60 Songs That Explain the '90s - “Tyrone - Live”—Erykah Badu

Episode Date: January 4, 2023

Rob explores his love for live albums while looking back at Erykah Badu’s “Tyrone.” Along the way he explains why the live version of the song is the clearly superior recording. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Clover Hope Producer: Justin Sayles Associate Producer: Jonathan Kermah Additional Productional Support: Abou Kamara Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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You can listen to This Blue Up on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Like hundreds of early 90s teenagers in the greater Cleveland area, I will forever associate these five pristine ascending synthesizer notes with Ron Harper's basketball camp. Those are the first three notes. Cool in the gang. This is a song called Summer Madness by Preternaturally Funky and Eternally Wedding approved New Jersey hitmakers. Cool in the gang. That's cool with the K ampersand, the gang. from their 1974 album, Light of Worlds. Presumably well-adjusted men on several message boards I stumbled across, speculate that these pristine ascending notes are issuing from an ARP synthesizer, the ARP-2,600.

I believe one of them humongous analog synths with all the cords plugged into it, all willy-nilly, like picture an old-timey telephone switchboard that the operator uses when you got to call the cops after the mob mows down your husband with a bunch of Tommy guns. It looks like you could accidentally fire a nuclear missile at Guam if you pulled out the wrong cord on the ARP 2,600. So be careful. That's ARP, A-R-P, famous purveyor of analog since Big Whop in the 70s, the 70s, the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar of 70 synthesizers. As for the note in question, we got an F-sharp ascending an octave at a time, of course. we're in the key of either F sharp major or C minor.

I stumbled across two presumably well-adjusted men, presumably men, but come on, duking it out politely in a YouTube comment section as to the key of this song. Pretty cordial conversation as that sort of thing goes. You want the other two notes? Sure you do. Here's the third note again and then the last two notes. Those are the last three notes.

Amazing, jaw-dropping, blissful, transcendent, Positizer notes. Absolutely perfect. No notes on these notes. These five notes, it sounds like God turning up the volume on a sunset. Ron Harper, NBA star Ron Harper, drafted by the Cleveland Cavaliers in 1986, shooting guard, tenacious, charismatic, runner-up for rookie the year in 87 behind Chuck Person of the Indiana Pacers. Ron Harper, great player, decent goatee, bright future. And indeed Ron led the Cavs to multiple NBA championships throughout the late 80s and early 90s of my overactive imagination. Meanwhile, IRL, the Cavs got their asses kicked by Michael Jordan and the Bulls a bunch of times.

I believe Ron Harper was on the floor for the shot in 1989, Jordan over Craig Elo, very famous game winning and playoff series ending shot. It sucked major ass. I'm super pissed that you're making me talk about. the shot. Ron Harper was cool as hell, though. His 1989 hoops card, I was into basketball cards for like 20 minutes there in the late 80s, early 90s, but hoops cards were briefly tremendously important to me. Ron's 1989 hoops card. He's driving for a dunk probably. He's hanging in mid-air. Craig Elo and Bill Cartwright of the Bulls are looking on with some measure of reverence. Ron looks

serene and indomitable. My favorite player. Also, L. Ron Harper is my my best ever fantasy basketball team name. I'm very proud of that one. At the time he was every Cavs fan's favorite player. Then we traded him to the Los Angeles Clippers for a guy named Danny Ferry, a highly touted young prospect from fucking Italy. Yikes. There were other guys in the trade, but who cares?

Danny Ferry's 1990 hoops card, somewhat ominously, he's in street clothes. He's just sitting there in a mint green side. sweater with his hands up in a sort of shrug emoji posture like someone had just asked him, are you even any good at basketball? And Danny's going, and he wasn't. Wow, he sucked. He was a scrub, dude. This one's for Danny. Oh, he stunk so bad. Meanwhile, tragically, when Ron Harper drove out of town after getting traded, the instant he crossed the Ohio border on the drive out to LA. His car was hit by a giant flaming meteor and he was killed instantly.

A very sad day for the NBA. I'm joking. He survived the meteor strike, but of course never played basketball again. I'm still joking. After a few years with the Clippers, Ron Harper went on to win five championships. Three with the Bulls, two with the Shaq and Kobe Lakers. It's possible I'm still mad about this. But nonetheless, I am grateful to Ron Harper

for giving us all the gift of Ron Harper's basketball camp. One week a year, every summer, while he still played for the calves, hundreds of greater Cleveland area teenagers, crammed into a sweaty gym somewhere, doing layups, scrimmaging, hustling, boxing out, perhaps. Not me. I didn't care for boxing out. Too many sweaty, flailing limbs. And then you'd wait in a long line for Ron Harper to sign your T-shirt. I believe Ron Harper's basketball camp is where I learned the beef method of shooting free throws. Because beef is a helpful pneumotic device, beef stands for bend, elbow, elongate, forearm.

I don't remember what beef stands for, man. I just wanted Ron Harper's autograph. And then we'd all burst out of the gym, triumphant, blinking and sneezing in the late afternoon, Midwestern summer sunlight. And one year the gym was coincidentally right across the street from my grandma's house. So after an exhausting day of not boxing out, I'd go back to grandma's and flap on her couch and chug red Gatorade and flip on MTV and spend some quality time with five amazing jaw-dropping, blissful, transcendent ARP-2600 synthesizer notes. They're still stupendous. This is the Fresh Prince's new definition of summer madness. This is a song called Summer Time.

By the preternaturally cuddly and occasionally misunderstood by parents West Philly rap duo DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. From their 1991 album Home Bass, a record I did not own, and yet I loved summertime very much and very much new every word by heart. Homebase is also the Fresh Prince record with. you saw my blinker bitch on it. Let's stick with summertime. Shall we? I knew every word. The temperature is about 88.

She turned around to see what you beeping at, etc. I might as well let the fresh prints take it from here. Wow, an immaculate cool in the first person you kiss. And as I think back makes me wonder how the smell from a grill can spark up nostalgia. Wow, an immaculate cool in the gang sample on summertime. Yeah, five pristine ascending synthesizer notes that unfortunately do not represent the steady improvement of my basketball skills after a week at Ron Harper's basketball camp. An ARP-2600 line that echoed the progression of my teenage basketball ability would go like,

and then I quit basketball and subscribed to Rolling Stone. I was not destined for greatness, or at least not destined for greatness at the moment. scale of Ron Harper or the Fresh Prince, otherwise known as our dear friend Will Smith, soon to be a chart-topping solo pop star, a world historical blockbuster actor, an Oscar winner, and a guy currently banned from attending the Oscars. Let's just say that 1991 was a simpler time for many of us. All the kids playing out fun little boys messing around with the girls playing double Dutch. While the DJs spinning a tune as the old folks dance at your family reunion.

