Where They're From 
Music
Voice of Amerykah
Dallas native Erykah Badu is burning up the charts with a soulful blend of jazz, blues, and hip-hop and a positive message for her inner-city fans.
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Badu pulls off these messagey gems because she obviously walks it like she talks it. She grew up as Erica Wright in a South Dallas extended family whose core included her mother, Kolleen Gipson-Wright, grandmothers Thelma Gipson and Viola “Ganny” Wilson, brothers Julian Brooks and Eevin E., and sister Koryan. She began singing and acting at age four at the Martin Luther King Recreational Center, which was run by her godmother, Gwen Hargrove. “I had my plan even then,” Badu says. “I always believe my plans will work, and they always do. It’s not in the plan; it’s in the belief.”
Erica attended Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, the arts magnet that produced singer Edie Brickell and jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove. She began with theater, switched to dance, and then studied dance and music. “I was very much in my own environment, surrounded by creativity and art and no boundaries,” she recalls. At Grambling State University in Louisiana, she concentrated on theater and sang on weekends, but in 1993 she dropped out and returned to Dallas, where she formed a duo called Erykah Free with her cousin Robert Bradford, who had graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago two years before. “I was disappointed she left school,” says Gwen Hargrove, “but she gave herself a time limit of a year or so and said if she didn’t get anywhere, she would go back. She beat her time limit, but I still believe she’ll eventually finish college.”
The Free duo was an immediate hit on Dallas’ hip-hop circuit, opening for touring acts like A Tribe Called Quest and Arrested Development; they even cut a nineteen-song demo tape that Badu says sounds very much like her current release. “Hip-hop is the foundation of my music, but there’s jazz, soul, R&B, classical, African drumming,” she says. “My mother had good taste—she liked Stevie Wonder and Chaka Khan—so that’s what I grew up with, and they’re still my old faithfuls. I don’t know where the jazz came from. I just remember it from someplace.” During this period, she also taught singing and drama at the South Dallas Cultural Center, taught dance at the King recreation center, and worked as a waitress at a coffee shop. All the while, she was developing her personal philosophy from her studies of African history and spirituality. (She dubbed it baduizm, taking the word from a jazz scat-singing phrase.)
Things clicked after Tim Grace featured Erica in the trailer for The Boulevard, a movie he directed and produced. He liked her so much that he became her manager, and soon after persuaded her to drop theater and dance to concentrate on singing. Using the Free tape to promote Erica as a solo act, Grace ignited a mini bidding war won by Kedar Massenburg, who was at the time the manager of soul singer D’Angelo and about to launch his own label, Kedar. It was then that Erica became Erykah Badu. Later, her father, who was in and out of her life when she was growing up, wrote her from prison that “badu” is an Arabic word meaning to manifest life, righteousness, and truth. The last time she saw him was when he watched her in a play at Grambling, and she’s not sure where he’s locked up today. “I don’t know what he’s in for. What does it matter?” she says tersely. “He’s in there along with half the people I grew up with.”
After signing with Kedar, Badu moved to Brooklyn to learn the music business, settling into the bohemian African American neighborhood of Fort Greene. Massenburg got her early exposure by having her sing “Your Precious Love” with D’Angelo for the soundtrack to the film High School High. For her debut album, Badu and her brain trust recruited hip-hop luminaries like producers the Roots and jazz stalwarts like bassist Ron Carter and Badu’s childhood friend Hargrove; though cousin Bradford was cut out of the Kedar deal so all the emphasis would be on Badu’s voice, he also worked on Baduizm. Massenburg built word of mouth by distributing hundreds of Badu cassettes at last year’s Soul Train Music Awards; he annointed her a “hip-hop Billie Holiday,” overkill that would doubtless have backfired if she weren’t so talented. Then, just before Baduizm was released, she played four stunning nights at the Soul Cafe, a trendy Manhattan soul food restaurant co-owned by Malik Yoba, one of the stars of TV’s New York Undercover.
Critics jumped on the CD as quickly as fans, hailing Badu as a cornerstone of a “neo-soul” movement that includes D’Angelo, Maxwell, and Me’Shell NdegéOcello. “What does that word ‘neo’ mean?” Badu asks. She sees herself as part of a diverse movement of successful iconoclasts such as the Fugees, Jungle Brothers, Brand Nubians, and A Tribe Called Quest. “I sing about the things rappers talk about,” she says. “Rap is something you do; hip-hop is something you live. But I didn’t know I had a style until I got a record deal. I didn’t know I had an image until I got a record deal.”
No matter, so long as her plan continues to take hold. “I said back then I’m gonna do music first, and after it takes off, then I will venture into film and take over and maybe direct and write. Then I said I’m gonna start my dance school in Dallas once I’ve built up enough income: ballet, modern, jazz, tap, everything. Eventually I’ll start a whole school in fine arts. That was my plan, and I’m in phase one. But that was before I got into the music business and realized how important my position was here. I don’t know what I’m gonna do from here. But I know I’m here now, and I’m staying as long as it takes in music to prove that real art sells. Then I’ll move on.”
Coming from most people, that would sound like pure hyperbole. Somehow, coming from Erykah Badu, it sounds more like manifest destiny.
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