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Signing/?On & On?
Kedar Massenburg (exec. producer/label head): As soon as I heard "On & On," I knew that I had to get involved. The thing that struck me immediately was the beginning, because Erykah had used a beat in the intro that Daddy-O, a member of a group I managed called Stetsasonic, had created: Audio Two?s "Top Billin."
Badu: That?s Dallas, Texas. Once I was out of school, I?d met this young, maybe 18 or 19, underground producer in Dallas named JaBorn Jamal. We created the beat to ?On? together. Mary J. Blige had used audio-tuned drums in ?Real Love? [starts imitating that drum beat], so I wanted to start the song like that because she was one of my biggest inspirations. And the rest is herstory.
Massenburg: I first played "On & On" for D'Angelo in my car, and he was like, ?Yo, Key, man -- she?s incredible, you gotta let me produce the album.? I said, ?Nah, D, you couldn't even finish your own album! You think I'm gonna think I'm gonna let you produce Erykah? As long as you take? But I'm gonna let her open up for you in Dallas.? He was only like 22, and he was already soooooo slow and picky about music. Also, I didn't want no sparks to start flying.
Bob Power (producer, "On & On"): D'Angelo's demos were killer, Me'Shell [N'deg?ocello]'s demos were killer, Erykah's demos were great. So in those cases, what you want to do is make something that sounds like a record, but not lose the coolness of the demos. It's much more difficult than it sounds.
Badu: The one thing I wish I?d done differently on the album is ?On & On.? Originally, we came with a really raw track. But I made one compromise by letting Kedar hook me up with a producer who wanted to make it into more of a ?song? -- it took the rawness out of it. I like the raw version that nobody has ever heard a lot better. I wasn?t mad at the newer version, it just took the street out of it a little bit.
Power: Before Erykah came along, no one really had the vision, or possibly the courage, to do something in that fashion. When you have a piece of art with great bones, you can just keep taking things away and it only gets better.
Massenburg: I called her and told her that if she sounded as good live as she did on her demo, then I would sign her to my label. So I flew to Dallas, and had her open for D'Angelo. At the time, she didn't have her hair wrapped up -- she had long braided extensions down her back. I thought she was a little weird at first, but realized that her weirdness had a method to its madness, and that she was a genius in her own right. I had to have her on my label, you know?
Badu: Kedar understood what I was trying to do. I signed with him because I think there were only two people on the label, and he made me feel my project would get the energy it needed.
Massenburg: She was performing around Dallas as Erykah Free with her cousin. They had a routine where she would sing and he would rap; it was more hip-hop-oriented. I remember telling her, "Listen, I have no problem with your group, but I think you should just be a soloist." I felt she was that strong, that she needed to be on a stage by herself.
Tim Latham (engineer): She's a force. You know when she's in the room, and you don't even see her there -- you just feel her walk in. Not too many people have that effect.
Badu: During that time period, I had to make the most adult decision of my life: whether I wanted to be in the squatting or sitting position during childbirth. [Laughs.] In all seriousness, my cousin Free and I were a group called Erykah Free. Sometimes we called ourselves the Funky Cousins. I never really wanted to be apart, but I didn?t really want to be a group -- I wanted to be a solo artist. I didn?t say anything for a long time, because we are just so good together. When I did finally decide to express that, it was very difficult. And it took some of the sweetness out of signing the deal. But Free, being the human being he is, said he understood. He didn?t go anywhere, of course; he?s produced on all the rest of my albums.
Massenburg: She was signed to my publishing company, too, because I knew how big she was going to be -- nobody else really believed it. I said, ?I'll tell you what, Erykah: Why don't you go shop around all your publishing, and whatever offer comes back the biggest, I'll match?? So that's what she did.
Recording
Badu: Most of Baduizm was written before I signed. Sonically [the demo] was just right for me. It was the way I wanted it to sound: very raw and underproduced. I did add a few songs.
Chinwah: I believe that Erykah started out with a very good idea of what she wanted to do with her record. There were certain Quincy Jones albums we used to listen to together. A lot of Bernard Ighner?s ?Everything Must Change? -- it influenced both of us from a songwriting standpoint, inspiring us to infuse a jazzy sound into what we were doing. Of course Chaka Khan -- she liked Chaka, and you can hear that.
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?Next Lifetime?