I regret to inform you that when summer rolls around again, the old folks, the family reunion will be dancing to summertime by DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. The old folks are us now. Tough break for us. But even in 1991, as a hustling averse 13-year-old, this song was one of those instant nostalgia deals for me, right? Quite a literal situation. It's summertime. And I'm sitting there on my grandma's couch spilling red gatorade on my signed Ron Harper's back. basketball camp t-shirt, and I'm watching the nostalgia tinged video for a song about nostalgia called summertime, and I'm thinking, I bet I'm going to remember this, and I do. Though I was also thinking, I bet I'll remember the beef method for shooting free throws, and I don't. But I still think of Ron Harper fondly, and I think of the Fresh Prince's delivery of the line, two miles an hour so everybody sees you fondly. and I think of those five transcendent ARP-2600 synthesizer notes most fondly of all. They are my all-time favorite ARP-2600 synthesizer notes.

So imagine my delight when I heard them again recently as accompaniment to one of my all-time favorite singers. This is Erica Badoo from her magnificent 1997 debut album Badoism. This is the flipped it mix of a song called Certainly. Fantastic first line to the song, Certainly. I think you'll agree. I need to tell you immediately that I've been to hundreds of concerts in my life, though I've been to like three concerts in the past three years. I'm basically retired in that sense, as you'd expect from one of the old folks at the family reunion.

And I've seen Erica Badu live a half dozen times. or so, and I have spent more time waiting for Erica Badu to take the stage than any other musician in history, with the sole exception of Lauren Hill. I've spent more time. I have devoted more hours of my life to waiting for Lauren Hill. Lauren Hill, as a live performer, is later than Erica Badu. But that's it. Erica Badu is later than anybody else. processes time differently. I'm not proud of this, but apparently I complained on Twitter about how long it was taking Erica Badu to take the stage in two separate incidents in the year 2010 alone, two shows like six months apart, and both times, every time, all that waiting was worth it.

Do you know the rapper Spank Rock, kind of a big whoop circuit 2010? I once watched Spank Rock open for Erica Badu and get booed off stage for doing a song with the line, shake it till my dick turns racist. That song might have been Spank Rock's big song, actually. Let's not find out if that's true. But so Spank Rock wrapped that line and then Erica Badu's fans booed his ass off stage. I don't think I'd ever seen anybody booed off stage before, and I haven't seen that since. And honestly, I'm grateful to Spank Rock for giving me that experience once. And then we stood there for like two hours waiting for Erica Badu to finally take the stage. It would appear that I spent part of those two hours angrily tweeting.

And it was worth it. This song is called On and On, the big single off Badawism and still one of Erica's biggest songs overall. It's her most streamed song on Spotify, etc. Most intellects do not believe in God, but they fear us just the same. That's a rad line for a hit song. It's a lovely song. On and on, the bass, the drums, the voice. These are just a few individual elements to this song.

Phenomenal song, really. I propose to you, however, that it is not quite Erika Badu's best song. Or at least it's not the song that makes the strongest argument for why I have devoted like 12 hours of my life exclusively to waiting for Erika Badu to finally come on stage. stage and sing it.

My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 83rd episode of 60 songs that explained the 90s, and today we are discussing Tyrone by Erica Badu from her album Live, also released in 1997. The live version of Tyrone is vastly superior to the recorded version of Tyrone. Just FYI. I'm not quite ready to declare that Erica Badu's live is the best live album of the 1990s, but I'm coaching myself up to saying that. I can talk myself into this,

and I can talk you into this as well. Come on, dude. Listen to the way she enunciates the words, Help you get your shit. Tell him, come on, help you get your shit. Unbelievable backing vocals on this song. Also, Come on, come on, come on.

We got Joyce M. Strong, Karen Bernard, and in Dombie on backing vocals. Unbelievable. Let me tell you the precise moment when I became a live album person. Live album people are not born that way. We are converted. We are radicalized. We are baptized. We are saved by one moment on one live album, listening at one very specific moment in time.

The artist, the album, the personal moments different for all of us. So, spring 2003, I move from, Columbus, Ohio to Oakland, California, my own little Ron Harper arc, a substantial physical move prompted by the remarkably lateral professional move from arts editor of one all weekly to music editor of another all weekly. Questionable, so I drive my car, my trusty silver Mitsubishi Galant, some 2,600 miles from Ohio to Oakland, California, and my dad goes with me. Just my dad and I, bonding on I-80 West for like 36 hours, chatting it up, needing Wendy's or whatever, and taking turns at the wheel.

So it's the dead of night, pitch black. I'm driving. My dad, I think, is getting some sleep. And there's a violent thunderstorm on the outskirts of North Platte, Nebraska. We got raging winds blowing my trusty silver Mitsubishi Galanto over the highway. We got a torrential downpour battering the windshield. We got crap visibility. All we really got are these spectral and gargantuan flashes of lightning in the distance,

illuminating the picturesque metropolitan skyline of North Platte, Nebraska. And I tighten my jaw and tighten my grip at 10 and 2 on the steering wheel. And I got my CD player and I pop in at San Quentin by Johnny Cash. So what do you want to hear? All right. Forgive me. this is not exactly the most obscure live album in existence. I am aware of that from 1969,

Johnny Cash at San Quentin, as in the prison, right? We are not exactly crate digging here, but for me personally in this moment, North Platte, Nebraska, dad, big road trip, big geographical move,

lateral career move, cinematic thunderstorm. We are driving to California. We are literally driving toward San Quentin, State Prison. In this moment, I got caught up in the pageantry of Johnny Cash at San Quinn. I get all hyperbolic. I get enraptured by the boisterous and menacing unruliness of the crowd. I then transfer that boisterous menacing unrueliness to the guitar riff to I walk the line. And then boom, another thunder clap, another burst of lightning. A quick flash at Dad

sleeping next to me and North Platte looming in the distance. It was a cool moment. All right, but here now, for whatever reason, is the precise moment when I personally became a live album person. What's that? Hey, what are you guys drinking in those tall purple glasses? What is that rock? Tea? The jovial contempt with which Johnny Cash says the word tea. Right before you launch.

launches into Darling Companion on the At San Quentin record. That's when I became a live album person. Just an entire immersive universe, a full-blown cult of personality, an almost too vivid sense of place, given that the place in question is literally a prison, conveyed. By the way, Johnny Cash goes, T, another thunder clap in the distance, and I can clearly picture the light glinting off those tall purple glasses, and I can practically taste whatever rotgut the residents of San Quentin are drinking out of those glasses. Tea, I loved it. I still love it. I am a live

album person now. I start listening to other live albums. I have apparently very little imagination, so next I listen to Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison. The residents of Folsom

prison seem to enjoy that particular line quite a bit. Do they not? I also love the way they break Johnny's concentration for a split second when he does the ordinarily quite grim acoustic ballad, long black veil. I'd been in the

arms of my best friend's wife. Did I hear somebody applaud? That's pretty funny, right? Sure, at Folsom Prison from 68, pretty good album, in my opinion. Ah, come on, Rob, still too obvious. Expand your horizons. Expand your horizons slightly.

