New Amerykah Part One (4th World War)
Encyclopedia
New Amerykah Part One is the fourth studio album
by American recording artist Erykah Badu
, released February 26, 2008, on Universal Motown. It follows her 2003 album Worldwide Underground
and a hiatus from recording music. Communicating with several hip hop producers
over the Internet
, Badu conceived the album through the GarageBand
software program on her laptop, which led to the album's primary recording sessions at Electric Lady Studios
in New York City.
An esoteric concept album, New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) features social commentary and impersonal lyrics, with subject matter that includes poverty, urban violence, complacency, and cultural identity. It features dense, stylistically-varied music that incorporates funk
, soul
, and hip hop
genres.
The album debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200
chart, selling 123,884 copies in its first week. It produced three singles and has sold 359,000 copies in the United States. Upon its release, New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) received general acclaim from music critics. The album was ranked in the top-10 of various critics and publications' year-end lists of best albums in 2008. It was named the best album of 2008 by the Associated Press
.
Dealing with writer's block
and conflicted about her mainstream success, Erykah Badu embarked on her Frustrated Artist Tour
in 2003. Her increasing popularity brought upon some backlash towards her public image and expectations of her as "queen of neo soul
", an honorific nickname that she found limiting. Her third studio album, Worldwide Underground
(2003), was released to mostly positive reviews and was certified gold
, although it was underpromoted and sold less than her previous albums. Badu herself was not satisfied with the album and felt she had nothing substantial to express with her music at the time. Plagued by a creative block and self-doubt, she took time off from her recording career and focused on caring for her children, although she continued to tour in the period between albums.
In 2004, Badu gave birth to a daughter, Puma Rose, with her former boyfriend, rapper The D.O.C.
. Later that year, she received her first computer as a Christmas gift from drummer and producer Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, and began communicating with and receiving music from him and other producers such as Q-Tip
and J Dilla
. Beginning in 2005, Badu worked from her home in Dallas and used the software application GarageBand
as a digital audio workstation
, which she was introduced to by her son, Seven. He taught her how to use her laptop as a mini recording studio, and she used it to construct various backing tracks for songs. Using GarageBand, she recorded demos of her vocals by singing into the computer's microphone.
She composed more than 75 songs within the year and intended on splitting them among her planned series of New Amerykah albums. She said of her productivity with her laptop, "I could be here, in my own space, with headphones on, and the kids could be doing what they doing, and I’m cooking dinner still, I’m making juices still, and it’s so easy just to sing. You got an idea — boom! Idea, boom!" Badu's iChat
buddies, including hip hop producers Questlove, Madlib
, 9th Wonder
, and J Dilla
, IMed her to get back into the studio and sent her tracks. Such exchanges inspired a creative spark for Badu, which she explained in an interview for the Dallas Observer
, "I started to accept that maybe it's OK for me to put out music, and it doesn't have to be something dynamic or world-changing. But just as I was accepting that, here comes this burst of light and energy and creativity. And that's the process, I guess, of life—the detachment and the release of something gives you even more room to grow or be creative."
With the album, Badu sought to augment her music's production, expose the work of underground
hip hop producers
, and exceed listeners' expectations of contemporary music. She discussed her creative intentions in an interview for Billboard
, stating "In taking on a project like this, I'm taking the responsibility to talk for my race and my planet." In an interview for the New York Post
, she explained the album to be about "the war against self [...] against your inner being", and said of her hiatus, "I've always taken my time between albums. I'm a performing artist - recording is secondary to me. My performances are what drive me. It's like my therapy. I like to write a lot while I'm on the road before I even think about recording." She also commented on her writer's block in retrospect, saying "Over the course of my career I thought I suffered from writer's block. But then I realized I only want to record an album when I have something relevant enough to say."
