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Erykah Badu: on her career and her romance with Common - Biography
Ebony, Sept, 2003 by Joy Bennett Kinnon
MUSIC icon Erykah Badu is in a new mood musically and personally. She's making new music and she has a new man, Next month Badu will release her fourth album, Worldwide Underground, and its first single, "Block, UnBlock." But don't expect this musical chameleon to revert to her early days when she personified the neo-soul movement. Badu is actively trying to slip the bonds of the head wrap, candles an d incense vibe she created. In the process she is unapologetically reinventing herself.
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I'm so many things that one image gets in the way and takes up a life of its own," Badu says. She openly admits that she let herself get "caught up" in her own image. "There're so many Sisters with Ankhs tattooed on them and head wraps that when I was in Africa, in Cape Town and Soweto, they called the head wrap the 'Badu,'" she says laughing. Born Erica Wright in Dallas, she no longer wears what became her trademark mile-high head wrap onstage, instead preferring to sport a huge '70s-Angela Davis-style Afro wig. And instead of candles onstage, she often performs with an incense stick in her mouth.
The unveiling has been a natural progression for the 32-year-old artist, who resists labels of any kind. "I didn't want to unravel everything I did, being a positive image and a positive role model, but it [the head wrap] had to go," she says. "I was careful not to be trapped inside of that head wrap for the rest of my life."
Transforming her image does not mean Badu is giving up her organic lifestyle. If anything, she wants to be "super" natural, and she still wants to present a positive, but natural image. "I love my natural hair, I love my skin the way it is, I love my breasts the way they are," she says. "I don't want to be augmented in any way."
There's also a new man in her life. Badu and a hip-hop artist named Common, a Chicago MC and rapper charging up the hip-hop charts, are hiphop's latest hot duo. Badu wrote and produced the Grammy-Award winning song, "Love of My Life (An Ode to Hip Hop)," and wrote and co-produced the video featuring Common that won the 2003 BET Video of the Year Award.
Is Common the love of her life?
Badu answered the question by raising another question, telling a reporter, "Even if I didn't know him at all, he would still be the one for the song. It would just be right."
The superstar, who has changed hairstyles, musical styles and love styles, was equally communicative and noncommunicative during a Los Angeles interview. Asked directly if she and Common intend to marry, she dodged the question and finally answered with a smile. "You can say, 'She smiled,'" she said. She not only smiled but communicated or seemed to communicate by body language. Her expressive face lit up like a marquee on Broadway at the mere mention of the rapper's name. At one point she said or implied that she has learned the hard way that the best way to lose a love is to talk about him to the media. "I just don't want to talk about it anymore," she says. However, Badu says that she does want to have more children, another son definitely and perhaps a daughter.
The couple has a lot in common. Together nearly three years, the pair collaborated musically for years before their friendship deepened. Each has a child from a previous relationship. Common has a daughter and Badu has a 5-year-old son, Seven, from her relationship with Andre (Dre) Benjamin of the group Outkast. And Common is known for his strong family ties and his devotion to his daughter.
Common and Badu are often together, either at her home in Dallas or on the road, where he is often spotted onstage with her during her performances. Savvy Badu spotters can also usually find the pair at local vegetarian restaurants. It's obvious that wherever the lovers are headed legally, personally they make each other happy and they apparently are destined to continue to make beautiful music together.
Badu says not talking so much about her private life is an important lesson she's learned from the past. Another one is "that it is necessary to hurt and heal over and over again. The cycles are totally necessary as the sun and the rain, and you have to accept them and embrace them," she says.
Trying to keep her private life private, Badu has learned, is another one of many life lessons, since she entered the business in 1997, when her debut album, Baduizm, entered the national album charts at No. 2--the highest debut of a female artist to that date. Her next album, Erykah Badu Live, also went platinum plus. Badu's last album was the critically acclaimed Mama's Gun in 2000.
Producing music on her own timetable has been another major lesson learned, she says. "Personally in my art, I learned how to work at my own pace and not be stressed out and rushed, because it is all in divine order."
Although it's been nearly three years since her last album, Badu says she doesn't need a new album to work. "One thing I feel is constant is my relationship with the audience," she says. "Even with no albums out I tour constantly and recreate and experiment with my music."
