Erykah Badu Concerts Tickets

About Erykah Badu

Born Erica Abi Wright in Dallas, Texas on February 26, 1971, Erykah Badu was a musical child, who was raised by her mother and maternal and paternal grandmothers. At the age of four, she began performing at the Dallas Theater Center and The Black Academy of Arts and Letters (TBAAL), where her godmother and uncle worked.

From the age of 14, she was known as a freestyler within the Dallas music community, under the name DJ Apples, and often appeared on a local Dallas radio station, where she jammed with other budding local musicians, including jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove.

She attended Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, and went on to major in theater and minor in quantum physics at Grambling University. Badu left Grambling in 1993 to pursue her music career, returning to Dallas, where she taught drama and dance classes at the South Dallas Cultural Center and waitressed to fund her first demo.

The 19-song demo, Country Cousins, was recorded with her cousin, Robert "Free" Bradford, who she also performed with at the time. It caught the attention of the record executive Kedar Massenburg, who arranged for Badu to record a duet with D'Angelo, "Your Precious Love", after seeing her open for him at a Dallas show in 1994. It was Massenburg who eventually signed her to his label Kedar Entertainment, which later became a subsidiary of Universal Motown when Massenburg became the president of Motown in 1997.

The stage name Erykah Badu was chosen in Badu's youth. The alternative spelling of her Christian name contains the term "kah", which signifies the inner self. "Badu" was chosen because it is her favorite jazz scat sound, and it also happens to be the term for the 10th-born child among the Akan people in Ghana.

Career

1997-1999: Baduizm and Live

In February 1997, her debut album, Baduizm, was released, debuting at number two on the Billboard 200 and number one on the US Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. The album was certified triple-platinum by the RIAA and launched four singles: "On & On", "Next Lifetime", "Otherside of the Game", and "Apple Tree". Baduizm won a Grammy Award for Best R&B Album at the 40th Grammy Awards in 1998, where "On & On" also won the award for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance.

November 1997 brought the release of Live, her debut live album, which was recorded whilst she was pregnant with her first child (the son of rapper André 3000 of OutKast), and released the day of his birth. The album reached number four on the US Billboard 200 and number one on the US Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums, and was certified double-platinum by the RIAA.

Badu was featured on the song "You Got Me", by hip hop band The Roots, who had helped her produce several of Baduizm's tracks. The song, which was co-written by Jill Scott, appeared on their 1999 breakthrough album, Things Fall Apart, and also featured rapper Eve. The track went on to win The Roots and Badu a Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group.

2000-2006: Mama's Gun and Worldwide Underground

In the late-1990s, Badu joined the Soulquarians – a hip hop and neo-soul collective comprised of Common, Talib Kweli, Mos Def, and Q-Tip (all previous members of the Native Tongues collective), Questlove, Bilal, Roy Hargrove, D'Angelo, James Poysner, Pino Palladino and J Dilla.

She returned with her second studio album, Mama's Gun, in November 2000, which featured significant production and musical contributions from several members of the Soulquarians. The album launched the single "Bag Lady", which was Badu's first top 10 Billboard hit, and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance and for Best R&B Song, as well as "Didn't Cha Know?", which was also nominated for Best R&B Song.

From February through September the following year, she embarked on the Mama's Gun World Tour.

In 2002, she released a collaboration with fellow Soulquarian, Common - "Love of My Life (An Ode to Hip-Hop)". The song spent four weeks at number one on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks chart, and reached number 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It also earned Badu a Soul Train Lady of Soul Award for Best Solo R&B/Soul Single and a Grammy Award for Best R&B Song. It was also featured in the 2002 film Brown Sugar.

That summer, she embarked on the Frustrated Artist Tour, so named because of the writer's block she experienced after releasing Mama's Gun.

Her third studio album, Worldwide Underground, was released in September 2003. The album features appearances from rappers Dead Prez and Common, along with singers Queen Latifah, Bahamadia, and Angie Stone, and debuted at number three on the Billboard 200. Badu received four further Grammy nominations for the album.

In 2004, she contributed to Zap Mama's album Ancestry in Progress (2004), featuring as a vocalist on the track "Bandy Bandy." She also embarked on the Worldwide Underground Tour through the winter and spring of 2004.

Badu co-founded the Sugar Water Festival with Queen Latifah and Jill Scott in 2005 – a touring music festival designed to bring awareness to health issues to African-American women that ran during the summer of 2005 and 2006. She also headlined the Summer Tour in 2006.

2007-2009: New Amerykah, Part One

In 2007, Badu began work on her fourth studio album in 2007 – after receiving her first laptop as a Christmas gift, she sent music back and forth with Questlove, Q-Tip and J Dilla, and began using it as a mini recording studio.

In February of the following year, she released her fourth studio album, New Amerykah Part One (4th World War). Debuting at number two on the Billboard 200 albums chart, the album received widespread critical acclaim and appeared on several critic's lists of the year's best records. It was preceded by its lead single, "Honey", in December 2007. The song's music video was nominated for Best Short Form Music Video at the Grammy Awards in 2009. New Amerykah Part One was supported by The Vortex World Tour in 2008, and in the summer of 2009 Badu embarked on the Jam Tour. She also appeared as a special guest co-headliner on Mos Def's "Ecstatic Tour" that September.

2010-2014: New Amerykah Part Two

New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh) was released in March 2010. It debuted at number four on the US Billboard 200 chart and was listed as one of the best albums of 2010, and the decade, by several publications. The album was promoted through several television performances on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, The Wendy Williams Show, Chelsea Lately, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and Good Day New York that March, as well as through features in Nylon, Playboy, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, Time Out New York, Spin, Vibe, Paste, and People magazines, among others. It launched three singles: "Window Seat", "Turn Me Away (Get MuNNY)", and "Gone Baby, Don't Be Long".

In 2011 Badu appeared on Flying Lotus's fourth album, Until the Quiet Comes, and the following year appeared on the debut album by the supergroup Rocketjuice and The Moon, and Black Radio by Robert Glasper. 2013 saw more collaborations, as she appeared on Tyler, The Creator's second studio album, Wolf, Bonobo's album The North Borders and Janelle Monae's first single from her second studio album, The Electric Lady, "Q.U.E.E.N."

2015-present: New album and mixtapes

Badu appeared on Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment's album Surf in May 2015. Two months later, she released a free mixtape of her favorite recordings, and in early October, she released a remix of Drake's single "Hotline Bling", followed by the mixtape But You Caint Use My Phone in November. The mixtape debuted at number 14 on the Billboard 200 and was well-received by critics. That same year, she also released three new tracks on SoundCloud: "Trill Friends", "Thru It All" and "Come See Badu".

In February 2016, she held her annual "Still Boomin'" sold-out birthday bash concert at The Bomb Factory in Dallas, which was hosted by Dave Chappelle and featured a surprise appearance by André 3000.

Badu appeared on an episode of the NPR video series Tiny Desk Concerts in August 2018. Three months later, she debuted a studio recording of a previously unreleased and untitled song while hosting the NTS series Sound of Color.

On June 3, 2019, Badu released her first single since 2015: a cover of "Tempted" by Squeeze, in collaboration The Roots' James Poyser. In September, she confirmed her plans to release her sixth studio album "soon".