, James Poyser
, audio engineer Mike "Chav" Chavarria, and the members of musical group Sa-Ra
, who made production and lyrical contributions to most of the tracks. She later explained choosing which producers to work with, saying "All of these people have a reputation for being visionaries and knowing them well, I felt 'Okay, now it's time to put together a project that not only takes us to another place, another dimension, but highlights these sights.' And that's what I had in mind for this project". She started the album's initial recording at Luminous Sound Recording in Dallas, where she was assisted by Chavarria in recording vocals and basic tracks to 2-tracks
. Her vocal harmonies were recorded to a Studer
A820 ½-inch, an Analog Playback Tape machine, using RMG
magnetic tape
. James Poyser, who was heavily involved as musician and producer in all of Badu's previous work, had his role on the album reduced amicably to accommodate her minimalist, beat
-driven approach in production. He discussed Badu's direction for the album in an interview for Shook
, stating "she wanted a dirtier, more organic underground hip hop sound. So she dealt with cats that brought that sound to the table."
A portion of the album's initial recording and programming
also took place at Sa-Ra's Cosmic Dust Studio. Om'mas Keith of Sa-Ra said of Badu's role at their studio, "Sometimes she’d come through and pick a skeletal and other times the beats would get made right then and there." Sa-Ra member Shafiq Husayn was bestowed by Badu with the honor of being the only person allowed to write lyrics for her. Husayn discussed the responsibility, saying "She’s never written with anyone on any of her previous releases. She had to go through some personal things to come to the point where she’d let somebody write for her in the manner that we did. It was spontaneous but at the same time there was structure to it. It might not have the right expression, or the right enunciation. Writing is so personal. That was a big thing."
in New York City, where the album was completed. In her interview for Remix, she elaborated on the recording process, stating "Everything that the producers e-mailed me I put into GarageBand. Then we would try to duplicate it at Electric Lady. I did vocals on my laptop, babies crying and everything. I also EQ
'd the tracks using effects like GarageBand's Vocal Reflection." Badu worked with audio engineers Chris Bell, Tom Soares, and Mike "Chav" Chavarria, who had spent numerous hours with Badu listening to her previous albums, including her 1997 debut Baduizm
(Kedar, 1997) and its 2000 follow-up Mama's Gun
, and older albums such as The Dark Side of the Moon
(1973) by progressive rock band Pink Floyd
and Innervisions
(1973) by Stevie Wonder
. They worked with the producers' emailed music and embellished their own 2-tracks by using Pro Tools
to incorporate live instrumentation such as bass, guitar, flutes, percussion, and keyboards. Contributing musicians included vocalist Georgia Anne Muldrow
, trumpeter Roy Hargrove
, vibraphonist Roy Ayers
, guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López
, and vocalist Bilal.
Influenced by Badu's creative flow and their time listening to music, Chavarria added special effects and delay
s to the tracks by using and manipulating a variety of plug-ins and guitar pedals, subsequently reworking effects frequency and modulation
parameters. He commented on their handling of the producers' tracks, saying "We were able to build around them. Erykah made this record to display to the world that there is this whole group of producers out there who are outside of the mainstream making great music. She was trying to highlight what they do. We didn't want to change what the producers originally brought to the table. We didn't change it; we just added to it." Badu said of the approach, "I work in layers. The first layer is the track. The second layer is the songs. The third would be the musicians who add a certain nuance. And when they play, they play like they are a sample. Or we take a piece of what they played, and we sample and loop
it."
At Electric Lady, Badu applied a multifaceted approach to recording her singing and opted against post-production editing of her vocals. She used her voice impressionistically
, and her vocals were characterized by high scales
, varied frequencies, wide intervals
, and time-stretched harmonies. Chavarria, who engineered the vocals with Badu, remarked on her singing, "Her voice has so many frequencies, from a subharmonic of her tonic to a thin raspiness, and she wants to hear all of that." Badu used a Shure SM57 dynamic microphone, finding it to have enough bottom for her voice type, and cut vocal takes while situated between two speakers in the studio's control room with the monitor mix
playing. She explained this setting to be more comfortable, noting the ability to hear herself sing and hold the microphone when moving around. Badu elaborated on the process in her interview for Remix, stating "I might do a vocal take 100 times and not get it, then come back the next day at 3 a.m., and laying down on the floor, my ears will get it. Pitch
is good but feeling is better. I never cut and paste or punch in, I like a single vocal take. [...] When I do vocals, I am singing with a certain volume in my voice. I am singing the double and triple harmonies at different volumes. You don't have to adjust it; I have already done it. We mix
as we go, so by the time we put the vocals to ½-inch tape, I know it. If you touch a damn thing, I will know it."
