Much of Erykah Badu’s career has been marked by Afrocetrism, higher consciousness and introspection. Her first album was perhaps the most spiritual but her music has always had a conceptual nature, layered with meaning deeper than what appears on the surface to be abstract ramblings. While Erykah has always had some level of social consciousness to her music it has become increasingly more political, with New Amerykah, Part I (4th World War) being the most political by far. However, for all her artistry and theory, one has to wonder how many will be able to decipher her message.

The concept of New AmErykah is introduced in the title of the album and depicted on the cover which shows Erykah’s afro fraught with Black fists, embryos (one of which has a bar code on its head), the all seeing eye, hypodermic needles, satellites, a mutated wasps, chains, flowers, the tree of life…I could go on and on in an ISpy like discovery. It is an Erykah Badu version of the world on her shoulders, only she is wearing the societal ills in her afro; the image is simultaneously magnificent and unsettling.

The album opens with Amerykahn Promise, a funky parody on the promise to bleed you dry in your search for the American dream; just sign your name on the dotted line. Big brother is watching and there can be no dissension among the ranks. Its instrumentation sounds like a Foxy Brown theme movie but that feeling gets lost as the apocalyptic voice welcomes all comers to receive 30K megawatts of power to radiate your soul.

Soldier is an ode to movements of struggle past and present. From the boys fighting in Iraq, to workers on strike, to Muslims selling “Final Call” periodicals, to those victimized by the broken levies in Louisiana; Erykah addresses a wide variety of social issues. Have no doubt that while she is definitely an artist, Erykah is militant and even pays homage to Harriett Tubman who led people to freedom, sometimes at gunpoint.

To the folks on the picket line
Don’t stop ’til you change they mind
Got love for my folks
Baptized when the levies broke
We gone keep marchin’ on
Until we hear that freedom song
And if you thinkin’ ’bout turning back
I got the shot gun on your back…

Healer and My People are esoteric and abstract on the surface but both contain poignant messages. Healer reminds us that while there are plenty of devices for division, music – hip hop in particular – is the ultimate healer; it’s bigger than religion and the government. Erykah warns against the dangers of believing everything you think because we’ve been programmed and now it’s time to wake up, “reboot, refresh, restart.”

In Twinkle Erykah laments the ignorance that keeps people oppressed. The beat is a sparse synth of a staccato rim shot, the pop of a kick drum and a scale on keys that seems to glimmer and fade. The result is an almost jarring duality of Erykah’s love for her people and desire for them to shine. However their sparkle is stamped out by their lack of knowledge and never comes full force. Twinkle ends with an almost exasperated call for the oppressed masses to wake up and get angry.

They don’t know their language
They don’t know their god
They take what their given
Even when it feels odd
They say their grandfathers and grandmothers worked hard for nothing
’Cause we still in this ghetto
So they end up in prisons…

Throughout the album you know that Erykah’s goal is enlightenment, which sometimes comes through loud and clear. At others though, you have to wonder if her commentary is lost in all her rhetorical questions, abstractions and artistry. It brings to mind a question asked on a previous album – what good do the words do if no one understands what she is saying? While intellectuals and conceptual thinkers will no doubt enjoy peeling away the layers to decipher the messages contained within New Amerykah, Part I (4th World War), there will be many others (masses in fact) on whom her message will be lost. Unfortunately, it is a message those masses need to hear.

• Share This:
  
  • Subscribe
  • Blinklist
  • Bloglines
  • Blogmarks
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Furl
  • Ma.gnolia
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati