Hip-hop was created out of necessity. We needed to create some digitized things to help us understand what we were feeling.
In the morning, instead of saying to yourself, ‘I got to wake up’ say ‘I get to wake up!’
Hip-Hop is bigger than the government.
We literally just finished making this gown 20 minutes ago. I love it. It’s my favorite color.
I’m only in competition with my last level. It don’t have nothing to do with music or anything. And the last level is hard competition, the last place you were.
I’ll dabble here and there in different forms of the art, but the label has me locked down like a slave so, of course, I’ll be doing albums during this time.
We’re all friends, inside the music and outside the music. I mean, we don’t sound anything alike, we don’t approach our music anything alike, but we come from the same genuine place. We want our music to be real and we don’t want to compromise our art.
I think what makes people think that is because of things people write. It really doesn’t have anything to do with the artist.
I actually started writing it because I was inspired by my own personal growth.
I really enjoy being the child’s ‘welcoming committee’ and to help someone usher his or her spirit into the world in a very peaceful way is very effortless to me.
He definitely does what a partner is supposed to do, that is, evolve you.
What a frequency What a voice. I love Bilal. I couldn’t imagine a music world without his voice.
When I get ready to do an album, that means I have something to say for the sake of words, and I listen back to all of the things I’ve been creating and pull things from out of the air to go with them. It’s almost like I start creating the album before I even think about creating it.
I’m in training to become a midwife. I’m almost there and before I know it I’ll be able to open my own practice, if that’s what I desire.
But now I realize that this record business really needs me. No one else is trying to take a chance or do something different.
When people are going on to the next plateau of whatever this thing is called life, I also want them to breathe easily, even if it’s the last one they take here with us. I guess I’m the welcoming committee and ushering committee.
Whereas I want everything to be peaceful during a birth, I take the total opposite approach when I’m helping someone come to terms with leaving this place – I play Richard Pryor records.
My truth is relevant and my songs are relevant, but I have to recalibrate myself and speed up my vibrations so that I can communicate with the voice of this generation.
All of my children are the same way I am. They’re little artists too, in their own ways.
When you’re performing, you’re creating a moment.
Erykah Badu projects don’t even sound like Erykah Badu projects. I don’t even have one album that sounds like another one of my albums.