 New Amerykah review at
Entertainment Weekly: They say that eyes are the
windows to the soul. With Erykah Badu, however, it may be
wiser to go directly to the hair. Badu habitually uses it
as an extension of her art — wrapped, tied, dyed, or
magnificently Afroed — but on New Amerykah's
illustrated cover, it literally contains a multitude:
fetuses, dollar signs, raised fists, weapons, syringes,
flowers... Apparently, she's got a lot on her mind. Ever
since her multiplatinum 1997 debut, Baduizm, Badu
has cultivated the air of a mild musical eccentric,
unusual but acces¬sible. She is both earth mama and
mystic, a Billie Holiday jazz-rasp queen with a tangy
Southern drawl and a penchant for hip-hop boys (she's
been linked to Common and OutKast's André 3000). On Amerykah,
she joins forces with a disparate group of collaborators,
67-year-old jazz vibraphonist Roy Ayers and DJ/rapper/producer
Madlib (Talib Kweli, Ghostface Killah) among them. Ayers
helms the wonderfully bizarre opening track, ''Amerykahn
Promise'' — a horn-filled tribute (or is it
a retort?) to the blaxploitation anthems of the '70s
— in which she breathes, ''I'll give you my eyes/I'll
give you my ears/I'll give you my hands,'' and pledges
her lips, tongue, thighs...''damn near anything you want.''
Madlib, meanwhile, brings an undulating, snake-charmer
menace to the atmospheric hymn ''The Healer (Hip
Hop).'' Back in 2006, rapper Nas declared that
hip-hop was dead; in 2008, Erykah claims ''it's bigger
than religion…bigger than the government.'' With her
it sounds not like a boast but a fortune-teller's promise.
''Me,'' built on gentle beats and muted
horns, is perhaps Badu's most fully realized attempt at
autobiography: ''Ev¬erything around you see/The ankhs,
the wraps, the plus degrees...It's all me.'' She also
freely says she's ''had two babies [with] different dudes''
and laments that at 37, ''my ass and legs have gotten
thick.'' Badu sings with a graceful self-accep¬tance
that would do Mary J. Blige proud, but she delivers it
with an easy humor Blige has never shown. Madlib also
guides the breezy, midtempo charmer ''My People,''
while ''Soldier 7'' serves up a lyrical
state-of-the-union update on Marvin Gaye's ''What's Going
On.'' The portrait of urban blight that follows, ''The
Cell,'' does the same with Stevie Wonder's ''Living
for the City.'' It's odd, then, that ''Honey,''
the album's bonus track, is also its first single. The
song's squiggly bass line and cute but inane sentiments (''Honey,
you so sweet/Sugar got a long way to catch you'') are
perhaps the safest, least interesting efforts on the
album. Thankfully, Badu spent 10 other tracks showing us
exactly what she can do. A- |
