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Live
11/18/1997 3:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
Brett Anderson
The mode of an Erykah Badu show is evident 30 seconds into "Rimshot," this live disc's opener: A chorus chants "Ba-doo," varying the cadence here and there, carefully tasting each syllable and making sure there's a complex, soft carpet of sound on which the singer can make her entrance. You can almost smell the incense burning on the stage. Granted, some of the music captured here offers little more than slightly looser versions of songs from Badu's Baduizm. But there are moments of striking immediacy, as when she ends "On & On" with a wicked, don't-even-try-to-play-me rap, or slides into Roy Ayers' "Searching" as though it were one of her flowing gowns. Compared to Baduizm, Live is merely interesting. But it's certainly enough to tide us over until the real followup.
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