Erykah Badu - A.D. 2000
OK, last one of the month is Black History Month platinum, and it's not a guy!!!! Sausage Festus interruptus!!!!
This lady is still relatively spry and still out there recording and concertizing, a rarity for this page where most honorees have been dead longer than Stephen Miller's eternal soul.
It occurs to me that she might be the most photogenic, stylish person I've ever put up here. Every picture is like Fashion Runway caliber.
Fortunately, Erykah Badu's got the tunes and the groove to match the image, also an increasing rarity these Autotuned days.
She hit in 1997, right when the latest silly category the Music Biz was inventing from whole cloth to sell was called Neo-Soul.
I halfway remember her coming to SF during the tour I'm spotlighting here, and thinking I should go. But I didn't. Regrets.... I've had a feeeeeeewwwww. But then again, too few to mentiooooooonnnn....
That album and subsequent tour, both called Mama's Gun, were really the moment when she arrived as her own, distinctive thing apart from the stupid industry boxes.
It isn't that she isn't Soul, or isn't a very effective mneumonic torchbearer for the golden era of that music. It's just that there's galaxies more to what she does, integrating Jazz, World themes, a whole lotta Funk and a good measure of well-applied theatricality into a presentation as compelling and unique as any around today.
Anyway, she's outlasted any attempts to categorize her music and style into a convenient little coffin like the Money Men like, becoming one of those artists (yes, it's even harder for women in an industry still Super Sausagey) to forge a long career essentially on her own terms.
So yes, that Mama's Gun excursion, which happened just before 9/11. Think of it as controlled demolition of a Dutch festival venue, using only musical instruments and the clarion voice of the birthday girl.
Erykah Badu
North Sea Jazz Festival
Statenhal
Den Haag, The Netherlands
7.14.2001
01 Rimshot (Intro)
02 Otherside of the Game
03 Penitentiary Philosophy
04 Didn't Cha Know/My Life
05 On & On
06 Cleva
07 Kiss Me On My Neck (Hesi)
08 A.D. 2000
09 Liberation
10 Orange Moon
11 Tyrone
12 percussion interlude
13 Green Eyes
14 Bag Lady/outro
Total time: 1:33:29
disc break goes after Track 07
Erykah Badu - guitar & vocals
Geno "JuneBugg" Young - keyboards & vocals
R.C. Williams - keyboards
Raphael "Lock Johnson" Iglehart - drums
Ramon Gonzalez - percussion
Dwayne Kerr - flute
Braylon Lacy - bass
Kevin Hanson - guitar
N'dambi, Chinah Blac & Yahzarah - vocals
320/48k audio extracted from an extra-HD YouTube Premium file
spectral analysis is lossless to 20 kHz, making this equivalent to a preFM source
converted to 16/44 CD Audio, edited, repaired, tracked & ever-so-slightly volume boosted throughout by EN, February 2026
433 MB FLAC/direct link
433 MB FLAC/direct link
That's it for February, and for the first time in a while, I got to 8 posts in a month! Celebrate accordingly, everyone.
I shall return to March ever onward. But before February's Groundhog Days dissipate into Spring, I was intent on honoring Erykah Badu's big, double nickeled day with this blistering 93 minutes of awesome!--J.
So nice to see this posting of Erykah. Been a fan since the first album. I was the buyer for a large Canadian record chain (Sam The Record Man) at the flagship store. When I was offered the initial buy on her first album, along with other releases that week from MCA Canada, I was listening to a promo cassette as I was ordering. I started with ordering 100 copies on CD but by the end of the cassette I ordered 1000 copies. My MCA rep. had to call the office when I gave him the order because MCA Canada were only bringing in 1000 from the US for all of Canada since Erykah was new and had no track record and it's obvious that MCA US didn't know what they had when they signed her and her label Kedar Entertainment for distribution. Well, she came to Canada, she did an industry showcase and MCA brought her to the store to meet me. I still have the Gold Record (CD) for that release where I was crowned "Mr. Ears" ... hahaha
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