Does anybody else have a prison album? All right, fine. B.B. King, live in Cook County Jail from 1971. You know the key to a truly great live album? Track one should consist of the crowd booing the sheriff. our own beloved sheriff woods great live album live in cook county jail whole thing's amazing

BB King does a song called worry worry worry that's essentially a 10 minute TED talk on male-female relations but yeah the best part of this record is within the first minute when the crowd booze the sheriff let's keep it moving you do listen to live albums for the crowds right the collective euphoria but also the individual yelps and screams

and whatnot. James Brown Live at the Apollo, right? From 1962. The song Lost Someone is also essentially a 10-minute TED talk on male-female relations, but this lady is probably my all-time favorite individual live album audience member.

In fact, I like to imagine that the screaming James Brown lady is also in the crowd for the recording, of Aretha Franklin's live at the Fillmore West from 1972. Dr. Feelgood is only seven minutes long, and I'm tired of the TED Talk joke, but this song kicks ass and the sound of everybody in the Fillmore West, losing their minds at how much ass this song kicks also kicks ass.

Let's keep it moving. Early 70s, you also got Donnie Hathaway live and Bill Withers live at Carnegie Hall. Mid-70s, you got Frampton Comes Alive. Late 70s, you got cheap trick at BudaCon. Early 80s, you got motorheads, no sleep till Hammersmith. Mid-80s, you got talking heads, stop making sense. And Sam Cook live at the Harlem Square Club from back in the 60s, and a shitload of Bruce Springsteen that takes the rest of the 80s to get through.

And in the early 90s, you got the Beastie Boys sampling Cheap Trick at BudaCon. I always really like that. What are the truly great 90s live albums? actually. It's not like there are zero necessarily. Neil Young's weld, that's pretty good. Fleetwood Max the Dance has that version of Silver Spring where Stevie Nix tries to kill Lindsay Buckingham just by singing at him. That's dope. People really dig the Boogie Down Productions Live album from 1991, right, called Live Hardcore Worldwide. I really like the part where the boisterous crowd responds to a freestyling K.R. R.S.1, making fun of the way other rappers write their songs.

Live hip-hop albums are great if you enjoy boisterous crowd responses to savage burns. Like, oh, but live album-wise, the 90s are dominated by MTV Unplugged albums, right? Which are fantastic. And in a few cases, historical, though the crowd interplay by necessity is quieter and subtler, and powered by an awkward sort of hushed veneration. Like the crowd for Eric Clapton unplug getting all microboisterous when they realize he's doing Layla. Nervous laughter is also an underrated element of the archetypal MTV Unplugged

experience. Immediately you think of Nirvana unplugged, right? Sure, you think of Kirk Cobain. What we remember now anyway as his de facto farewell concert eliciting nervous laughter by cracking the very, very, very, very occasion. joke. What are they tuning to harp? Curtis smoking on stage when he says that while they're setting up the meat puppets. I never knew that. He'd just finish singing something in the way, which is not the Nirvana song you'd imagine would lead

to jokes. Nirvana unplugged is way too much to deal with emotionally at this point. I have to say, it is unbearably dense with meaning. I need something lighter. I need these spiritual daughters of the lady yelling at James Brown in 1962, showing up to yell at Maxwell during the Maxwell unplugged record in 1997. Yeah, that's what he said. Maxwell is a rad soul singer from Brooklyn. He's amorous in a remarkably cerebral sort of way, with the additional compelling wrinkle that. that the more chaste his lyrics get, the pornier the vibe gets. That's the line that gets everybody hootin and hollering during the song called The Lady Sweet,

a wholesome but also somehow X-rated marriage proposal. Maxwell Unplugged also includes his cover of This Woman's Work by Kate Bush, which makes me cry every time I hear it, and that too is unbearably dense with meaning and too much for me to deal with right now. And also, incredibly, he covers closer by nine-inch nails. Maxwell changed the lyrics to closer. Basically, he took out the word fuck and made the whole song even filthier. Remarkable.

I don't know how he does that. Maxwell is also in this moment one of the biggest young stars in the thirsty and nebulous and somewhat controversial neo-soul movement. Hot genre alert, Neo-Soul. Born in the mid-9-9. or at least named in the mid-90s. It gets nebulous. Neo-Soul features young soul and R&B singers who are a little jazier, a little more profound and sophisticated and ethereal, and hopefully a great deal more evocative of the big shots from the 60s and 70s, your Marvin Gaze, your Stevie Wonders,

your Arethas, et cetera. That's the idea. Anyway, Thirsty is a rude way for me to put it, but there's an immediate aspirational quality to this term. Neo-Soul is, though, one of the better-regarded modern instances of the prefix Neo entering the sociocultural sphere, Neo-blank things are generally bad. Please do not make me list examples of bad neobank phenomena. Just please trust me on this. But still, you're right to be skeptical. Any new musical genre name is a little corny, right?

Neo-Soul is a better name than Trip Hop or Electronica or Neo-Swing. That's one of the bad Nios. But really the reason to be skeptical is that obviously it's called Neo-Soul as a way to imply that regular soul music here in the mid-90s is bad now, or at least corrupted. Corrupted in part theoretically by rap music. Early in mid-90s, soul and R&B singers just want to be rappers now. They want the swagger that rappers have. And forget evoking or reaching the level of all the 60s and 70s big shots. They just want to sample all those greats the way rappers do.

So here's a thought experiment. Picture the Roots, the Great Philly rap group, The Roots, who are just getting started in the early 90s, Questlove, Black Thought, etc. They're all crammed into a tiny van. There's a clown car aspect to the Roots touring situation here in the band's infancy. And this comes on the radio.

Here is Questlove, Roots drummer, DJ, record collector, Polymath, Oscar-winning film-making. not currently banned from attending the Oscars in his autobiography in his first book from 2013 called Mo Meta Blues, The World According to Questlove. Quote, The day that Mary J. Blige's My Life came out in 1994, we all just sat in the van scratching our heads. We had never heard anyone sing over samples before, and here she was, with Roy Ayers' Everybody Loves the Sunshine under her, making up a new vocal, new lyrics.

We were so caught between rejecting it as untenable and accepting it as the vanguard. End quote. My life is way closer to being the vanguard, but I think I get why they all got freaked out. Listen, I love this song. This is a pro-Marie J. Blige shop. I think we've established that. But what does it mean that My Life, one of the best soul songs of the the 90s is very explicitly built on the foundation of one of the best soul songs of the 70s.

Everybody loves the sunshine is from 1976. It's at the summertime of 1976. If you're the roots, if you're Questlove, it means that beyond Mary J. Blyde's herself, this whole genre is in trouble. In his book, he goes on. He writes, like any new development, there was lag time. It took a year for us to digest it and accept that R&B singers were trying to be hip-hop artists. There was nowhere left for them to go. I hated what contemporary R&B had become. It was trite. It was soulless.

