I probably would've done this earlier, but I did a Complex list of the best Erykah Badu songs a few years ago that scratched that itch for a while, but now I feel like doing a proper playlist.

Erykah Badu deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. My Life
2. Rim Shot (Intro)
3. Master Teacher
4. Woo
5. Sometimes
6. Agitation
7. Green Eyes
8. Hello featuring Andre 3000
9. Me
10. In Love With You featuring Stephen Marley
11. 20 Feet Tall
12. Telephone
13. Searching (live)
14. 4 Leaf Clover
15. I Want You

Tracks 2, 5 and 14 from Baduizm (1997)
Track 13 from Live (1997)
Tracks 1, 7 and 10 from Mama's Gun (2000)
Tracks 4 and 15 from Worldwide Underground (2003)
Tracks 3, 9 and 12 from New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) (2008)
Tracks 6 and 11 from New Amerykah Part Two (Return Of The Ankh) (2010)
Track 8 from But You Caint Use My Phone (2015)

In a couple weeks we'll be 10 years out from Erykah Badu's last proper album, Return Of The Ankh. I know a lot of people thought the mixtape that appeared a few years later, But You Caint Use My Phone, was as good as an album, but I found the whole thing mostly disappointing and forgettable -- I definitely wanted to include the great Andre 3000 collaboration, but all the covers and guest verses by a Drake soundalike that Erykah wanted people to think maybe actually was Drake, it was weird.

But even before this long break between releases, Badu tended to take her time between records -- not quite as much as D'Angelo or Maxwell, but it definitely feels like the artists who came up in that mid-'90s neo-soul wave share an indifference to the hurried pace of major label release schedules that I respect. Generally speaking, those folks are worth waiting for (incidentally, I teleprompted the Urban One Honors broadcast a few months ago -- Badu was supposed to present an award, but kept us waiting so long that we had to scramble to give her lines to someone else and adjust the script, but I couldn't even be mad, it's Erykah Badu).

Badu's early success has kind of overshadowed the rest of her career commercially -- Baduizm is by far her biggest seller, and the live album released the same year isn't far behind. But while I'm kind of annoyed by people with big debut albums having a live album really earlier in their career before they've amassed a catalog -- I'd love to hear another Badu live album now -- 1997's Live holds up pretty well. It featured the debut of the classic "Tyrone" as well as a nice selection of covers to distinguish it from simply being a live version of Baduizm, including a rending of "Searching" by Roy Ayers, years before Badu started working with Ayers himself on Mama's Gun.

I think there's a case to be made for any of Badu's albums being your favorite, I certainly respect Mama's Gun being the answer for a lot of people, but for me 4th World War is just a classic, still one of the best albums of the 2010s. And of course "Master Teacher" now has the strange legacy of giving the world the phrase "stay woke" and kicking off the last decade's slide into 'woke' being the new thing people say instead of "politically correct" to belittle ideas about justice and equality. The song is still good, though. I would've liked to fit more than 15 songs into my 80-minute cap, but I didn't feel like I could lose either of the 10-minute epics "Green Eyes" and "I Want You," or the 7-minute Dilla tribute "Telephone," she just does well with long songs. The 93-second "Agitation" is one of my favorites too, though.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 18, 2020 at 8:22 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.