Erykah Badu - New Amerykah Part One (4th World War)
Let me start off by quoting myself from some months ago regarding Erykah Badu’s 4th EP New Amerykah Part One (4th World War)
“I’m not really getting into it, there are a couple of good tracks but nothing that I can get into. Its just not very good, I’m quite disappointed really.”
This was met by swift responses of “It’s not her fault you’re not getting it,” or “your wrong listen to it again.”
As it turns out, I listened to the album again, and I was wrong. My main gripe with New Amerykah was that Erykah doesn’t sing on it, not as much as she did on Mama’s Gun (2000) or Worldwide Underground (2003) and nowhere near the pureness of her debut Baduizm(1997). The Erykah from those albums was the Erykah I fell in love with and with her latest offering I felt, her voice was, just there and not really doing anything. It was like listening to an entire album of Badu features, where her voice is cool but it wasn’t her track. New Amerykah is an electic mix of 70’s funk and soul, along with 9th Wonder and Madlib’s sampling. This is similar to her previous albums in the sense that it it’s different from the norm but what made me a reluctant fan was that this is different from her norm. With time I can see this isn’t such a bad thing. New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) feature production from some of hip-hop’s finest, meaning while Erykah doesn’t steal the show on any of the tracks it is used more like an instrument to accompany the drum, saxophone and base samples. This is evident on the heavily drum influenced tracks The Cell, Soldier, The Healer and Twinkle. There are still some songs where I don’t feel this works, such as Master Teacher, Me and to a lesser extent Amerykahn Promise.
As I probably should have picked up on from the albums title, (Part one) this is like when an actor takes up a new role, you wouldn’t go to see an Al Pacino movie and complain that Frank Slade from Scent of a Woman doesn't have the same personality as Tony Montana....
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