It had no authentic passion. It was doing very little for me. And then I heard DeAngelo, and my head was turned. DeAngelo is from Richmond, Virginia. he was born in 1974. He was two years old when everybody loves the sunshine came out, and he was 21 years old when his debut album, Brown Sugar, came out in 1995.

Questlove was into it. Quote, it changed my life. Here was a singer who connected as deeply with me as the best hip-hop. It was that first album, of course, but it was more than that. It was what I heard behind the album, the sensibility that powered the songs, the ability to locate the heart of the best soul music.

It was out of step with the times, but in a way that made it seem like he was stepping into uncharted territory. End quote. Speaking of locating the heart of the best soul music, my personal favorite song on Brown Sugar is DeAngelo's cover of Smokey Robinson's Cruzen, aka the summertime of 1979. Great album, Brown Sugar. It is steeped in the 70s, but spiritually,

feels like the 90s. It is conversant with hip-hop, but does not spiritually submit to hip-hop. Delicate balance. DeAngelo figured it out early. Mary J. Blige figured it out early, but it's a tough balance for other new R&B singers to strike. Questlove's going to work on the next DeAngelo record, which is called Voodoo and comes out in January of 2000, and that's a whole thing. But here in 95, DeAngelo is a new artist with an old soul, and he's got a manager named Caduce. Madar Massenberg, who's naturally thinking about promotion, about marketing schemes. And so Kedar decides to promote his new artist by making DeAngelo the face of a whole new genre, Neo-Soul. These facts are not in dispute. Kedar owns the trademark.

Neo-Soul genre creator is the first line of Kedar's Instagram bio. Sure, if it's 1995 and you're trying to build a whole new genre of music around one person, DeAngelo's an excellent choice. The filthier his lyrics get, the smoothery sounds. I don't know how he does that. My favorite YouTube comment for the song, Shit Damn Motherfucker is Never heard anybody cuss so smooth.

Song gives me chills. All right, fine, let's call this Neo Soul. Who else should we call Neosol? The first Maxwell record called Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite comes out in 1996, and he's not so much into cussing. but I bet he'd sound pretty fucking smooth if he did. This is my favorite song on Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite,

and I'm always slightly embarrassed to inform you that it is called Till the Cops Come Knocking. Never heard anyone not cuss so smooth. Both these records, the debut albums from both DeAngelo and Maxwell, it's not that they don't have great melodies or hooks or whole pop songs, But I do think that primarily they're both triumphant creators of atmosphere, of mood, of vibe, whatever the word vibe means to you. Not background music in the sense that it's extraneous or ignorable, but there's an immersive quality. A hole so overwhelming that you forget all the individual parts.

You also forget how to add all the parts together to confirm that the hole is greater than the sum of its parts. This is music that still sounds fantastic when it's faintly audible over the roar of a bathtub faucet, whether you're making a baby in that bathtub or it's two years later and now you are giving the baby you made a bath in the bathtub. It's great music for zoning out, whether that's an amorous activity for you or not amorous in the slightest. Is that emphasis on languorous atmosphere over immediate pop hooks, the Neo part of Neo Soul? How are we all feeling about the term Neo Soul so far? Not everyone's crazy about it. There's a Billboard magazine article from 2002 where Neosol is very much still happening,

and Kedar Massenberg is still bragging about inventing it. But Raphael Sadiq, singer, songwriter and producer, Oakland R&B great, founding member of the killer R&B group Tony, Tony, Tony, Raphael Sadiq's not into NeoSole. He says, quote, Neo Soul is disrespectful for me because you're calling something new soul. When did it stop? It never stopped.

I understand it for marketing reasons. I get that. But people who really love music can't respect that because it's not new soul. You either have soul or you don't. End quote. Fair enough. Next time a hot new genre comes around, think about the larger genre it's nestled into,

soul in this case, obviously, or rock or rap or whatever. And then think about what music the hot new genre is deliberately trying to exclude. And then think about why. So yeah, let's quickly dispense with the notion that soul music was dead in the early 90s to the point where DeAngelo's manager had to reinvent it. Let's play some tunes. Let's play some Tony, Tony, Tony. Their third album from 1993 is called Sons of Soul.

This song is a nine-minute TED talk about how today is your anniversary. called anniversary. If someone plays this song for you on your anniversary and you don't immediately know the answer to the question, do you know what today is? You're in a lot of trouble. 1993 also brings us plantation lullabies, the debut album from Michelle and Dejiochello,

born in Germany, raised in Washington, D.C., rad singer and songwriter and bass player. Compared to a lot of pop music in 93, she's a little jazier, a little more profound, and sophisticated and ethereal. Sound familiar? Michelle sounded both familiar and delightfully unfamiliar. If you caught her on MTV,

bragging about stealing your boyfriend. That song's called If That's Your Boyfriend, Parentheses, he wasn't last night. Excellent use of parentheses. That's a very funny breakout song for Michelle's long and excellent career. Let's leave it at that. But she's another great new artist,

conversant with hip-hop, but not submitting to hip-hop. Make a note of it. Finally in 1994, we got the Philadelphia R&B duo Jeanne, that's Z-H-A-N-E with an accent. Their debut album is rather pointedly titled, Pronounced Jeanne, and their first single, Hey Mr. DJ, is a top 10 pop hit with a great Michael Wycoff early 80s disco sample and a ridiculously fantastic chorus. If you know where to look, soul, R&B, urban sweet music, whatever you want to call it.

This music is already thriving in 1995 when the Neo-Soul Marketing Revolution kicks off. And that marketing revolution doesn't become a real revolution until 1997 when Erica Badu shows up. Continuity. We love continuity, don't we? Erica Wright was born in Dallas, Texas in 1971, and raised mostly by her mother, Colleen with a K. an actress who did a lot of local theater.

Erica herself started doing theater when she was four years old and wrote her first song when she was around seven. As for her singing voice, as quoted in Joel McIver's 2002 book Erica Badu, the First Lady of Neo-Soul, she says, I've got tapes for when I was five years old, and I think I sound exactly the same.

Nobody taught me. It was just the right situation. Now it's effortless. The creator does it. end quote. By then Erica decided that her all-time favorite musician was Stevie Wonder, and she started performing at front of a mirror and imagining that she was a backup singer for Shaka Khan. In grade school, Erica played Annie in a production of Annie. Early in her teenage years, she saw her first concert, Run DMC and the Beastie Boys,

and soon she was rapping under the name MC Apples. No reason. It's a fine name. A couple years later, Erica decided that Erica, E-R-I-C-A, was a little. a slave name and she wanted to change it, her mother convinced her to just, you know, change the spelling. So E-R-I-C-A-E-R-I-C-A-R-Y-K-A-H, because K-A-H-K-A-H can mean the inner self or that, which can do no wrong. And the letter Y is the 25th letter of the alphabet. Separate 25 into 2-5, 2-5 is 7. 7 is the perfect number and a prime number divisible only by one or by itself.

