New Video: Erykah Badu - Gone Baby, Don't be Long

Erykah Badu - Gone Baby, Don't be Long from beeple on Vimeo.

From the album New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh

Directed by: Flying Lotus
Post-Production: Beeple
Modeling: Beeple + Vince Ream

Is Tyler Perry Possessed by the Word? Thoughts on 'For Colored Girls...'

Tyler Perry's Presence is the Difference Between a Major Blockbuster and a Little Watched Film.

Possessed by the Word?: Tyler Perry does 'For Colored Girls'
by Mark Anthony Neal | TheLoop21.com

There was a collective holding of breath recently, when the trailer for Tyler Perry’s adaptation of Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Was Enuff began to circulate on the internet. I was among those who were pleasantly surprised by the craftsmanship and power of the trailer, replete with a stunning vocal melding of Nina Simone’s classic “Four Women.”

The trailer is in clear contrast to what audiences have come to expect from the Tyler Perry brand. If the trailer is any indication of the quality of the film, than it might seem that our apprehensions about what would happen when Perry got his hands on this signature Black feminist text, might have been for naught. But are we witnessing a growth in Perry’ skill-set or the fact that even a “professional novice” like Perry can’t mess up a text that is so magical?

The original Broadway production of For Colored Girls…, which opened at the Booth Theater in September of 1976, inspired as much controversy as Perry’s adaptation does now. Produced two years before the publication of Michele Wallace’s Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwomen, Shange’s text represented the most explicit expression of Black Feminist discourse to find an audience in mainstream American culture. In the late 1970s—before Alice Walker’s The Color Purple appears—the work of Shange, Wallace and novelist Gayl Jones became easy targets for those who believed that Black feminism undermined Black men, who were already under assault by racism and White supremacy.

In his 1980s essay, famously titled “Aunt Jemima Don’t Like Uncle Ben” Stanley Crouch described Shange’s work as “militant mediocrity and self pity.” However critics like Crouch and others felt about Shange’s work, the power of For Colored Girls… was not lost on anyone, including a ten-year old Joan Morgan who, two decades before the publication of her groundbreaking When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: My Life as a Hip-Hop Feminist, was disappointed in not being able to accompany her mother to a performance of the show during that initial Broadway run. Perhaps Erykah Badu was recalling a similar reaction when she channeled Shange in her music video for “Bag Lady” (2000).

Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21.com

'Work Ain't Honest...':Hip-Hop's Black Collar Economy

Whereas generations of Black Americans literally worked themselves to death, hip-hop adapted to new economic realities and new forms of work.

“Work Ain’t Honest”: Hip-Hop's Black Collar Economy
by Mark Anthony Neal | TheLoop21

On the track “Other Side of the Game” from her debut Baduizm (1997) Erykah Badu offers a bittersweet tale of a woman trying to justify and rationalize her man with the “complex occupation.” Despite a college graduate and a skill set that was, in theory, of value in the mainstream economy, Badu’s song captured the dilemma of a generation of young Blacks who found that the illicit and often illegal underground economy offered better opportunities than a pursuit of a college degree and traditional forms of work. Rap music, particularly in the 1990s, was reflective of these struggles, while Hip-Hop culture more broadly offered some of the most trenchant responses to what was essentially a labor crisis amongst the Post-Soul and Hip-Hop generations.

When the Isley Brothers sang “Work to Do” in 1970, a year after James Brown famously announced “I don’t want nobody to give me nothin’/open up the door I’ll get it myself,” they reflected the sentiments of the Civil Rights Generation. With the doors of higher education and corporate America opening up, the feeling was that if Black America was simply given opportunities—if the so called playing field was leveled—they would be able to make their own way in the world. For many, this was indeed the case; the 1970s and early 1980s witnessed the unprecedented growth of what sociologist Bart Landry called “The New Black Middle Class.”

Many in that “New Black Middle Class” were the children of parents who toiled in blue collar and domestic jobs, in eras when the working class in America could not only be home-owners but also save enough to send their children to college. The blueprint was simple; get your hands dirty in the only jobs that Blacks were allowed to work in the years before the Civil Rights movement and your children would be able to work the kind of White Collar jobs that you weren’t allowed to. Such a strategy worked for some but as the 1980s emerged, a shift occurred in the labor force as the traditional factory jobs and the industrial workforce, gave way to service, finance and information based economies or what was called by many, the Post-industrial era.

This economic shift had a dramatic impact on Black America particularly among the Black working class and an emerging Black underclass who found themselves outside of the traditional workforce, just as they were making inroads into it. Simply put, the traditional Black worker was no longer necessary, translating into chronic unemployment, under-employment and increased involvement in the illegal underground economies. The latter dynamic was tailor-made for the rise of the Prison Industrial Complex, where the incarceration rates of poor and working class blacks swelled over the past 30 years, often for non-violent offenses directly related to dire economic situations.

Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21.com

...Back to the Music

All the attention has been on her video strip act, but the neo-soul diva's latest album has some pretty good tunes.

The Music of Afro-Hippie Erykah Badu

by Abdul Ali

With New Amerykah Part Two: The Return of the Ankh, Erykah Badu has secured her status as the bonafide Afro-Hippie of the neo-soul generation. Five albums into the music game, her work is still fresh, and gives listeners an occasional throwback to jazz artists like Miles Davis (who reinvented himself countless times) and Billie Holiday, who created a signature style.

