40 Days & 40 Nights: Erykah Badu
To commemorate the most beautifullest time of the year for me, summertime in the NYC, I will be posting concert reviews from this Independence Day weekend through Labor Day. I'm calling this endeavor, 40 Days & 40 Nights. I aim to blog that many shows, whether they stir me when the sun bears down brutal or when it has set.
ERYKAH BADU, BROOKLYN, 8.04.08
In a plunging grey jump suit with her go-to Afro wig loosely affixed, Erykah Badu began her free Wingate Field performance with "The Healer." It's a spiritual gumbo that reflects the 37 year-old soul singer's broad cosmology and tastes mostly of hip hop. Magnanimous in her band-hushing and crowd-shushing, Badu was Monday night as big as the culture and just as diffuse. As is her wont, she commanded her band to lay out on alternating lines for much of her 14-song set making for a jerky evening. This compulsion to explain what I, and it seemed many others, would rather feel ensured that few of her songs were met with the noise she expected Brooklyn to bring.
"I see what this is...I see what kind of shit y'all trying to pull." Badu said mid-performance, "Y'all trying to have church. This is not church." Now, this was just a few minutes after she offered up a sort of tribal incantation with accompanying African drumming. It was a scene that adhered to the satirical Afrocentrist portrayals offered up by Chris Rock to Dave Chappelle. Badu is blessed to be able to get away with that Black boho earnestness attribute that to her humor, honesty and keenly parlayed emotional IQ.
That said, It wasn't a bad show I've just seen her deliver a similar set list in explosive fashion. I assign some of the blame to the venue. Wingate Field's wide-open space swallowed Badu's breaths. She liberally spaced her vocals as if to suggest that chopped and screwed we would better understand the words that were coming out of her mouth. She tried to Deebo us excited, "I'm getting tired Brooklyn. Fuck this shit. I'm from South Dallas" and we clapped until the beat stopped and it always did. Us fans lurched right to left ("Do the wop with me") and then sloppily back on our grass-grounded heels ("Freeze").
I just wanted to "wop it out" to quote "30 Rock"'s Tracy Jordan. That's how I let it go, the day's accumulated baggage. I was grateful for the "Apple Tree" update, all sped up and Soulsonic forced out and that shoulder-dipping, finger snapping "I understand the game" elucidation of her complicated dboy love song, "Other Side of the Game" is still stuck in my head.
Throughout she sounded squeakily good-a little part Bob Marley, a healthy slab of old skinny church soloist, with some jazz flirtations and that Chaka Khan imitative core-but she fucked up my two-step. I didn't fully get it until "Bag Lady." That one was for Dilla with "Dolar" taking over for Dr. Dre halfway through and then passing it back by way of the Snoop Dogg's "It Ain't No Fun." The pregnant Badu, a recidivist stage diver, glided down into the hoi polloi on this occasion extending her microphone before the lips of a series of overenthused and off key. She brought it back though, slowed and shut it down on this note, "I don't know if I hit the right notes today. Ain't it good that my shit ain't based on notes no way." Point taken.
Set List: The Healer, On & On, ... & On, Me, My People, Apple Tree, I Want You, Other Side of the Game, Danger, Love of My Life, The Healer, Time's a Wastin', Soldier, Tyrone, & Bag Lady
Check Bossip for more photos.
Tags: 40 Days & 40 Nights, Erykah Badu, Soul
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