Soul-jazz diva Erykah Badu is climbing the world’s charts and has been hailed as the new Billie Holliday. DAN GLAISTER takes in her British debut
INCENSE, candles, an ethnic curio on the floor – the set suggests voodoo, but this is no voodoo show. Welcome to Baduizm, the precinct of Erykah Badu, a 26-year-old singer-songwriter from the previously unheralded musical frontier of South Dallas.
But this is no singer-songwriter in the Joan Osborne meaning of the term. Badu’s muse is a beguiling blend of Seventies soul and jazz hypnotics informed by the sassy sensibilities of hip- hop’s verbal culture. Atop it all comes Badu’s voice, something of fragile, cracked beauty that flits, floats and flirts around her music.
Badu is something of a phenomenon in the States. Her debut album, Baduizm, went platinum in two weeks early this year, while her debut single, On & On, went gold, in the process crossing over from the R’n’B charts to the pop charts.
At the Jazz Caf in London for her British debut, there is a slightly unreal air of mellow anticipation. The cognoscenti are out in force to pay homage to one of the rare talents to have emerged from the overcrowded world of soul-jazz in the last few years.
The evening is a skilled, quiet celebration of her music, an event of intimacy rather than boisterous adulation. Badu gives a near- flawless rendition of most of the album, performing with ease and grace, interjecting a charm and spontaneity that go beyond the album’s sometimes measured cool. It is an evening to cherish, not least because the next time she is here, she is sure to play a larger venue. For now, though, it is her, a pared-down three-piece band and three backing singers.
“Did you see how that guy was dancing?” she shrieks the next day when we meet in her hotel room. “I was like, wait a minute, I think I chose the wrong person here. It kind of freaked me out.” Was it a ritual humiliation? “Oh no,” she says, “I do something new every show. I made up a song last night. That’s going to be on my second album.” The song in question featured a memorable couplet involving the exchange of “cash” for “ass”.
The prospect of that difficult second album doesn’t faze her. In fact, little does. “It ain’t difficult,” she says, in a slow, sing- song drawl. “I gotta lot o’ mo’. I held back on the first album – heh-heh-heh. You have to try and convince the label that it’s going to sell because they like to win, so I did what was required of me this time, but I got a lot o’ mo’ – a lot of stuff,” she explains, in response to my puzzled look.
Badu, by her own admission, is a dreamy soul. “I’m a typical Piscean dreamer,” she says, big eyes sparkling. “I’m seeing balloons and flowers and birds. I’ve been dressing you up while you been sitting there. I’ve dressed you up as a clown, I dressed you up as a stripper. I write when I’m on stage. I do the music first usually, my songwriting lyrics are inspired by music. I can hear the song in the music. ”
But Baduizm is not aimless dreaming. There is a very un-Piscean hard-edged practicality at work too. “I’m a businesswoman as well, I make my money too, just like everybody else, even though my agenda is a little bit different to others. The music business is inspired by money. Music itself is inspired by inspiration. You just have to have a balance. You have to know how to sell that type of music. I have learnt to market myself without compromising myself, and that’s the whole key. I’m a real person. It’s just about being real, and convincing my label that this is what’s happening.”
D’Angelo is the name most often mentioned by way of comparison. But there is a more striking parallel: Billie Holliday. Badu is untroubled by the comparison. “I think it’s great,” she says. “If I’m doing what she could do then that’s fabulous. If I am making an audience feel the way she did, then that’s great. I invite her energy on to the stage.” Badu is not, it must be said, unconfident of her abilities, exhibiting an assurance that doesn’t always come with instant success. She takes immediate control of the hotel-room interview scenario, instructing me to sit in a chair squashed next to an oversized television cabinet while she busies herself applying makeup to one of her backing singers. Although sometimes enigmatic, verging on elusive in her answers, she is not afraid to ask the direct question.
“How much of a debt is there to Marvin Gaye?” I ask her.”How much of a what?” “How much of a debt?” “How much of a what?” “How much do you owe him?” “I don’t owe him anything. He gave hisself free, just I like I give of myself. Marvin Gaye is one of my favourite singers, but Stevie Wonder is my favourite. I listened to Stevie Wonder in the womb.” Talking about her influences, she pulls me up. “A huge what? Cross-fertilisation? What does that mean? Uh … Oh … Yeah, I just grew up basically listening to Seventies music and hip-hop. In the hip-hop world what we do as a nation is to make music for one another. It’s like a fun competition.”
Prior to the rap there was a long history of performance, starting a school play at the age of seven. Playing a boy. “I was sitting there looking at the boys auditioning, going like, `terrible, not good at all’. I went home and practised it in front of my family and the next day I got up there and I blew the whole class away. I thought: `They can’t keep me off the stage now.”
The way to stay on the stage was music. “I got into it because I didn’t want to work a nine- to-five job. I didn’t want to be punching no clock and trying to be on time. That’s just not my way of life.” When the record deal came last winter, she demonstrated an enviable chutzpah, packing her backpack, waving goodbye to mama, and heading for a week in Jamaica.
She is keen to assert that what you see is what you get. It is the real Erykah Badu on stage, not some music executive’s exotic creation of the month. “Did you enjoy the show?” she asks. “Did you think was this real, or an act?”
“I’ve got something to show you,” she declares, returning with a bundle of objects that had accompanied her on stage the previous night. She takes me through them, item by item: the pendant her uncle made when she was born, the skirt a friend made for her, the ring her father made. They are all genuine articles. It is not even a stage name. “My name was originally spelled E-r-i-c-a but I wanted to change it because we had a big explosion of black power. I didn’t want a slave name. I changed the spelling.” So I have been initiated into the world of Baduizm, a world inhabited by dreamers and businesswomen, relics and myth, music and words. But have I understood its essence? Is there a universal programme I can sign up to?
Erykah gives me a cool look. “Izm is weed in the states. Baduizm is what’s called the Badu high, it’s supposed to get you high. Baduizm is my experience, my thoughts and my feeling, which don’t represent anyone else but me.”