Badu: I wrote that song in college. Once I got to New York, I got new music from this guy named Tone the Backbone, who was in a local DJ group called the Da Beatminerz (De La Soul, Nas) that I met through Kedar. Coincidentally, his partner, Evil Dee, broke my song ?On & On? on Hot 97 when it was a single. Tone gave me a beat tape, and I chose that beat off of there. The lyrics sounded really good over it.
Latham: She was in the studio with me almost every day [during the mixing process]. It was great; some days we'd sit down and she?d make us tea before we listened to everything. It's all genuine -- behind the scenes, she's the same as she is in public.
Philadelphia
Sigma Sounds Studios
Badu: I was in love with this group called The Roots from Philadelphia. They weren?t very popular or famous at the time, so I didn?t know how cooperative Kedar would be. But surprisingly and pleasantly, he trusted my vision. He got me on a plane to Philly and I came back with ?Otherside of the Game,? ?Sometimes? and ?Afro.? So I added those to the track listing.
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?Other Side of the Game?
David Ivory (engineer): It was funny; that record was kind of done in between sessions for The Roots. If something wasn?t happening for them, then we?d work on Erykah?s record. It was back and forth like that.
Badu: At the time, [the Roots] were working with a young piano player named James Poyser. Back then he wasn?t a member of the group yet.
James Poyser (keyboardist/producer): I was sort of on the periphery, doing things with some other musicians. Rich Nichols, The Roots' manager, was like, "We're working with this girl from Dallas, if you want to come in the studio and vibe with it.? We went in and instantly clicked -- wrote a few songs and became great friends. We're still working together.
Badu: James and I finish each other?s sentences musically. He is my Piano Man. We just connected very well because of the way he plays and the choices he makes with chords, tones and changes. That is my world. After I met him, I didn?t play with any other piano player, or write songs with anyone else but him, to this day.
Poyser: We sort of connected personally, which is always a great way to connect musically. She was just a real cool and funny -- extremely funny -- person. We all clicked, and then it was just us playing music, me and Ahmir [?Questlove? Thompson] and the other musicians. It was really, really simple. It wasn't like we were shaking the trees really hard -- things fell off the trees easy.
Badu: When he sat down and began playing the chords to ?Other Side,? I was just convinced that [James and I] were supposed to meet. We wrote and arranged the song together. It was an instrumental first, because for me music always comes before lyrics. If not, that would be poetry. So we wrote and arranged the tune, then I took it back to the hotel on a cassette and wrote the lyrics there. Then we recorded it the next day there in Philly.
Poyser: The beauty of doing it with live musicians is just plugging in and playing. I was sitting at the piano playing with her and happened upon that chord progression, and she was like, ?That's it.? Literally 15 minutes later, the track was cut. I think she might have worked on the lyrics overnight, but the next day the song was done.
Ivory: Because it was her first record, she was very shy. I remember a couple sessions where, for her to sing, I?d have to turn all the lights off, put paper over the meters [on the mixing board]... I mean, she wanted it really dark sometimes, to where I couldn?t even see what was going on. That kind of stuff.
Poyser: There were quite a few jam sessions. I remember D'Angelo being there in the studio, too, and one day it was like the two of them on the mic, I think the Jazzy[fatnastees]s were around? D was playing [piano], I was playing and Ahmir was playing. We just sang covers and created things for a good five, six hours. That was sort of the vibe.
Ivory: A lot of times they would just jam. Scott [Storch, producer and former Roots keyboardist] walks in the door, Common?s in the lobby, Ahmir is playing drums, Rahzel -- they would just say, ?Okay, come on in, let?s just do something.? We would do that for hours. It was intimate, it was a good time. Nobody was a big star at that point, everybody was still coming up, a big posse of contributors. I mean, I worked with [the Roots] for eight, nine years on all those records, throughout the ?90s. And Erykah was a great part of the middle of that.
http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/hip-hop/7686037/erykah-badu-baduizm-oral-history-interview
It's a good a read.
Very good read. Pretty cool that she was inspired by Mary and recorded most of the album before she even signed. Erykah will always be my girl.
Love this but prefer mamas gun
Thanks. I love these sorts of wrote-ups. Her debut is classic.
No prob.
"next Lifetime" is one of my favorite songs EVER.
def' one of those songs I attached a memory to. smh
Four Leaf Clover>>>>
Didn't she say "Brandy" I soured Baduizm, wish they would have touched on that.