Live Review: Erykah Badu Gets Out of Her Mind

In anticipation of releasing her brilliant sound odyssey, New Amerykah Pt. 1: 4th World War (Universal Motown, 2008), Erykah Badu, a.k.a. “Analogue Girl in A Digital World,” a.k.a. “Fat Belly Bella,” a.k.a. “Low Down Loretta Brown,” clarified her artistic objectives on an Okayplayer form. Posting as analoguegirl, Badu affirmed, “As much as I would love to be just a recording artist, I am not. There’s a difference. I am a performance artist first; there’s a difference.” Having the chance to see Badu perform live at the Warfield June 6, I could not agree more with her distinction.

Erykah Badu performs at L.A.'s Club Nokia June 5, 2009, the night before her San Francisco gig. Photo by Beth Stirnaman via LA Record.

Dressed in a mystical mauve kimono, golden skull cap, and gem encrusted space goggles, Badu strutted onstage in profile, tracing her steps forward like a celestial, hieroglyph narrative. A cinematic whirling rainstorm of bleeps and lasers and synth bubbling keys reverberated in the background, aspiring to transport the audience to the far reaches. This intergalactic resonance would remain the most consistent frequency throughout the performance; each transition of song and style marked by its cosmic joy of noise. Badu’s enigmatic presence recalled Sun Ra’s theatrical myth making, framed by an open ended aesthetic in Egyptology and a surreal space age, radicalized belief in the power of music to free the soul from its rusty, earthly shackles.

But this outlandish and historically rooted ethos did not restrain Badu’s emphasis on the contemporary. The high priestess of hip-hop soul incorporated the gods of our musical past into the urgency of the now. The tensions of old and new styles and sounds continuously pressed against each other throughout the remarkable performance.

Sometimes the antagonisms felt dramatically sharp. To introduce the set before Badu entered stage, her solid boogie funk outfit played a couple of the original tracks sampled in the production of 4th World War. The tribute to these musical foundations was contrasted by the DJ dropping Lil Wayne’s gutter poetry banger, “A Milli,” a wild song that encapsulates the sonic zeitgeist of the youngest generation of hip-hop heads. At other times Badu chose -- in a smoother fashion -- to synthesize contrasting musical elements with her own highly original, personal touch. Armed with a vigorous back catalog, Badu redefined some of classic soul grooves like “On and On” and “Didn’t Cha’ Know” in accordance to 4th World War’s coarsely textured and somewhat dissonant sonic landscape. While crooning her smoked-out throwback joint, “Back in the Day”, Badu cut in and out of the song to channel her muses, tracing the aggressive and playful soundscapes of Ice Cube and Slick Rick to feel good soul jams and real old school bluesy ballads. At one moment Badu reinvigorated her moniker, jazz scatting to sing the cosmic electronic keys in Afrika Bambaata’s “Looking For The Perfect Beat” all while reproducing the unforgettable bass line on the drum machine. To arrange such a complex performance -- seamlessly referencing and remixing musical history in a compellingly contemporary style -- Badu succeeded in translating and expanding the formal aesthetic of the hip-hop DJ into the art of the composer-singer. I’m not even overstating it.

While unraveling the many historical layers behind her sound, Badu slowly unburdened herself of wardrobe layers. Each shedding of an item enabled one of the many schizophrenic characters which make up the complicated being of Erykah Badu to manifest. The initial, arkestral space creature transformed into a golden headed free flowing being, and for the second act, Badu changed garb completely into a simple red summer dress. She whisked around the stage like a funkified ballerina, singing from her younger-aged repertoire of intimate coming-of-age joints. Shining the spotlight on her own personal struggles, Badu showed us the conflicted trajectory which led her to the apotheosis of her new mythological project articulated most transparently in “Healer,” the cyphered song marking the opening and closure of the first act. In “Healer,” Badu refines her musical vision, declaring a mysteriously therapeutic and transcendental power of hip-hop as more expansive than religious or governmental entities. The meaning behind this notion of spiritualized hip-hop is left vague, but there might be a clue in Badu’s closing actions. The sorceress sips her tea and implores the crowd, “Get out of your mind!” Badu is certainly out of her own.

This article was co-published on SFBG.