Erykah Badu To Release Album ”Worldwide Underground”
Album Title: Worldwide Underground
Album release date: September 16, 2003
Label: Motown
Single (Audio Stream) : “Danger”
Websites: http://www.erykahbadu.com/
http://www.motown.com/
E-cards:
U.S. http://www.erykahbadu.com/ecard/us/
International: http://www.erykahbadu.com/ecard/int/
Singer/songwriter Erykah Badu’s third studio album Worldwide Underground
is a collection of songs firmly rooted in soul without being nostalgic,
recalling a time when ceilings where higher and folk weren’t afraid to
let the music play. “I wasn’t thinking airplay,” says Erykah. “I wasn’t
thinking singles, I just wanted to groove, and groove for a long time.”
Since her 1997, 5x platinum-selling debut, Baduizm, Erykah Badu has been
prodigious and determinedly original. Brilliant writer, producer and
visionary with pendulum timing, the four-time Grammy winning artist
introduced herself as a southern girl with an old soul. Later that year,
she gave fans around the world a taste of her dynamic live performances
when she released the double-platinum set Erykah Badu Live which
contained the run-a-way hit “Tyrone.” Her new millennium follow up, the
2x platinum-certified Mama’s Gun, was an exciting progression; raw,
moody and emotional. Though Erykah considers the sleeper album an
“incomplete thought,” Mama’s Gun was evidence that in the wreckage of
contemporary music, there was an artist among us, a woman who was
confident but vulnerable.
Badu summarizes Worldwide Underground as “the struggle on a good day.”
Here, she is surer, braver, directed, focused; a touch lighter, having
exorcised her inner bag lady. Relaxed and having fun. This time around
Badu is producing the album along with her production team, Freakquency,
consisting of long-time collaborator James Poyser, Rashad “Ringo” Smith
and RC Williams. The eight-jam EP rides on water in a funk-bottom boat.
The brevity is refreshing.
Worldwide Underground was created out of Erykah’s “Frustrated Artist
Tour,” the worldwide road show said artist went on last year to gain
inspiration for the album and tempt the muse. Let her tell it, “I named
it that because I was so frustrated because I could not think of
anything to write. So finally I decided to go on a tour. Just do clubs.
Go back to the essence of the underground. The people, the fans brought
the energy I needed to create ‘Worldwide Underground.'”
And so, from all over the world, those who heard the call gathered in
the name of support of said frustrated artist who traveled by bus all
through the US and across Europe. “I’m on the bus in Germany, in
Switzerland, in Amsterdam, Finland and Italy. I’m everywhere on the
bus,” she recalls. It was on that proverbial road, that Erykah picked up
Zap Mama (Marie Daulne), who eventually joined the tour-“as an
instrument” Badu emphasizes-and who appears with the blessed Caron
Wheeler on Worldwide Underground’s “Bump It,” a sensual, layered song
about turning stuff up, playing your own music loud. The song concludes
with a beautiful breakdown of Badu, Daulne, and Wheeler uttering,
scatting and speaking in tongues. “Bump It” and the breezy, buzzed “Woo”
(cowbells give the song a Go-Go feel) were created onstage and developed
after shows on the tour bus during all night jam sessions.
Created by the production team, Freakquency, Worldwide Underground
stayed true to Badu’s Dallas, Texas, roots. Lots of soul claps, partying
and hollarin.’ Erykah’s life and growing production experience has
taught her that the funk has to be the leader. “It’s about laying back
into the funk and letting the funk lead you,” she says.
So she did. On the sublime “Back In The Day” Erykah let Lenny Kravitz
lead, fingering a bass almost obscenel. Then there is “Love of My Life
Worldwide,” a remix of the Grammy-winning song she performed with Common
on the Brown Sugar soundtrack. The song also garnered a 2002 BET Video
Award for “Video of the Year.” Built on the backbone of Sequence’s 1979
“Funk You Up,” the remix features Angie Stone (the original Angie B of
the Sequence trio), Queen Latifah, Bahamadia and Erykah as her hip hop
altar ego MC Apples. “Me and my sister used to dance off of that song
when we were kids,” Erykah reminisces, “Sugar Hill Records! Had the
light blue album cover in my book bag. It was something in-between my
mother’s soul music and this new rap music in the eighties. In-between
is where I developed my craft.”
There are other revisits. The cinematic lead single “Danger,” which
Erykah describes as “sophisticated gangsterism,” picks up where
Baduizm’s “Otherside of the Game” left off. But where “Otherside” was
lamenting, “Danger” is both revolutionary and critical as it depicts the
desperation, love, commitment and destruction of the hustler’s woman’s
life. The song concludes with what can only be considered a wicked
primal wail for all souls in the struggle on the streets. Dead Prez
appears on the “already living and breathing” “Steady On the Grind,”
which is the undercurrent of WWU, getting your hustle on trying to do
what you love. Homefolk Roy Hargrove appears on a remake of Donald
Byrd’s 1975 “Think Twice” where Hargrove gets to scattin’.
Ultimately, Worldwide Underground is for lovers of music. “When I create
music, I think as a fan, as a soul lover, and as a person who uses music
as therapy,” says Badu. The collaborations on her album are organic, yet
deliberately represent a group of musicians that go against the grain.
“I love what I do and I love the camaraderie amongst those artists,” she
says. “And we choose to stay underground.”