That's the reason. She graduated from Booker T. Washington High School in 1989 and went to Gambling State University in Louisiana, theater studies. She also started a rap duo with her cousin Bradford. They called themselves Erica Free. They make a demo.

An enterprising young manager named Keedar Massenberg, hears this demo and loves it, but signs Erica as a solo artist. Erica Badu. Badu is a nod to her love of jazz, of jazz singing, of scatting. Pretty soon she's going to release a live album that starts like this. Shout out Miles Davis.

First thing Erica Badu does in 1996 is record a duet with DiAngelo. A cover of the 1967 Marvin Gaye and Tammy Terrell hit Your precious love. What can you say? They're both old souls. Erica Badu's debut album, Baduism, comes out in February 1997 and pretty much immediately she's a star. She's got the immediately iconic headwrap lives. She's got the incense, the candles. She's got a very quietly fantastic sense of comic timing. Here she is explaining the album title Badoism to Regis and Kathy Lee. The Badoism experience is supposed to get you high and make you feel really good naturally.

You know, it's similar to Regisism, but, you know. Have I mentioned that Erica's first thing? first job was working as a waitress at Steve Harvey's comedy house in Dallas. Pretty quickly, she talked her way on stage. That feels relevant. Badoism is another world-class. The whole overwhelms the sum of its parts experience. But for such a complete, unbroken and sublime vibe, there's a lot of people involved and a whole hell of a lot going on. A songwriter and producer named Madukwu Chinwa helped her with a song called Rimshot. A songwriter named Anthony Scott and a producer named Tone the Backbone helped her with a song called Next Lifetime, which is a rad, epic ballad about trying to avoid and if that's your boyfriend, he wasn't the last night situation.

And the roots, in fact, her new friends from Philadelphia, helped Erica with a song called Other Side of the Game, which quickly becomes her favorite song to sing live, period. Erica called other side of the game her favorite song to sing live period in 2011 while talking to our dear friend and ringer overlord Sean Fennacy for GQ magazine. She also talked about how she felt about her manager calling her music Neo Soul. Quote, it was constructed outside of us. I think titles and music are mainly constructed to categorize things to sell units. If I can speak for a lot of artists who feel the same way I do, it doesn't really matter. I don't have one song that sounds like another one in my entire catalog. It only sounds alike because I'm present in all of it.

End quote. It's not that Neo-Soul was total bullshit or totally unuseful. The great New Yorker writer Caliphaseena writing about Erica Badu in 2016, he wrote, Neo Soul spoke two and four an increasingly confident black bohemian culture politically aware, spiritually minded, middle class. Its exponents took pains to show that mainstream hip-hop videos offered only a partial representation of black life.

End quote. But he also wrote about how Erica, from the very beginning, did exist outside of that box or any box. He said, of course, Baduism had its own understated hip-hop swagger. Badu's willowy voice, softened by vibrato, inspired comparisons to Billy Holiday, but she had a rapper's sense of rhythm and restraint.

She knew how to stack syllables and deploy slang, and she knew when not to smother the beat with extraneous ad-libs, end quote. He also notes politely that Erica, back in 97, was sometimes willing to frame herself, at least as something new for soul music, something necessary, something healing. She once told B.E.T.

Music is kind of sick. It's going through a rebirthing process, and I found myself being one of the midwives. End quote, sure. Anyway, Badawism, great album. I can stay with absolute confidence that it's the second best Erica Badoo album released in 1997. Live is the best Erica Badoo album released in 1997,

The version of other side of the game on live is the best version of that song. Why did Erica Badu put out a live album in the same calendar year, just nine months after her first record came out? Because her manager thought it was a good idea to keep her momentum going. Because he wanted everyone to know more or less immediately what an uncommonly fantastic live performer Erica Badu was and is. So they put her in the fairly tiny Sony music studio in New York City in front of an intimate but decidedly raucous crowd and let her rip. An added bonus, a live album cannot arrive on stage late.

A live album is reliable and punctual. You hit play and it starts playing. This is convenience, but in my experience, it is also a betrayal of the quintessential Erica Badu live experience. I have just realized that this is the single flaw in Erica Badu's live album. It's on time. Track one of this record should consist of silence and last, let's say 90 minutes, or at least 90 seconds, long enough for things to get awkward, long enough for you to get confused and uneasy and mildly irritated, just so Erica Badu can do the incredible, magical thing where she finally hits the stage and starts singing and you see. instantly to be irritated with her. Did you hear the dude in the crowd going,

It's all right, baby? That's a huge part of what makes Erica Badu live superior, the boisterousness of the crowd. The boisterousness of the crowd makes the live version, the superior version of on and on. This is a live album coming out nine months after her debut album, so she's got to work up some new shit, too. She covers Searching by our friend Roy Ayers,

in a disco tune by the band Heat Wave called Boogie Nights, and all night long by the Mary Jane Girls. And oh, look at that, stay by Shaka Khan. The backing vocals are the key there, and the key really to the whole thing. I actually have two minor complaints about this record. The first is that she doesn't begin with an hour and a half of awkward silence,

and the second is that she does the song certainly. She does the flipped-it mix of certainly, but this keyboard does not sound like an ARP-26-Hu-Hu. now does it I don't care for that keyboard tone that keyboard is a mild insult to the grandeur of the ARP-2600 that doesn't sound like God slowly turning up the volume

on a sunset at all that sounds like the Danny Ferry remix of the flipped it remix of certainly that's too bad that's my other complaint that's fairly minor I'm complaining about that because there's very little else to complain about here. I'm complaining about that as a quick counterbalance before I start lavishly praising Tyrone. Erica explains before Tyrone starts that Tyrone is her next single. She just

recorded it and she'd originally improvised it on stage with her band during a sound check in London. It is fair to assume that most people present for this live version are not familiar with this song. I guess I sound mildly naive when I say that, but it is terribly important to me to maintain my belief that the women here in the crowd screaming with malevolent joy at every line, Erica Badu sings, are having a genuine, instinctive reaction to how hilariously indignant and mean this song is. These are malevolently joyful screams of recognition, of commiseration. Erica and all these women are sharing a moment here. What are they all drinking together in those tall purple glasses? Tea? I need you to understand how electrifying Erica Badu is live and playing you this song is the

closest I can reasonably get. I have told this story before a few times probably at this point, but the first time I saw Erica Badu live in 2003, I believe, the Newport in Columbus, Ohio. She punctuated one song by ripping her giant afro wig off her head and bouncing it on stage like a basketball, like boing, and it was and it remains the single most incredible thing I've ever seen anybody do on stage. Might have been during Tyrone. Dude, I was shocked. I was stupefied. I was delighted.

