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Worldwide Underground
09/17/2003 10:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Dan Leroy
Ambition in urban music is great and all, but most performers neglect the street and its demands at their peril. So after an ambitious sophomore album that proudly displayed her jazz jones (and occasionally, her Hendrix-loving freak flag) a bit of Badu backlash began. The Dallas singer with the Billie Holiday rasp is too proud to cave in to that concern, and Worldwide Underground still luxuriates in jazzy abstraction; "Bump It," "Back in the Day (Puff)" and "I Want You" comprise a blissful suite of almost 25 minutes, with guests Zap Mama and Lenny Kravitz joining Badu on a cloud of Fender Rhodes riffs and wispy scatting. But this time around, she and her collaborators have also figured out how to blow away the incense without losing her mystique. Brimming with "I got the block on lock" attitude, "Danger" and "Steady On the Grind" boast the hip-hop hardness Badu's been lacking, and yet it never seriously impedes the languid, elegant groove that's as much a trademark as her headwrap used to be.
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