Erykah Badu – New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) (2008)

The rise of the Black Lives Matter movement permanently changed the discourse of American politics and culture, to the point where those who were newly conscious of the enduring struggles of African-Americans had begun to retrospectively reevaluate the worthiness of media from the last thirty years, when hip-hop was a fledgling art and soul music was on the cusp of a renaissance. Black artists at that point, for all their groundbreaking works, were not regaled on a national critical stage (a stage largely bereft of Black critics) until mass awareness shifted our lenses. Look at the reception to Kendrick Lamar’s game-changing To Pimp A Butterfly in 2015, shortly before the BLM movement found itself in the center of the preceding year’s presidential election. The timing was almost too perfect: in addition to being an unimpeachable artwork on its own, Butterfly examined the plight of black entertainers as collateral from America’s continued treatment of Black people after the Civil Rights Movement, right as the country was on the brink of a grand (if failed) reevaluation.

Erykah Badu had it right before that though. On “Master Teacher,” a knotted, winding medley from her 2008 masterpiece New Amerykah Part One: 4th World War, her use of “woke” was fresh and novel. Over a soupy sample of Curtis Mayfield’s iconic “Freddie’s Dead,” she and guest vocalist Georgia Anne Muldrow (who originally conceived the piece) are at the point of resignation, recognizing the meager ways in which American culture has changed since desegregation. It’s yet another pointed statement in an album almost exclusively focused on the issues still facing Black people in the 21st century: poverty, drug addiction, police brutality, the prison system, and on.

Looking back, even if some critics accused Badu for playing up herself as both a performer and a brand, it was those qualities that made her such an iconic role model for many in the Black community. Badu was and is proud of her talent and her voice, but more importantly, she makes few compromises in enacting her creative vision. Mama’s Gun, the 2000 followup to her debut, remained within the R&B wild but played with structure and form, essentially forming one long suite that dove deep into her psyche. Worldwide Underground, a 50-minute “EP” that might have paled in comparison to her normal level of output, still found her being honest with her creative block: she supported the project on the cannily-titled “Frustrated Artist Tour”. By being honest about her limits and nailing down the things about herself she considered unimpeachable, she succeeded time and time again, and she did it with a searing self-assurance that indicated a specific sense of pride. Self-pride? Sure, but the pride she exuded was also intertwined with her identity as a black woman and her goal to advance that culture in a marked way by process of emphasis.

In that sense, New Amerykah Part One was the logical extension of her ultimate goal. It’s socially conscious, even a little didactic at times, but that didacticism works because it’s supported by some truly risky maneuvers. It’s remarkably static, but also positively quivers with unpredictability. Songs are often made of multiple parts. Moods shift constantly from warm to chilly, from foredoomed to hopeful. News clips and speeches are sampled freely and surface with the nervous tension of a fever dream. She gives up almost three minutes of “Twinkle” to vocal chameleon Bilal, who retrofits Peter Finch’s iconic monologue from Network into the track’s rumination on systemic racism and police brutality. Even considering what Badu was known for, this was new territory. And that vision remained as uncompromising as ever; despite label executives’ ultimatum concerning radio play, she managed to keep the original album intact while sneaking in the excellent yet conceptually-untethered single “Honey” at the end. She could write the hits, but her focus was on telling a story, and sending a message.

Music about resistance has endless precedents, but what separates this album from its previous peers is its focus, or seeming lack thereof. Badu chose to match her sprawling excoriation of systematic injustice with an equally sprawling musical scope, which fused hip-hop, soul, R&B and funk in myriad newfound ways well before listeners were paying attention. “Amerykahn Promise” resuscitates the G-funk of Parliamant-Funkadelic into a campy, hallucinogenic opener. “Me” takes a hand-clapped groove and adds sunlit textures and breezy guitar a la George Benson, making a cross between R&B and yacht rock that reads less self-absorbed than endearingly candid. Thundercat’s menacing bass on “The Cell” fuses with guitar and Badu’s percussion like a warped nightmare version of doo-wop. There’s precedent to all of these sounds, but rarely under one umbrella as presented here.

It’s not just a retrofitting of sonic puzzle pieces though: its takes on each of these genres feels novel to her and her collaborators, an ebullient exploration of sound and color that comes from the joyous spirit of teamwork. New Amerykah Part One counts over ten producers, including the aforementioned Muldrow, along with Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, legendary composer Roy Ayers, legend-in-the-works Madlib, and Badu herself. Not one of these people goes to waste. The sound of this record is consistently exquisite; the bass rumbles, the treble is just as sharply prominent, and so many tracks are environments in themselves – from “The Healer’s” mystical chakra rings to the heartbreakingly tender flutes of “Soldier” to the swamp-thick guitar and sickly bass on “The Cell”. At times it feels as much like a tribute to the achievements of Black producers as an inventory of Black suffering, especially considering the producer who’s hands stretch across this record most of all: the late J Dilla.

Dilla’s death in 2006 felt like a miniature breaking point. Diagnosed with a rare blood disorder and doomed to die on a hospital bed, shortly after finishing his now-iconic Donuts, the ghost of the forward-looking, universally-loved producer could be felt in several works soon afterward. Badu, who frequently collaborated with Dilla, practically dedicates the whole album to him. His ability to mash up samples and styles likely inspired the madcap energy of this record. She namedrops him in her ode to hip-hop’s power, “The Healer.” Her inclusion of the tense call-and-response of “My People” could be a sequel to the corresponding track on his farewell record. And there’s the album’s true closer, the elegiac “Telephone,” which opens with Dilla’s signature mark as if he were presiding over the recording. Badu lets out a cathartic exhale in its final moments, as if released from some spiritual possession.

Such gestures imbue New Amerykah Part One with a sense of heightened purpose, and of raised stakes. Unlike anything else in her discography, it feels bigger than herself. It’s the type of project that only exists through the auspicious crossing of individual brilliances, and the pure force of ambition. More relevantly, it highlighted in grim detail the persistence of the Great American Problem, years before that problem would find itself again on the forefront of the cultural discourse.