Return of the Ankh differs in cohesion alone from World War 4, part one of her NewAmerykah trilogy. The melodies complement each other; she creates a thread that ties all the songs together. Ever the consummate artist, Badu shows her versatility as a contemporary artist by mixing styles and aesthetics on this album. She gives a nod to Biggie's Junior Mafia in "Turn Me Away (Get Munny);" she represents her R&B following beautifully in "Umm Hmm;" and she doesn't skimp on her love for hip-hop in her collaboration with Lil Wayne and Bilal on "Jump Up in the Air and Stay There." She pays homage to Billie Holiday in the song "Out My Mind (Just in Time)." She sings: "I'm a recovering, undercover over lover/ recovering from a love I can't get over/ And now my common law lover thinks he wants another."

Of late, it seems Badu has become a victim of her success. In doing something different, she's become self-indulgent. She's stitched a career around a persona that once was shy and is now outsized and rebellious. Recently, we've witnessed less of the colorfully wrapped Erykah and more of a new Badu that's free-loving, who changes wigs with each song, is more costume-conscious, more mutable. It's not that this is a bad thing, as artists should evolve but the thing is--evolutions are slow changes.

In a 2008 New York Times article, Badu rejected the title of queen of neo soul, "I hated that because what if I don't do that anymore? What if I change? Then that puts me in a penitentiary."

What we are seeing is less evolution than a revolving door: rapid changes in style and temperament that, in the minds of many, are affecting the work. The recent video snafu is a good example of how Badu's political rhetoric is half-baked, disjointed, not clearly communicating her artistic vision. There's even a naïveté on Badu's part that's shocking: It appears she believes that by merely saying her work is radical, that makes it so. As if her fans won't ask her to prove it.

Read the Full Essay @ The Root

The Assassination of Erykah Badu

It's not just a video. It's art.

The Assassination of Erykah Badu
by Rebecca Walker

The frenzy over the latest Erykah Badu video, "Window Seat," has been fascinating to watch--a cultural phenom in itself. Folks in the blogosphere have been grasping for answers, for the magic decoder to come down from on high. What on earth is Erykah trying to say? Is it a publicity stunt? Is being shot on the grassy knoll another portrait of a tragic artist? Has the black, female president of the United States of Amerykah just been assassinated? Or, if she staged the "shoot" herself, is it a suicide?

I had some of the same questions, but was more struck by the prevailing need to pin down an ultimate truth, or at least a definitive opinion. It made me think about great artists--not de facto including Erykah in this category--and how they often have their own, sometimes incomprehensible, language. Davinci's Mona Lisa is still indecipherable, for example, and if it were not, its power would be lost. Modern art itself would be dead, or at least returned to its vainglorious Medici roots.

Because doesn't art too easily understood cease to be art? It becomes a simple product for easy consumption, and robs the viewer of the right to their own experience, all the while upholding values possibly not even in their own best interest. In that other world--the world, perhaps, of entertainment--each painting, video, and piece of music, is a piece of propaganda for those who control its production; an opportunist vehicle to affirm someone else's way of looking at the world.

Like Roy DeCarava and Charlie Mingus, Eva Hesse and Ana Mendieta, Erykah Badu, aka @fatbellybella, strikes me as someone who lives in a sealed world of her own linguistic creation. She absorbs the bits that speak to her and runs it through the sieve of her own sensibility--an extremely specific (and ultimately proprietary) way of seeing. As Erykah's tattoo acknowledges, her alchemical interface with the world is ever changing, but her commitment to her inner truth, accessibility be damned, is where her process of transforming the ordinary into the transcendent begins.

Read the Full Essay @ The Root

Erykah Badu @ The International House of Blues Foundation

Erykah Badu Rocks the SchoolHouse
At IHOBF’s Blues SchoolHouse Program

Grammy Award winner Erykah Badu rocked the SchoolHouse when she surprised students attending the International House of Blues Foundation® (IHOBF) Blues SchoolHouse Program in Dallas on Wednesday, May 13, 2009. The program traces the evolution of the blues from its roots in African culture through its emergence and evolution as a unique American musical form. Badu was featured as an example of the influence of blues on contemporary music. “The influence of blues is in my cells. It’s a big part of who I am,” said Badu. “I am the blues.”

Badu and her non-profit, Beautiful Love Incorporated Non-Profit Development arranged for fifth graders from St. Philips School to take part in the musical journey. Students from Prestonwood Elementary and Holy Trinity Catholic Schools also participated in the program.. Badu, who was a schoolteacher before she launched her music career, jumped at the opportunity to participate in IHOBF’s Blues SchoolHouse Program. “Blues music tells the story of important events in our history,” said Badu. “It is important for young people to understand the origin of the music that is such a big part of their everyday lives. If they don’t know and understand their heritage, they’ll lose it.“

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About Erykah Badu: Best known for her eccentric style and cerebral music, is an award winning American soul singer and songwriter, whose sound -- a concoction of soul, hip-hop and jazz -- cannot be contained to a single genre. The Texas native, who prides herself on being a “mother first”, is a touring artist, teacher, community activist, holistic healer, vegan, recycler, and conscious spirit. Committed to children, Badu gives back to her hometown through Beautiful Love Incorporated Non-Profit Development (B.L.I.N.D.), a charity organization she created to provide community-based programs for inner-city youth.

About the IHOBF: International House of Blues Foundation® (IHOBF) is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization dedicated to bringing the arts to schools and communities through programs that promote cultural understanding and encourage creative expression. IHOBF programs teach about aspects of American culture and history through the arts, highlight African American cultural contributions and support youth participation in the arts. IHOBF conducts programming in twelve locations nationwide and is supported by House of Blues, House of Blues Foundation Room members, Live Nation and other public and private donors. For more information, visit www.ihobf.org .