Peak Badu

Peak Badu,Erykah Badu is an iconoclast who fills arenas, an online scrapper who just wants to hide from the world, a Fashion Week regular who rejects the notion that clothes should carry a meaning. Come join a four-hour phone call with the Queen of Neo-Soul.

She stood alone atop a black staircase before a megascreen that had all night projected many curious symbols — digital mitochondria, ancestral totems, a beetle — but would soon show a giant moon. Till then, it was just her. Just her and me, just thousands of Mes watching their own private Her. It was late July in Dallas, in the blunt-filled dark of the American Airlines Center, during one of the hottest summers we’ll ever experience until next summer. Time had come for Erykah Badu to sing “Orange Moon.”

From the keyboard trickled pools of ascending notes, and under those keys crickets chirped softly. Everything was very still, everything was the memory of your first great summer lover — then she noseped into the first lines:

I’m an orange moon

Reflecting the light of the sun

The drums locked in. Three background singers oohed on cue. Then Badu’s voice — which some compare to Billie Holiday’s, though she compares it to a clarinet — pulled us through the song, from her album Mama’s Gun. It’s a tale of a man who’d spent so many, many, many nights all alone because his light was too bright. Until, one day, he turned to her. He saw his reflection in her. He smiled at her. He said to her: “How good it is.”

Cover Story

Erykah the Almighty

Photo: Zhong Lin

Hours after her Dallas show, a few dozen fans lingered in the basement of the American Airlines Center waiting for Badu. Her imminent arrival was announced, and a loose receiving line formed, then lost all structure when she entered, barefoot. As she walked toward the small crowd — most seemed under 25 — some hooted wildly and gratefully. A young girl rushed and hugged Badu like a child whose mother finally comes back home from war. All gathered around in a circle, close.

Amid the crowd, Badu tried to speak but started coughing. She’d been coming down with a cold, I learned days later. She’d been grieving her dear friend and former musical director, Daniel Jones, whose sudden death had been announced just days before. “That smoke tore my ass up,” she said, laughing between some coughs, referring to the stage smoke that she sang and danced in for two hours. “Well, you sang yo ass off,” somebody hollered. “You know what?” she said, leaning back on her heels, lifting her eyebrows. “That’s all I had.”

Production Credits

Photography by Zhong Lin
Styling by Jessica Willis and Erykah Badu
Makeup by Pat McGrath Labs
Set Design byJay Evers
Manicure byTaliysha Lenoir
Tailoring by Andrew Bayer
Production byKindly Productions
On the cover: Balenciaga V-neck Pleated Dress, at balenciaga.com.
Luar Feathered Shiesty Headpiece, inquiries at [email protected]. Gloves are Badu’s own.

Thank you for subscribing and supporting our journalism. If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the September 11, 2023, issue of New York Magazine.

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