&B history:
This year, she'll release New AmErykah, a series of at least two, possibly three, albums
tackling sociopolitical issues like poverty and 9/11, drawing on musical styles from the
Forties through the Sixties, and promising, she says, to "talk for my race and my planet."
Badu kicks off the first disc by indulging her arty side: 4th World War is mostly d... More >