Erykah Badu, New Amerykah Part One – Contunuing the rundown from 2008 missed connections. If only all R&B could be influenced by Erykah. I sometimes wonder how she can persist in pushing avant-garde neo soul to the fore front of her work. But then I realized – she’s just crazy. Actually crazy. Nothing more, nothing less. A tad more focused than your normal crazy, but not much. Her last two albums (Worldwide Underground and New Amerykah respectively) are perfect sketches of songs. Not a true cohesive album, just artist renditions of what poetry, an idea, or even a fledgling thought should be if it were put to music. Where Worldwide Underground left you with the half empty stomach of an EP for breakfast, New Amerykah leaves you much more full by way of small plates that add up to a filling sum. There are very few breakout tracks – no radio single to speak of and an occasionally played video for “Honey” – and quite a few interludes. But they do all address Erykah’s concerns with the material nature of the world (a constant theme for many of her albums). And they somehow build towards a decisive conclusion to the album. This gradually build plays well for the last three songs on the album which make the most sense as fully formed songs. In a way, it’s a smart device to force listeners to hear the entire album in sequence. However, it can only be listened to as a sum of its parts. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it. I liked the appropriate use of funk, the silliness of the blacksploitation soundtrack, and the courage to make an album so completely far away from where contemporary black music is headed. Maybe this will stand as a fork towards the road less taken. And maybe a few more artists will follow.

Tags: crazy, Erykah Badu, neo soul, New Amerykah Par One