To adjust to potential audio feedback
and leakage
and obtain a usable take, Chavarria tried having Badu sit in an overstuffed chair six feet behind the mixing console
and use alternate microphones such as a Neumann
M 269 or AEA R44 ribbon microphone
with Sony MDR-V900 headphones into a Furman headphone mixer. However, Badu felt she could not perceive all of her voice's frequencies with the headphones and often discarded them to move towards the studio monitor
s. He also considered situating her in an equilateral triangle with the two speakers, one of which would be placed out of phase
in order to have the leakage cancel itself. However, according to him, the mic has to be stationary, while Badu "likes to hold the mic like an MC. She is at home as a live performer." He said of working around audio spills and adapting to Badu's methods, "We worked to make her vocals fit into the track, phase
-wise. [...] What did work was to keep the monitors fairly low and turn the microphone out of phase, and we would move her around the room until she found a spot where the leakage was reasonable and where she felt comfortable and could hear herself. But just as often she would just sit in that chair behind the board in the A Room."
As with her previous recordings, Badu used tuning fork
s when recording the album. She said of her fondness of using the instrument, "According to the message I am trying to get and studying the frequency of sound, each tuning fork has a certain vibrational energy that is conducive to a feeling or a color or a smell. They're related to different chakra
s in the body, too. Some may make you feel good or sexy or conscious of what you're saying. Depending on the song and the frequency I am trying to get over to the people, I use the tuning forks, and I also played talking drum." New Amerykah Part One was mastered
at Electric Lady Studios in February 2008.
The album's music is a dense, stylistic amalgam that primarily incorporates funk
, soul
, and hip hop
genres, as well as jazz
and electronica
. Alexander Billet of ZNet
writes that the styles featured on New Amerykah Part One are "woven together into an often mind-bending eclecticism." Music writer Nelson George
describes it as "a complicated mesh of soul, electro
sounds and references, simple and obscure [...] a musically challenging album that owes much to Radiohead
and Curtis Mayfield
". Expanding of the loose, jam-oriented style of Worldwide Underground, it features groove-based instrumentation, murky tones, hip hop musical phrasing, eccentric interludes, and various beats, digital glitches
, and samples
. Sputnikmusic
's Nick Butler notes the influence of J Dilla in the album's sound, and compares the music to the work of neo soul
collective Soulquarians
, which featured Dilla, Badu, and New Amerykah contributors Questlove, James Poyser, and Bilal. Butler adds that the album is "moved beyond the ideas and conventions that have defined neo-soul over the past decade." Greg Kot
of the Chicago Tribune
writes that, "Like her peers D'Angelo
(with Voodoo in 2000), Common
(Electric Circus
in 2002) and the Roots
(Phrenology
in 2002), Badu has made a record that defies efforts to categorize it." He adds that its "murkier, funkier vibe" draws on the "hypnotic funk" of early 1970s albums such as Miles Davis
's On the Corner
(1972), Herbie Hancock
's Sextant
(1973), and Sly & the Family Stone
's There's a Riot Goin' On
(1971).