I will wait two hours to see this woman alive again at every opportunity for the rest of my life. My riveted and bewildered enthusiasm in that moment is still audible to me here, now, in these women, screaming along to what is a fairly simple and clearly quickly improvised song about a crap dude Erica is about to kick out of her house. Another time at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, I watched a dude proposed to his girlfriend on stage during an Erica Badu concert. She said, Yes. This is like 15 years ago now or something. I hope those two are doing well in that they're doing well together. This is the effect Erica Badu Live has on people. The one like the time Spank Rock got boot off stage, I had seen that before. So far I've seen four onstage marriage

proposals during concerts. Erica Badu, Sunday Day Real Estate, the emo band, stars the melodramatic Canadian indie rock band and clutch the stoner rock band. The girls always said yes, thank God. Don't ask me why, but I'm most confident in the durability of the clutch marriage. I can't explain this, but I feel very strongly about it. I just got a really excellent vibe from that whole clutch experience. But I will say that proposing at an Erica Badu concert presents the greatest risk, the highest degree of difficulty. Hats off to that fucking guy.

Imagine you're a sweaty, nervous dude with a ring box. You keep transferring from one pants pocket to the other so your girl doesn't notice the bulge. And you're listening to this song and you're working up the nerve to try to get this crowd to unite behind you. I keep meaning to mention that Erica Badu is pregnant when she records this live album. her due date is basically this album's release date. She is pregnant with her first son, Seven, whose father, quite famously, is Andre 3000 from Outcast. Andre will later clarify on an outcast album that Tyrone is not about him or about his friend.

Such is the fearsome power of Tyrone, that it made one of the most deified rappers of his generation vain enough to announce that this song was probably not about him. You got to set aside some time at some point and just listen to old Erica Badu interviews and whatnot. Regis and Kathy Lee, that NPR show, Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, her tiny desk concert. That time she did one of those pitchfork over under videos and complained that aliens hadn't abducted her yet. This is a genuinely professionally funny person, like Steve Harvey caliber funny. I read somewhere recently that her favorite cartoon is the Flintstones. She talks about what a boss Fred Flintstone is in that pitch for video too.

I respect the Flintstones is a crucial moment in cartoon history, but I never really thought of the Flintstones as funny. I don't know that I've ever laughed out loud while watching the Flintstones in my life, but it is tremendously funny to me to imagine Erica Badu laughing out loud at the Flintstones. If it's good enough for her, then yabba-dab-dab-doo. The line delivery, of and sometimes your cousin's way unbelievable it is honestly a little unnerving to me how relatable this song appears to be judging by the reaction of the women in the crowd that can you pay for my cousin

gaff is apparently a more common relationship fuck up than i thought i've been a lousy boyfriend in all kinds of ways but i don't recall ever trying to get anybody to pay for my cousin to do anything i take some solace from this time for the last chorus It's time for the climactic punchline in which Erica Badu, very pregnant and in total command, will gather every ounce of charisma and fury from every soul singer ever in existence, past and future. This is the promise of Neo Soul fulfilled. This is the precise moment when Neo Soul goes from a corny marketing term to a legit and beloved, and still in retrospect, fairly well-regarded musical phenomenon. This, I have to

imagine is the precise moment when thousands of people over the years have become live album people. Welcome. Friends, we've been waiting for you. But you can't use my home. Unbelievable.

Eric Kabadu's Live is the best live album of the 90s. I told you we'd get there. Erikabadu is one of my favorite singers living or otherwise. Go see her whenever possible, but maybe bring a book or something just for the wait. just in case. Her best album is New America Part 1, Fourth World War from 2008. And as it happens, her last album from 2015 is actually a mixtape called,

But You Can't Use My Phone. Even Erica knows that Tyrone is still her best song. I have one last complaint about this live record, however. The last track on this record is the studio version of Tyrone, which I regret to inform you just does not do a goddamn thing for me. I'm getting tired of your shit. You don't never buy me nothing. You hear that, right? You know why this version doesn't work at all, right?

You know it's missing, right? Of course you know it's missing. You are. Our guest today, we're thrilled to welcome back Clover Hope, a writer for Vibe, Jezebel, the Wall Street Journal magazine and a bunch of other places. She's also the author of the book The Mother Lode

100 plus women who made hip hop. Clover, welcome back. Thank you so much. Glad to be back. All right. Last year you wrote a really great review of Baduism for Pitchfork's Sunday review, and you talked about the idea of this record as a cultural reset, like a

back-to-basics sort of thing, but back to basics and scare quotes. Like hearing this record back in 1997, did it sound more like the past or the future. Yeah, I mean, at the time, the album didn't strike me as futuristic when I first heard it.

Like, to me, the sound was more contemporary R&B inspired by classic soul. Like, Bajou's voice had that bluesy rasps to it. You know, it's like that raspy alto reminded you of jazz singers. She was compared to Billy Holiday, obviously, and sang with the band, live instrumentation.

But looking back on the moment, like there are elements of Afrofuturism in her artistry, I think, overall, as far as like the way she envisions the world, the way she kind of like fuses technology and digital aesthetics and, like, ambiance into her music and fuses this old sound with this new, these new ideas, basically. Yeah. So, you know, there was, Neo Soul itself is, you know, clearly a combination of new. and old. And so there's some sense of like the past and the present in her music. So yeah, to me it was it was more, okay, this sounds so familiar but new like in this way, you know, in the same way that maybe like hip-hop soul, like the Mayor J Blas's and totals of that era, it was production and a sound that, you know, harkened, I guess, the 70s, 80s, you know, that blend of old soul and new hip-hop basically.

She definitely had that hip hop edge, essentially, that made it feel new but recognizable. I think you wrote that the song on and on came out where you were in eighth grade, which I imagine is a very intense time and age to first encounter, Erica Badu. What did you, like, what did a bunch of junior high kids make of her at first? It was so, we were so, you know, like, emo at that time. And just kind of figuring out feelings and, like, making sense. of the world, everything felt so big and existential, you know, losing a first love or something like that just feels like the end of the world. And you're maybe at that time I was also

questioning, you know, like having maybe more of a spiritual awakening or questioning like, right, what do I believe in and things like that, finding ways to kind of just survive, you know, maturing. And when you have this figure in music who feels sort of like, just kind of like, this mother earth six you know um i think that really appealed to us um you know not just the way she looked with her whole vibe of you know just this calming spirit um on and on came out i know that when i heard that song i was uh yeah i was around maybe 13 14 and um saw it with the video so i'm hearing it with the the this image of her with the head rap and and kind of just walking around in her element and just kind of looking really peaceful.

