Her sophisticated style of singing drew many comparisons to Billie Holiday. Badu received notice for her introspective lyrics and jazzy, bass-heavy sound, and was hailed as one of the leading lights of the burgeoning neo soul genre. Lead single On & On reached #12 on the singles charts in both the U.S. Some music journalists have labeled her Nu soul, nouvelle-soul or neo soul, often comparing her to Billie Holiday in lyrical delivery and grouping her with Maxwell and D'Angelo in musical genre.īaduizm, Badu's highly acclaimed debut album, was released in early 1997 and debuted at #2 on the Billboard charts. She weaves unusual musical influences together creating a rich texture of sound. Her lyrics are highly personal urban philosophy which throw emotional challenges in the face of the listener.

She is best known for her singles You Got Me her collaboration with The Roots, as well as her own songs Tyrone, Love of My Life, On & On, Bag Lady, The Healer, Honey and Soldier. Badu but are still fantastic songs in themselves and are different enough to maintain the listener's interest but at the same time similar enough to subconsciously 'please' the listener as there aren't any drastic changes that come as a big shock.Erykah Badu (born Erica Abi Wright on Februin Dallas, Texas) is an American R'n'B/neo-soul artist whose work crosses over into jazz. The laid-back, 'chilled', minimalistic vibe is Erykah Badu's stylistic fingerprint that points out to the listener that 'Yes this is an Erykah Badu song', for example, listen to the songs Other Side Of The Game ( )and Rimshot (Intro) ( ) both of these songs still have that exact same stylistic fingerprint of Ms. Badu, that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Badu creates, which some may see as a bad thing as she doesn't push herself as an artist to expand her music into new directions or reach new audiences, however, I would argue that even though this song is very reminiscent of many other songs by Ms. The laid-back, 'chilled', minimalistic vibe of this song can be seen in nearly every song that Ms. Badu is out to live her life and not care about what others think of her.įor me this song shows exactly who Erykah Badu is as a musician and an artist. On the other hand the repetition, of the pre-chorus and chorus, really drills the message of the song into the reader's mind, that Ms. Badu's part, as we know she is very capable of writing intelligent and fitting lyrics that could've offered more to the song but she gets away with this laziness because her sultry vocal styling make whatever she's singing pleasant to listen to regardless of the lyrics actually are. Some individuals may see this as laziness on Ms. However, despite being very cleverly written in some places there is also a great deal of repetition of lyrics, for example the last four sections of the song are just repetitions of what has already been said.

I think overall the lyrics are very cleverly written with intelligent references to the Tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden and that her knowledge is like the apple that Eve picked from the tree and that knowledge is like food that has to be planted and grown before being passed on to other people.

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