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This post is dedicated to a DailyCrack Favorite so we will be highlighting 10 of our favorite songs of hers (besides new amerykah part 2 tracks)….. What better way to spend the day. Press play they are all there.
Didn’t Cha Know
The making of this song, in Erykah’s words
I went to Detroit to work with this cat that I heard a few tracks from that drove me crazy. Common took me over there, we went down to the basement, Common left and Dilla and I sat and talked. He had records wall-to-wall like it was a public library and he goes, “OK, I want you to look for a record.” I’m leaking through these organized, tightly packed crates, and I just pulled out one record and the artist was Tarika Blue. I liked that name. I put on the first track [“Dreamflower”] and I fell in love with the song and I kept playing it over and over again and I said, “I want this.” He showed me how to loop a small part of the bassline, he was very generous in teaching you and letting you be hands on. Then I left the room and when I came back he had looped some drums to a small sample of the song and I started to write to it. I came up with the Ooooh, heeeey melody. I wrote for a few days and then the song came to be. My songs sound different from everyone else’s Dilla songs. The sound is a little bit more bass heavy and the frequencies are definitely different than most of the songs he does, because it’s his world. But when he allowed me to come into his world, it became another kind of world. I think he allowed everybody that kind of space and that kind of freedom because he was so super creative that he would go onto something else while we learned the first part.
Other Side of the Game
Classic track from Baduizm, with the great video featuring Andre 3000. This video introduced a lot of us to Erykah Badu when she first came with her soulful jazzy sound that changed the landscape of popular r&b at the time. There was nothing neo about this it was just straight up soul that fits along with any record from yesterday.
That Hump
This song is very emotional; you gotta be dead to not connect with her on this. The vocals just grab you. Espcially the part…
ooh, I’m living check to check/I’m just trying to pay my rent and I can feel it/coming down around me and these children/a boy, a little girl and
she so pretty/oooh feel me/we just need a little house hope it comes with a spouses,this building, building ooo/my brother’s sleeping on my floor
a bitch could use a little more
It’s been a long time since I’ve heard anyone cry out like that on a track. That’s what I’ve been talking about in the past when I say that a lot of music and vocalists are lifeless and without emotion. Don’t correct there voices with autotune, just let them sing.
I can’t wrap this up though without referencing the flip to Switch’s classic song “there’ll never be.” It comes out of nowhere, yet fits properly.
A.D. 2000
This song is beautiful the strumming of the guitar, the light drum, the moog, and of course Erykah’s singing. This info about the song comes from the Rolling Stone review.
But Erykah wouldn’t be Erykah without some obfuscation: There’s very little hint that “A.D. 2000” is a song about Amadou Diallo, the West African man shot at forty-one times and killed by New York City police officers in February 1999. On the track, she grabs an acoustic guitar and takes on the voice of the slain immigrant, imagining him in heaven defiantly saying, “No, you won’t be namin’ no buildings after me.”
Orange Moon
We had to follow A.D. 2000 up with Orange Moon, they fit together so perfectly. Can you believe that the original album sequencing for Mama’s Gun was going to put Penitentiary Philosophy in between. Saying that I hope you all understand how important sequencing is to an album. We’re a little old school here so that album experience will never die for us.
I Want You
This was the one song that made it onto everyone’s list. “I Want You” was the standout track from Worldwide Underground. This song comes in like you’re heart beating over and over as your physical being is completely falling for a person. I use this word a lot, but screw it, it’s purely classic material. Then the end when it just goes into a crazy synthed out mess… gotta love it
Danger
Imagine being told a story too in the form of a hot beat, some gunfire, and flushing the ye-yong. This track is one that definitely requires some appreciation when you hear the struggles of the brotha who had a “complex occupation”. It’s like you can feel her pain in describing what led up to the erroneous events of having to have the trunk locked, and having a glock on cock. Life is a danger zone, and everything gets fucked up when you gotta flush the ye-yong. OH NO!
Master Teacher
i wrote this about 2 years ago when the album first came out in reference to this song. “to me being a nigga instead of a master teacher is being a person who is lost, who just talks, who does not attempt to make anything happen, who is just there. a master teacher is when you get to that point in life where you step up and you take control of your life and work your ass off to make something happen that will make an impact.”
Stay woke
Honey
The first time I ran into this track I was shocked because it was a hidden track. I didn’t pay much attention to it, but the beat of it kept me listening. She goes on to describe her admiration that she has for the young gentleman, and basically telling him to make the next move. “Tell me slim what you gonna do, when you know I’m in love with you…” It’s about time for him to step up to the plate, but even with the unsureness of his emotion, she continues to let him know that her life is incomplete without this honey in her life. “I’m love with a bumblebee”. I think the best part is when she asks “Can I stick your pinky finger in my tea, cause you’re so sweet to me… oww”. Erykah got mad game in this song, and I will never look at honey the same.
Back in the Day (BC)
The first time I really indulged in this song was in the summer of 2006. It was the summer I would never remember and be referred to probably in 20 years as “back in the day”. It’s about a time when things were easy, things were free, where there was nothing else to think about except letting the dog go out and bark. This hit home to be as I would sit, with the windows rolled up, and literally thinking about nothing except for the “puff.” Her song would come on, and I would laugh in a dazed high and say “how ironic, we’re doing that now”. Every time this song comes on, I’m taken back to that day in the park (on the street, in a room, in a meadow, etc…) and would just smile as the sounds of this song would let me know everything is O. K.