And it was also almost, I think, a year after DeAngelo had released brown sugar. So my peer group was already bonding over him. And, you know, like to us, DeAngelo was like, you know, like, what if methad man pulled up to a lounge and like he just started singing. And Erica was like his sister. And I think like that wise friend who would sort of tell you the truth in the most profound way. and that really appealed to, I think, like, teenagers and, like, who are forming this sort of sisterhood in high school. And we were, you know, talking about dating for the first time.

And, you know, here was someone who was imparting some sort of wisdom about, like, the next lifetime. And, you know, things that we were just starting to relate to, at least, you know, lyrically and conceptually. And then the sound was something that felt, you know, to us, you know, like I had listened to Mo town, you know, and like that, I read through my, the records that my dad would play. But this was me having my own discovery of that sound, essentially, of my own discovery of soul music, basically. Everything you're describing, you know, the headwrap, like the candles, the incense, that's all multiplied live, right?

Like, you can just tell, looking at her when she performs, this is a very, you know, spiritual, philosophical, like, existential type person. But you got that just off the video or just by hearing her voice even. before you ever saw her live. Yeah, and then every, you know, it was a combination of, it was, you know, like a narrative thread in her music from, you know, like those first few videos that she put out.

There was, you know, this, this idea that you couldn't just hear her, you had to kind of see her and experience it. And that there was this live element to her, like wanting to actually, like, feel the music, like be in the same room and have that, have that um you know like the music kind of just um rub off on you basically and having been around her and interviewed her um i can definitely say like there's a an aura or just like a presence i was like this is it's funny how true this is right right it's it's it's all true you know it's not a

caricature like she really is like that like pretty much all the time it appears it's not an act in any sense yeah yeah exactly Exactly. And you could feel that in the music that there was a certain authenticity, basically. And I think that also clearly appealed to, you know, just like R&B heads fans who wanted some sense of something that wasn't just for radio. It's like, all right, we have our commercial radio music and this is sort of, all right, this is like just, I can vibe out in my room and, you know, kind of like have this, I don't know, like, I guess awakening, basically. Was your dad into it? You said, like, growing up on Motown or whatever. Like, is this something that you could bring back to your parents? Not really. I was like, it was more so my sisters. So, like, we would kind of be watching the same videos. I have two sisters older and younger. More so my older sister who I discovered a lot of music through and, and, you know, just friends around the block. So it was this way of, I think there's just a certain, like, kinship or, um, show. community

aspects of her music, at least with like women. You know, like my best friend lived across the street from me at that time. And, you know, like she, her, like, she had all the CDs and like, Eric Babaji was one of them. And we would just kind of put it on and it would be

playing in the background. And I do think there was probably some generational, you know, like a connection with at that time high schoolers, maybe. And then, you know, like our parents who could relate to like the DeAngelo's and Fazus because of the sound, but maybe not so much the, you know, like she was talking about drug dealer, like, dating

a drug dealer and like, you know, it might not have been as okay with that. Sure. Yeah. Looking back on it now, is Neo-Soul, you know, a legit and tangible musical movement to you or was it just a marketing scheme, you know, for a bunch of great new artists who didn't necessarily need a marketing scheme. Yeah, that was something I thought about as I was writing the Pitchfork Review a lot because it's this sufficive term between not just artists, but the industry and fans.

And I kind of was like, at the time, I think I was just sort of embracing, all right, oh, Neil Sol sounds like the cool term and like the best way to kind of just, extinguished just what seemed new at the time. So I don't think, I mean, I think it was clearly a marketing. It was that, you know, like savvy to give a label to this new, this like sect of artists, people love labels and sub-genres. And I think it's just that categories help make sense of what sounds new. And a lot of times specifically in the music industry just kind of comes up with, you know,

like new vocabulary to describe a genre that's in transition, I think. And so NeoSouled to me was just used to show that something in R&B was changing, shifting, and that, you know, it didn't mean that it was a new sound. It's just the sound is, you know, it's before the turn of the millennium, like, you know, this music. We have this old soul sound and then we have like this contemporary, you know, destiny's child. and, you know, right next to them, the Jill Scots and Bazuz.

And Neo-Soul was a way to kind of just collect everyone under that umbrella and show that, hey, there's still, soul is still around. Even as the sound of shifting and toward more like maybe toward like commercial, like more hip-hop fusion, we still have this, this Neo-Soul subgenre that is also hip-hop. also Seoul and also R&B. And it just kind of helped distinguish. So that's more so how I, like, organize it in my head now. You know, it just helps it in the same way that maybe like false R&B was, you know, like everyone sort of hated that term.

But it was just, again, like just a way to describe a transition in R&B that was happening with the weekend and TNACHA. Like, it's, you know, here we are shifting for something. basically. Yeah. In the same way you mentioned sort of DeAngel and Method Man together, like Erica Badu only occasionally raps,

but for me she's always had like the personality, like the charisma, the swagger, I guess, of a rapper. Does that make sense? Do you see her in that same kind of way? Yeah, totally. And she had started out rapping, like before she was singing.

And that was something that also, you know, like as far as the hip-hop, persona or edge that was always in her music and in her aesthetic. It's exactly that, the swagger. There's also just a flow, like a cadence that's more like a freestyler. She's used to be on stage and improv and doing improv, basically, you know, just kind of coming up with lyrics on the spot or, you know, like really viving out with a band and that lends itself to just a certain lyricism.

or just a certain, you know, like, uh, certain like flow where she's actually like spinning bars essentially or like, she's kind of like, you know, singing but spinning bars. And on top of that, she's also just great with improv. Like, you know, like she's funny.

Bantor. Like, yeah. Yeah, banter. Like excellent, like comedic timing, like punchlines. Um, you know, the one from, you know, on and on was like, I was born underwater with $3 and $6 times, you know. And it's like, you did not do your mass.

And that was one that, you know, like those are, that to me is like, it's some essence of like, of rapping, hip-hop, like, rhyming, putting together bars. It's just kind of essential to who she is as an artist, I think. Yeah. You write so beautifully about the Badawism song Next Lifetime, you know, this very existential love song, like I love the part where she sings maybe will be butterflies.

Is that the best song in this record for you? Or is this a record where every song is kind of the best song? That is the best song for me and the one that I would replay often. But every, I mean, it's such a like front to back. You can play it all the way through sort of album. That it, you know, like it's hard to pick. But I do think that that just kind of. kind of hit deeply because it was so crushing a bit.

