Erykah Badu plans to make music, money and babies

Ebony, July, 1998 by Joy Bennett Kinnon

Embraced by Generation Next and X, old school and new school, hip-hoppers and beboppers, the jazz police and gangster-rappers, Erykah Badu in one incredible year has leaped across musical fashion and beauty boundaries to become one of the top female singer/songwriters performing today.

Bigger than her trademark head wrap, Badu is large, in today's hip-hop jargon, and that's not in physical size, because her fighting weight is only a buck-o-five. Badu has had a phenomenal year by anyone's view. She released two platinum-plus albums -- her debut effort Baduizm and her follow-up album Erykah Badu Live. To date combined sales of both albums total more than 3 million copies. And after burning up the award shows, she needed a shopping cart to haul away all of her awards. She took home two Grammys, four Soul Train Awards, two NAACP Image Awards and an American Music Award.

If July now belongs to actor Will Smith, then January certainly belongs to Erykah Badu. The 27-year-old Dallas native, who received a total of 15 nominations, won the nine awards for her first album Baduizm and its debut single, "On & On."

The multitalented songstress also directed two of her own videos, Next Lifetime and Otherside of the Game, had a cameo in the The Blues Brothers 2000 movie and sang on the Eve's Bayou movie soundtrack. And by-the-by, did we mention she also added motherhood to her multitude of honors, delivering her first child and second album, Erykah Badu Live, on the very same day.

Her son, Seven Sirius made his 6-pound, 7-ounce debut at No. 1 in her heart on Nov. 18, 1997, at 2:07 p.m. in Dallas, and the Live album debuted at No. 1 on the pop album charts the same day and remains a top staple on R&B album charts.

More astounding is that only a few months later, while most women are still fighting the battle-of-the-baby bulge, Badu is back in slinky, eye-catching Afrocentric gowns, and, as she puts it, "hot-damn shoes," those three- and four-inch spiked-heel sandals that make everyone exclaim just that.

How does she do it? The Serene Highness of Serenity has joined the surreal world of working mothers armed with mysticism, incense and candles. She delivered Seven at home, attended by midwives and surrounded by her family, her mother and grandmother. The oldest of three children, she says Seven's arrival made her calmer and more serene. "I feel more responsible and more in order," she says.

Crediting "correct diet (she's a vegetarian who doesn't eat meat or dairy products) and nursing her newborn for helping her shed her pregnancy weight, she admits some trepidation on joining the ranks of mothers.

"At first I was really nervous because I've never been a mom before and I was worried," she confides. Seven dozes easily in her arms as she does the traditional motherhood juggle, feeding a baby, eating a salad and fielding business calls all at the same time. "I've always been confident in my career and very confident in my talent because I knew where it came from. It's plentiful," she adds. "But I was insecure about being a mom and sometimes about relationships and about people, period."

Relationships are a constant theme in Badu's songs, with her current hit "Tyrone" fast becoming the Black women's anthem for dissing and dismissing do-wrong brothers. But for Badu that song is especially not referring to Seven's father, Andre (Dre) Benjamin, from the rap group OutKast, whom she calls her "beloved reflection and divine lover." She calls their son her "love child" and says although she "loves him [Dre] dearly," has no immediate plans for marriage.

"We'll see about that. Right now we're still dating," she says. "We plan to grow together and be happy. We'll know when the time is right."

Benjamin lives in Atlanta, and although they celebrated their first anniversary as a couple last December, for now they plan to continue their long-distance relationship.

"It works for us," she says. "It works really good for us. That's how it has always been and we don't have anything to compare it to. Maybe that's what has made the relationship last this long because we don't have to be up in each other's face all the time. Distance brings enchantment to the view."

From Badu's view, it's plain that any plans for Seven must also include Dre. While Seven is little he will travel with his mother, but when it comes time for school, a different plan is in the making. "He'll be well-traveled, but I think he may be home-schooled," she says. "I think his Dad wants him to be home-schooled and kept in a one-on-one atmosphere," she says.

"We want to make sure that he has the healthiest diet and atmosphere to grow up in -- but not sheltered," she adds. "We want to give him the hard truths at the beginning of life so he won't have to be like me and [his] Daddy, unlearning a bunch of s---, a bunch of crap that messed us up as human beings."

Badu intends to give Seven "straight truth" about life with no sugar-coating, no fairy tales. "That way he can go ahead and start being the beautiful person that he is. It takes us too long to be the beautiful person we are because we have so much junk to undo."