When he started taking his talent seriously as a teenager, he began “singing and harmonizing” along to Badu’s records, using her songs as vocal warm-ups. Badu was one of the only pop artists he was allowed to listen to. Bernarr grew up in a household where his parents only played gospel and jazz.
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Vocalist Durand Barnarr, who started singing backup for the Dallas native after she spotted his cover of her song “That Hump” on YouTube nearly ten years ago, has called the young artists influenced by Erykah’s sound and lyricism the “Badu Babies.” (Not to be confused with the actual babies Badu helps bring into the world in her role as a doula.)īernarr says that as a kid he was initially drawn to Badu’s tone, a “floozy, full twang.” “When you take away the band, she’s a blues singer,” he says. “There’s a gang of singers I’ve heard after she came out that adopted her kind of phrasing.” The way she emotes, growls and that Billie Holliday tremolo that she has, it all works,” he says. He says Badu “sings in a way that’s imperfectly perfect.” Producer, songwriter, and member of both The Roots and The Soulquarians production collective, James Poyser has been working with Badu since her debut album, Baduizm, co-writing “Other Side of the Game” during one of their first sessions together. Listen to Erykah Badu on Apple Music and Spotify. Her vocal delivery has always been essential to the ways in which we understand Badu’s artistry. But one listen to a fan favorite such as “Green Eyes,” and it’s easy to see how significant her vocals have been to her legacy, too. As Badu has introduced us to her varied artistic facets playing with aliases like Badulla Oblongata, Sara Bellum, and Analogue Girl in a Digital World DJ’ing, rhyming, hosting, and delivering babies, her singing almost gets lost in the conversation. Decades after her 1997 debut, Erykah continues to be a source of inspiration for producers and singers such as SZA, Lion Babe’s Jillian Harvey and Ari Lennox.īadu has received her flowers in the time she’s reigned as the “First Lady of Neo-Soul” celebrated for her storytelling through layered and nuanced lyrics for her persona and style and her mix of soul, hip-hop, and jazz in her music. Her voice recalled Billie Holiday, her style recalled the Black pride and Afro-futurism of the 70s, but her sum total was something completely new to R&B. (In fact, the subgenre’s name was originally coined to market Badu). Erykah Badu was one of the four R&B vocalists, along with D’Angelo, Maxwell, and Lauryn Hill, who ushered in the neo-soul era of the late 90s.
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