‘Worldwide Underground’: Erykah Badu’s Stunning Third Album
The LP is the sound of an artist reveling in the liberation provided by pure groove.
Erykah Badu’s 1997 debut, Baduizm, not only heralded the arrival of a transformative artist, but of the genre expressly coined to promote her. With a nod to ’70s classic soul, “neo soul” (the brainchild of her then-label head, Kedar Massenburg) promised a purer, more musically and emotionally developed alternative to contemporary R&B. And as its avatar, the Texas-bred Brooklynite cut an indelible figure of retro-adjacent Bohemian cool: perpetually armored with an arresting green-eyed gaze, styled in a signature headdress a la Young, Gifted and Black-period Aretha, and possessed with a syllable caressing cadence that drew inevitable Billie Holiday comparisons.
Yet far more than the sum of any historic influences, Erykah Badu represented a singular voice for her own generation; hip-hop assured but spiritually seeking, Gen X pragmatic and romantic. This, whether bittersweetly exploring the tensions between morality, loyalty, and infatuation, stealth dropping Five Percent mathematics amidst existential musings (as on her brilliant breakout single, “On and On”), or playfully indulging in old school bars and bluesy adlibs. Baduizm’s massive creative and commercial triumphs made her a modern icon, the “First Lady of Neo Soul.”
She endured the title grudgingly. “I hated that because what if I don’t do that anymore?” she would admit years later. “What if I change? Then that puts me in a penitentiary.” 2000’s vibrant Mama’s Gun – birthed within the creative cabal of the Soulquarians collective – diverged into expansive compositions, shifting tonal hues, and explicit social commentary. Three years on, that divestment from her past is even more evident on Worldwide Underground. Born out of a period of writer’s block and a subsequent two-month performance trek tellingly entitled the Frustrated Artist Tour, it’s the sound of an artist reveling in the liberation provided by pure groove.
“Bump It” establishes as much from the jump, a near nine-minute mid-tempo jam moored by 808 accents, warm keys, echo-laden scats, and a refrain (“Push up the fader/ Bust the meter/ Shake the tweeter”) celebrating the exhilaration of the musical moment. Bouncing with syncopated ease, “Back in the Day” pays homage to simpler times riding around carefreely getting lost in tunes and weed smoke.
“I Want You” is the LP’s sprawling centerpiece. A 12-minute expression of desire (be it ethereal, emotional, or physical), it builds in dynamic and tempo from a terse heartbeat to waves of layered vocals and repeated unanswerable queries of, “What we gon’ do?” Here and throughout, the “content” is encoded within the buoyant and adventurous sonic choices of production quartet, Freakquency (Badu, along with longtime cohort James Poyser, Rashad Smith and RC Williams). Lyrically, she’s content to stay largely surreptitious – e.g. acknowledging the weight of career responsibility with a nostalgic, “Back in the day when things were cool/ All we needed was bop-bop, bop-bop, bop-ba-domp.” Elsewhere, she defers to well-placed guests (Dead Prez on “The Grind”; Queen Latifah, Angie Stone and Bahamadia on “Love of My Life Worldwide” – which eclipses the earnestness of her previous hip-hop tribute, “Love of My Life,” by being the party).
Even “Danger,” the most conventionally structured song here, finds its most cathartic moment not in its trap house narrative (a foreboding sequel to Baduizm’s “The Other Side of the Game”) but in a wordless wailing improv that quotes Clare Torry’s performance on Pink Floyd’s “Great Gig in the Sky.” Beautiful, clever, haunting, and funky as all hell, it says everything – much like Worldwide Underground itself – without having to say anything at all.
