Baduizm

I bought this album when I had just moved back from living in West Africa in 1997 when the album dropped. My college friend Matt was working for a record distributing company, and I, a record collector too long without access to records, could buy albums from him at cost. I went a little crazy. 

I don’t know why I chose this album–I don’t remember reading about it or hearing about it from anyone. But somehow I chose it. The album starts of with “Rimshot–Intro”, a little jazzy song that clocks in at less than two minutes. Apparently, before recording the album, she’d become fascinated with the “boom-bap” sound we loved in 80’s East Coast hip hop, and this is the track that she came up with to pay homage to that sound. There’s some Ron Carter/Tribe vibe going on, there’s her lovely lilting voice, and some hip 90s kind of scat singing in the soul/R & B tradition. 

The song ends and switches instantly into the track that I think I bought the album for, “On & On.” Badu here shows off her New Age, incense and sage, crystals and Afrocentrism character with lines like “Most intellects do not believe in God, but they fear us just the same.” There’re lots of little key words and allusions I don’t get, but I assume have some underlying philosophical meaning–”I was born underwater/With three dollars and six dimes/Yeah you might laugh/’Cause you did not do your math”; there’s some numerology going here (Maybe having to do with the 5 Percent kind?), but the beat is fully funky and the melody is entrancing. This was the jam I heard and wanted to own, I’m pretty sure. I’m listening to it now, and I had to stop typing to bob my head, sway, and dance a little on the stool I’m sitting on.

The next song picks up the tempo, gets your head nodding a little faster, a little harder, and her southern drawl comes out a bit more. She calls back to her cipher from “On & On”, and the lessons on how to be a righteous person flow fast in her sultry voice–

I don’t walk around trying to be what I’m not

I don’t waste my time trying to get what you got

I work at pleasin’ me

Cause I can’t please you and that’s why I do what I do

My soul flies free like a willow tree

Doo wee doo wee doo wee

I can practically smell the incense, see the naturals and dashikis, hold the crystals, and there’s probably a guy wearing a kufi somewhere around here, too. But it’s a jam, and the familiar beats of 80s and 90s hip hop are funky and make my head bop.

“Apple Tree” is a sassy song to a man who wants to get some of her juicy fruit. Or maybe the apple represents her knowledge and understanding. If he ain’t wit’ it, she ain’t wit’ it, either. Or maybe the apple represents clean living; knowing Badu, who apparently was a yoga teacher, who went vegan in ‘97, this is the mot apt translation. But she’s sexy, too, and her mother is the inspiration for the Outkast song “Sorry, Ms. Jackson.” So maybe all the interpretations work.

For me, the album slows down with “Otherside of the Game”, a slow jam that is not my style. But Badu picks up the pace with the next song.

According to Pitchfork, “Next Lifetime” is the transcendent moment of the album. Of course, this wouldn’t be an album of the time without a skit or some little acting breaks. But “Next Lifetime” cuts its little drama short and gets into a lush slow song with a fat bass line slinking around a synth zooming up and down the scales. Pitchfork picks a good adjective: woozy. She’s overcome with deire for another guy while she’s already with someone, she’s smitten, and she’s trying to keep a clear head.

Next up is a silly little free style jazz piece about picking afro and going to see Wu-Tang. It’s fine, but not anything to listen to besides the first time you hear it. 

In fact, for me, the album falls off a bit from here on. It becomes a bit jazzy and self-indulgent, and I’ve never been a big Quiet Storm type. “4 Leaf Clover” is a remake of an Atlantic Star song, but it doesn’t get my head moving like the first half of the album does. Since this is an LP for me, that’s fine. I’ll just keep side one playing and move on once the needle lifts up.

“Sometimes” the penultimate song if you don’t count the return of “Rimshot (Outro)”, is more like the songs on the first side: a nice boom bap beat, a little bit of a head nodder, a little more uptempo. But it doesn’t have the brilliant mix of RnB and hip hop that the first side did, it doesn’t have that otherworldly funky strange sound that “On & On” has. It’s good, but it isn’t the song I want to hear from this album. 

As she goes out with “Certainly (Flipped It)”, Badu makes plenty of call backs to the best tracks on the album, both sonically and lyrically. There are some lines that come from other songs, there’s a nice beat, there’s a rising siren that leads into the chorus, and I can imagine this song being a nice one as your driving your car on a summer night with the windows down. Still, why wouldn’t I want to hear “On & On” instead? I wouldn’t, that’s right.