Like, I think I have protein or whatever. It's like, oh, I'm not, I just can't be with you now, but maybe. And like when we're at like the next lifetime, when we're, like, some other beings or whatever. And it's just such a, you know, like, it's, there's a way that it could have been corny or it could have been, you know, teasing coming from anybody else, but she just makes this beautiful sentiment. And yeah, that one,

I have, that holds a special place for sure. Does the live album do much for you? Does Tyrone? Oh, yeah. I mean, that was, that was another one that

sort of came out of nowhere because she had already dropped this debut album. And then that song, and I think she had been performing and that song was kind of, she created it as she was like touring. And I do think it had just a hold on specifically like my generation of young women,

I guess like older millennials essentially. Like it just felt like she was talking to us. And, you know, it was what, 1997 before this era of like really major like R&B and pop empowerment records. but, you know, Tyrone is probably in conversation with, like, you know, no scrubs, PLC,

right, right. Bills, bills. It's like, I'm fed up and, like, the first line is I'm getting tired of your shit. It is. Get it together. Like, you know, so that, that I think, you know,

it maybe was part of this new wave or ushering in this wave of records from women pop stars. who were kind of like staking some claim in and as far as like relationships and just like making demands and like that was certainly a new feeling you know at that time and yeah so and you know no, Tyrone isn't even the subject, the bad guy in the song, the subject. Right, right. It's like the friend of Siron and people kind of confuse it, but yeah.

You mentioned briefly, like, you've interviewed her. She's a fantastic interview, but she's fearless, right? She's not afraid to talk about seeing the good in Bill Cosby or something, you know, like she's active still in an era where like woke means something very different than how she meant it, you know, is there any way to separate her occasional sort of wild opinions from the rest of her persona or is she not really being herself if she's not making you, you know, slightly uncomfortable? Yeah, I think there, yeah, that that discomfort might be part of her, this kind of overall

way of being that, you know, when someone is as, I guess, unconventional as I do, like, they are meaning bound to say something that is reckless and doesn't really resonate with the times. And it's kind of like what, you know, like how, like what is your kind of logic rationale? It's almost like too much empathy and not enough logic, basically. So, you know, those are the times where maybe her antenna is just tuned somewhere else and is uncomfortable for, like, as a fan,

to just realize that people you love or artists you love have these like questionable views. So it's, you know, a thing where you have to, there's some separation, but not like, it's not like excusing sort of. It's maybe like the beauty of like problematic faves essentially. And I think there's been other, yeah, there's been other views that you've had that's been like, okay, just maybe put the mic down right now. Sure. New America, the first one is my favorite of hers. I love her whole discography, and it's very frustrating to me that we haven't gotten a new record from her in forever now.

But, you know, we waited for DeAngelo forever, of course. You know, Lauren Hill belongs here, too. Like, is there something about this generation of great soul singers that makes them value quality over quantity to such an extreme degree? Right. Yeah, New America was, the part one was around when I interviewed her. And she had talked a lot about just discovering or how she had always been fascinated with technology and just discovering this new way of just making music digitally and how that, you know, like, fascinated her. And I think there's just some way like artists like a DeAngel and Lauren, And there are remnants of just an old way of doing things.

Like, their generation was still on the cusp of, like, you know, this transition to digital and online. And just putting out an excess, basically. Putting out, like, what's essentially now too much music or way too many artists. Yes. And so maybe they just still have that tradition of marinating with the music. And just they need to be. to take their time. But I also think just by definition,

like people who are used to live, like live singers or, like they're not studio artists. Their music became commercial, but they're not like radio artists. They're not necessarily making music for, to be on the radio or to be consumed in a, in a mass scale.

So they make intimate soul music, you know, essentially smaller venues and kind of even just sitting on a chair and performing with the guitar. And so you can make a living just doing that and making money and like never releasing an album if you don't want to. And so I think maybe that part of it is just their DNA as artists is more so, you know, they are, you know, they're just not studio musicians. And, you know, Shaday could add her to that as well. like they're of course of course yeah you know they they they're um it's not their bread and flutter basically so i don't think it necessarily um even bothers like you know bothers them that they're

not putting on an album every year right i like what you're saying about her embracing technology like i just think a lot about tyrone like what the line you can't use my phone means in 1997 you know she used it as an album title a mixtape title on 2015 you know the song is evolving alongside her, which is another reason I think I still gravitate toward Tyrone specifically. Right. And probably part of why Bazu is still has some like cultural, like a cultural presence now is that she has embraced, you know, social media. She's on Instagram a lot. And she's, you know, she loves like using these tools to kind of be creative. And I think, you know, that that to me is like the futuristic element where she is finding out new. like she's embracing and finding out new ways to communicate and be creative, you know, like with the tool she has access to. And that while she may not be releasing albums, like frequently,

like that sort of present, creative presence, I think, is, you know, like a big factor of why we're still, like people still talk about her. The new generation knows her. Like that influences, you know, like, major. Yeah, I think her verses battle with Jill Scott was like the one versus thing that I listened to like front to back. Like it's, you know, one of my favorite memories, you know, of 2020, you know, was just sitting there and then listening to that for three hours or whatever. And I think that's because she sounded natural on that platform, you know, to an extent that maybe other people who were there didn't. Exactly.

Like she's just used to improvising like both of them. And they can play off each other. and they, you know, they get to do that all day, essentially. Yeah. Just the last question. I read somewhere that Erica is going to be Summer Walker's Dula, which is like such a literal way of explaining her influence, you know, on newer R&B stars, like the CISSA record, obviously.

Do you hear a lot of Erica in R&B or rap now? I forgot that she is a dula. Like that's, you know, like just another element of, like, this is who she is as a person. Yeah, I do think I see influence as far as you know, like this is as the summer workers, just mostly her sort of like lyricism

or, you know, like she's not, she was a, I don't want to say, vibes, because like it's not, it's not just vibes. It's, she has a great voice and she you know, like she, but she wields it in a different way. It's not, she's not like, you know, blowing her pipes and, you know, it's controlled. Yeah, it's not Araya or Aretha.

Yeah, like it's controlled. And, you know, she has this essence of just feeling things out and going with the flow. And I think that influences in the fizzas of the world where, you know, they are feeling, there's like an certain ambiance, basically, to the music, the sound. And I also think about how blood she is in her music, historically. Like she will kind of just tell someone off very beautifully. Right.

And I think that is also just kind of inherent in a lot of the new generation. You know, not just women, but R&B is just so filled with, it's just like the most direct, like there's no innuendo anymore. It's just kind of, you know, like just really. just laying it on thick. So I think that she, that, like I can see that, like that influence all over.

And in hip-hop and in R&B, because, you know, so much of hip-hop now is, you know, like, it's all fused. And, you know, like, there's this sort of fluidity that I think people like her and DeAngelo, Badu and DeAngelo and Lauren had, where they really works, It was sort of like the sing rapping or like they were essentially like emcees and

and singer. So that is everywhere now. I do hear a lot of I'm getting tired of your shit type music these days. I think Erica deserves a lot of credit for that. This has been awesome, Clover. Thanks so much for coming back on. It was great to talk to you again. Thank you.

It's great. Thanks. Thanks so much to our guest this week, Clover Hope. Thanks as always to our producers, Justin Sales and Jonathan Kerma. We've got additional production support this week from Abu Kamara. Thanks very much. And thanks very much to you for listening. And now I must insist that you go listen to the live version of Tyrone by Erica Badu.

We'll see you next week.