Similar to Voodoo and On the Corner, New Amerykah Part One emphasizes sound and mood over choruses and verses. The album is unififed by a musical theme, with songs sequenced together and typified by ominous musical elements, minor-key
melodies, and atmospheric beats. Greg Kot characterizes it as "heavy on shadowy mood and mesmerizing groove, and short on melody and hooks." Ben Ratliff of The New York Times
distinguishes the music's mood as "claustrophobic and sad and sometimes grandiose", with turbid tones and vibrato
by Badu. Lauren Carter of the Boston Herald
views that Badu's subtle musical approach led to her "wrapping tracks in a hazy, mellow groove that frequently has the feel of a seance
." Ken Micallef of Remix compares the album's "fluid bass rhythms" to "the low-down subterfuge of D'Angelo's masterpiece, Voodoo", noting that "Badu's layered vocal harmonies [...] are at times frighteningly bizarre; the music is diverse and exploratory; altogether, the overwhelming underground nature of the record recalls a mad mash of Stevie Wonder
's Innervisions
, Sly and the Family Stone's Fresh
and Quasimoto
's The Further Adventures of Lord Quas
." Several writers have compared its sound to the music of Funkadelic
. Viewing both albums as "diffuse", Eric Henderson of Slant Magazine
comments that "Worldwide Underground was Parliament
. New AmErykah is Funkadelic", with the latter being more "urgent" and avant-garde
.
Songs on the album incorporate experimental hip hop backing tracks and other hip hop elements in a surrealistic manner. The majority of the beats are dark, blunted, and hazy, and have been noted by music writers as conveying an urban soundscape
and feeling of paranoia. Most of the songs were either produced or co-written by members of Sa-Ra, who are known for their sonically dissonant
music, characerized by eccentric chord
placements and off-time beats. Mildred Fallen of Shook
writes that the album is "as much an inauguration for Sa-Ra as it is a re-emergence for Erykah Badu." Andy Kellman of Allmusic calls its music "varied and layered", noting "plenty of fearless weirdness and a couple relaxed soul-jazz
backdrops", and cites the album as "easily the most hip-hop and most out-there release from Badu thus far, with beats bumping, knocking, and booming in roughly equal measure, sometimes switching tacks or vanishing midstream, dropping down dark corridors, gradually levitating into direct sunlight." Music writer Sasha Frere-Jones
comments on the album's hip hop element, saying that it "isn’t so much hip-hop as it is a reorganization of the historical flotsam and jetsam
that were recycled and turned into hip-hop." Music writer Alex V. Cook characterizes the music as heavy on the groove and bass elements that are predominantly found in funk and hip hop.
, religion, poverty, urban violence, the abuse of power, complacency, cultural identity
, drug addiction, and nihilism
. Badu has said that the album discusses "religion, [...] poor families, the undermining of the working class, the so-called minority." Andy Gill of The Independent
denotes the album's subject matter as "the black struggle to find a place of nobility". Greg Kot writes that the album "plays like an extended meditation on the African-American community, streaked with anger, sadness and a pinch of hope", noting that "pleas for perseverance [...] alternate with calls to action". Patrick Taylor of RapReviews calls its subject matter both "contemporary and old school, referencing the psychedelic soul
of the late sixties and seventies, and realizing the anger and optimism of that era." Ben Ratliff calls it "a political record" and views that most of the "social agenda" in Badu's lyrics has been previously explored by artists such as Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye
, and Funkadelic, adding that it "suggests that little has changed in nearly 40 years, and perhaps [...] that’s her point."
Music journalist Nitsuh Abebe writes that the album's lyrical content is rooted in the era of "those Civil Rights and post-Civil Rights moments when African-Americans were left with some strange, heavy tasks: sorting out how to have a cultural identity as part of a nation that had, up until very recently, been a dedicated adversary, and sorting out how to clean up the wreckage that had accumulated in the meantime." Quentin B. Huff of PopMatters
compares its thematic structure to singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega
's Beauty & Crime
(2007), which was composed by Vega as an ode to her native New York City, and interprets the plot of New Amerykah Part One to be "an amalgam of post-Civil Rights Era experience mixed with a post-9/11
worldview, plus a few shots of community spirit, individual growth, pleas for social activism and spiritual enlightenment, and [...] the realities of death." Huff comments that the album's "clash in musical styles" reinforces the subject matter's "clash between progress and patience", adding that some songs "seem committed to having America honor" the promise of the American Dream
for African-Americans, while other songs "seem to reject the promise, or at least the idea that the promise can be fulfilled without considerable effort".
