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Mama's Got A Brand New Bag
11/22/2000 9:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Billy Johnson Jr
"Most of the time, you don't even know your mama have a gun," Erykah Badu says, explaining the title of her third album, Mama's Gun. "And when she pulls it out and shows it to you, it's something serious, and that's the way life is to me right now. We're at a very detrimental time, and our sons and daughters are going to need something to take with them."
As Erykah sits in a room full of journalists, just days after mastering her new album, she makes it clear that her album title in no way advocates the use of firearms. But in the same metaphoric way that she introduced her double-platinum 1997 debut, Baduizm, the title holds deeper meaning. Erykah hopes the content of Mama's Gun will empower listeners. "They can put my album in they holster," she offers. "Or on they lap, or they seat."
The first Mama's single, "Bag Lady," serves up a healthy load of ammunition for those struggling with relationships. Over the same distinctive electric guitar sample Dr. Dre used for "Xxplosive," Erykah encourages listeners to free themselves of their various forms of emotional baggage.
"I wrote 'Bag Lady' about [two and a half] years ago, after Baduizm," Erykah says of the song, whose video is loosely based on Ntozake Shange's book and play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When The Rainbow Is Enuf: A Choreopoem. "When I started my live show, I actually started writing it because I was inspired by my own personal growth. I was happy that I was able to assess things a little bit better, and I figured out the reason why I couldn't get though the day as well as I can now was because I had too many things on my mind, on my plate, for one person to have. So I started to eliminate some of the things that were too heavy to carry and unnecessary."
Erykah doesn't explain whether or not the song was inspired by her former relationship with André 3000 from OutKast. (André, with whom Erykah has a 2-year-old son named Seven, openly deals with the pain of their failed romance in OutKast's song "Ms. Jackson.") Still, Badu's "Bag Lady" isn't the only message-oriented song on her new album. On "Time's A Wastin'," she attempts to get unfocused men on track: "Time's a wastin'/Don't you take your time, young man/Keep on driftin' and ain't no telling where you'll land." "Penitentiary Philosophy" sends inspirational words to men on lockdown. And anyone facing indecision can relate to "Didn't Cha Know."
Though uplifting content has been part of Erykah's music since the beginning, it holds more significance now that she's a mother, as having a child has changed her entire outlook on life. For the first two years after Seven's birth, the two were inseparable, and she breast-fed him every day. "It made me feel like a very responsible person, tidy and healthy," Erykah reflects on motherhood. "I was better, 'cause now I'm responsible for someone whose whole reason for being I helped shape."
If there is a particularly noticeable change in Erykah's work, it's in her sound, which takes a different path than the soft, jazzy offerings of Baduizm that drew numerous comparisons to Billie Holiday. Now, the music seems more influenced by the true soul of the '70s--ballads with layered background vocals, extra percussion, and some funk-rock flare. Call it a revitalization of '70s funk, if you will, but Erykah claims the transformation wasn't intentional.
"I love that music, and I wouldn't say it was an accident," she explains. "I would just say it's just natural. That's the way I feel. I didn't know I had a style until I got a record deal, and people started writing what the style was. That's just what I like, and I never underestimate the audience's ability to feel it, too."
Erykah happens to be pretty picky about where she records. When she's at home, she records in the Paul Meyer studio, a recording facility Meyer built by hand out of scrap pieces of wood and tin. "It's really warm," Erykah says about the studio, located five miles deep in the woods with a tee-pee out back. But when she was deciding where to record Mama's Gun, there was one obvious choice: New York's Electric Lady Studios, previously owned by the late Jimi Hendrix.
"The walls are covered with paintings and collages of Electric Lady-looking stuff," Erykah reflects. "The booths are the same ones that Jimi, Stevie Wonder, Roy Ayers, and countless other people, a lot of legends, [used]. D'Angelo had just left the studio [it's where he recorded Voodoo]. You feel it. I don't know exactly how to explain it, but you feel the music, and sometimes, when I didn't have an idea, it would come from someplace, and it would just come out the air--melodies [would come out of thin air]."
It's not too difficult for Erykah to get into her natural zone to create music. The green-eyed beauty, who majored in theater studies at Grambling State University before heading back home to pursue music, is also the daughter of an actress, and last year she appeared on the big screen in her most significant acting role to date: Rose Rose, in The Cider House Rules, the Oscar-winning film based on the John Irving novel. "Once I got the role and learned that the director did not know who Erykah Badu was, I felt an ego boost: 'I can act!'" says Erykah, who was attracted to the movie because it was a period piece. "I did it, and it was wonderful. I was new again. I didn't walk in and people expected something--they didn't know what was going to happen."
Though Erykah is happy to wear so many hats (or head-wraps, in her case), the heavy workload can be overwhelming sometimes. In addition to being a mother, singing, writing, and acting, she also directed the video for "Bag Lady" and supervised the direction of all of the songs on Mama's Gun. "Every time I would complain [about my workload], people would say, 'Well, you said you wanted to do it all,'" Erykah laughs. "I said, 'Yeah, but...' It was a one-woman show this time, but it was great. It was a good experience, and I got it all done, and it went on time." Seems like Erykah is still firing on all cylinders, so to speak.
-- Interview conducted by Lucy Tauss
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