Never knew what a friendship was, Never knew how to really love, You can't be what I need you to, & I don't know why I fuck with you
Well, if you look at all of the cultures in America, this is a great opportunity for us to really get acquainted with the rest of the world. America is the only place you can do that, but we don't have sense enough to take advantage of that.
I'm a complete human being. I'm very emotional and loving. I feel, I hurt, I give, I take, and also I think. I analyze. I'm a sociologist, anthropologist.
Hopefully my music is medicine, some type of antidote for something or some kind of explanation or just to feel good.
From then on, I realized this is what I want to do, what I'm supposed to do: Giving energy and receiving it back through applause. I love it. That's my world. I love it. I enjoy it. I live for it.
The kind of music or the kind of arrangements that I do, the kind of musicians I choose, is just what I like to hear.
What makes me furious, not just because we're in an interview, but I don't like when writers take your words and put them somewhere else, in the wrong context in their own article about you.
There are millions and billions of atoms of memory of all kinds of musical themes in me.
I'm not trying to win an award for being the best vegetarian, just want to be healthy. Take a salt bath. Do things that my parents were never able to do. I'm blessed to do anything I want, so I decide to take the best care of my body and my family in the same way. Holistically. Vitally.
Being honest is my job. That's what music is for me.
I thought the Billie Holiday comparison was beautiful. I think, Wow, what a wonderful, creative, helpful spirit. She's someone who wanted to help others by sharing her emotion. That's what I do, too, so I think that's a great comparison.
I have the ability to sing with emotion and feeling, but if you say I sound like Billie Holiday, that's cool. Let's look at who Billie was: she was this person, this singer, this beautiful diva who could move the audience with the slightest gesture of her hand.
I've had two children. I've had three boyfriends. I've had a lot of things happen that can change your opinions and values and philosophies.
I don't have one song that sounds like another one in my entire catalog.
No one chooses to raise children alone.
It's almost like a lot of black people in America, a lot of young black men, are born with this cloud over their heads. It's their penitentiary cloud, this philosophy we all have, that it's harder for us.
As Erykah Badu, it has nothing to do with me, the way I look, my hair wrap, my style, it's about you and what you feel for my music. If I can make you feel like the way that people who influenced me made me feel, that's completion.
Man, I don't want to have nothing to do with computers. I don't want the government in my business.
I think a lot of people have lost respect for the individual, you know, the individual, the person who doesn't conform.
I'll dabble here and there in different forms of the art, but the label has me locked down like a slave so, of course, I'll be doing albums during this time.
