Music Monthly Review: Erykah Badu’s New Amerykah Pt. 2

Erykah Badu
New Amerykah Pt.2: Return of the Ankh (Island Records)
Out now

Confession time! I’ve never been a big fan of Erykah Badu’s previous material. I’m sorry. There were a few singles I could say I grew fond of but as far as albums are concerned Ms Badu was always ”too” something; too much jazzy bass on Baduzism, (I got it way too late in 2006) and too much kookiness in Mama’s Gun. Worldwide Underground was going somewhere, but only on three songs, and with New Amerykah Part One, well…politics and soul are strange bed-fellows; get it right and you’re the voice of a generation, get it even slightly wrong and you’re preachy pap, or even worse, come off as someone with a chip on their shoulder that they can’t really work into words so they rant over beats in the hope that the volume plus melody will explain everything to the listener.

Labelled ‘neo soul’ alongside Jill Scott and D’Angelo did her no favours, with her distinct raspy nasal singing voice and her reliance on whimsy lyrics; not that either are bad, just not applied properly. I could see she was capable of an album as wholly touching and memorable as Who is Jill Scott but like a clumsy cook, the good ingredients were measured wrong and there are only so many times you can release a ‘flawed genius,’ before people quit the genius and just say ‘flawed.’ I realise I am probably alone in this line of thinking.

So here comes New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh, and you’re probably wondering what a heathen like me is doing reviewing this album. I’ll tell you because I like it. Sorry, I love it. I love it to death. I think it’s the best album of 2010. I think it’s the best album she’s ever done.
Erykah’s writing over the whole album has gained joyous focus. Perhaps it was a prior decision to make this album purely about emotion/love that’s stripped her of reason to soil the broth with meandering songs; there’s a purer honesty and maturity to work than ever before, more depth in her narrative. On Loving You, she proclaims ‘You’re loving me… and I’m sipping your gin/You’re loving me…and I’m fucking your friends.’ Fall in Love (Your Funeral) features the warning, ‘You don’t wanna fall in love with me.’ Amy Winehouse is currently losing sleep.

Sonically, Part Two accomplishes the rare feat of nodding to nostalgia whilst sounding fresh and modern. Ten Feet Tall, the moody opener where she states her refusal to give up on a cold lover, features the sound of bedsprings. Bedsprings! Gone Baby Gone is all eighties-lite synth heaven with a 90s baseline groove. Incense sounds like a deleted track off of Common’s Electric Circus, and Agitation, with its Herbie Hancock Watermelon Man keyboard vibe, continues that age old tradition of having a wicked song as nothing more than an interlude. It’s a soul album through and through blessed with all of the genre’s best attributes; little pretension, memorable, heartfelt tunes, it cuts to the bone of the matter and has a couple of songs that might make it to a dance floor.

Erykah has, for me at least, finally achieved whole-scale the brilliance hinted at on the single On and On when I first heard it blare out of the speakers while I was in Nigeria. This is the first Erykah Badu album I have ever listened to on repeat, repeatedly. Buy it or pay to see her live.