Badu's songwriting on the album is characterized by austerity, pointillism
, stream of consciousness, improvisation, and scenic narrative. Her lyrics are alternately overtly political and deeply personal, interlaced with Five Percenter
notions and references to the Nation of Islam
. Alex Macpherson of The Guardian
writes that Badu's lyrics "veer from oblique poetry to direct, full-force observational commentary". Melena Ryzik of The New York Times describes it as "idiosyncratic" and finds Badu's "hard-boiled speechifying" to be "charged by a rambling political fervor and a level of introspection that were only hinted at in her previous work." Badu expresses a motherly perspective and feelings of dismay and empathy for the subjects in the songs. Charles Aaron of Spin
comments that "a sense of history and maternal compassion [...] grounds even her most oblique forays." Nitsuh Abebe writes similarly, "her keen writing about people" gives songs "much of their shape" and views that her candor helps communicate the album's "social concerns, which could otherwise sound like a laundry list of black-community struggles".
as its backing track. The original song was co-written and produced by Roy Ayers, who gave Badu the original master tape for her to rework on the album. Ayers and Edwin Birdsong
were inspired to write the song by President Lyndon B. Johnson
's 1965 speech "The American Promise", which called for justice and equal rights in the United States. "Amerykahn Promise" features explicit political satire and has themes of disfranchisement and the hindrance of the American Dream
. Its tongue-in-cheek
subject matter portrays America as a land of broken promises. The song opens with a blaxploitation
trailer blurb
, saying "more action, more excitement, more everything", and features an improvisatory funk vamp, RAMP vocalists Sibel Thrasher and Sharon Matthews, and an authoritative male voice, performed by Om'mas Keith of Sa-Ra. The authoritative character is portrayed as a circus-barker
whose smoke and mirrors
presentation of the American Dream leads to contentious dialogue with Badu. A female voice at the end of the song asks, "Has anyone seen my 42 laws?", an arcane allusion to the 42 divine laws of ancient Egyptian goddess Maat
.
Produced by Madlib, "The Healer" is an ode to hip hop culture and a proclamation of its scope. It opens with a brief snippet from a song by Malcolm McLaren
featuring the World's Famous Supreme Team
. Music writer Piero Scaruffi
describes the song's music as "trancey, exotic and brooding", while Sasha Frere-Jones notes "bells, unidentifiable knocks, a lonesome instrument that might be a sitar, or a guitar, and lots of empty space" in the musical backdrop, adding that "the music flirts with total stasis, though it still has an audible beat." Badu's lyrics, delivered in an incantation
style, make reference to various names of God, including Humdililah, Allah, Jehovah, Yahweh, Jah, and Rastafari, while asserting hip hop to be "bigger than" social institutions such as religion and government. She explained the lyrics and religious references, saying "to me, hip-hop is felt in all religions - it has a healing power. I've recently been to Palestine, Jerusalem, Africa and a bunch of other places, and everyone is listening to hip-hop. There's something about that kicking snare sound that all kinds of people find meaning in."
Layered with acoustic guitars, keyboards, and a shuffling drumbeat, the midtempo, autobiographical song "Me" discusses Badu's thoughts and feelings about her life, including the struggle of growing as a public figure. It features multitracked trumpet by Roy Hargrove. She mocks others' perception of her, which she has explained as "everything you can see of Erykah Badu — the Ankh
s, the powers, the 5 Percenters, the mysteries, it’s all true. The lies; it’s all true. Had two babies with different daddies. Thirty-six years old and addicted to a variety of spending." The song's jazz conclusion
has Badu singing about her mother's life and resilience in unison with a muted trumpet. Piero Scaruffi compares Badu to "the sweetest Diana Ross
" on the song and finds the songwriting "simple and spontaneous". "My People" has a slow beat and righteous lyrics delivered with gospel
and chant
-like repetition and call and response
patterns. It features a sample of singer-songwriter Eddie Kendricks
' 1972 song "My People...Hold On".
"Soldier
" was produced by Karriem Riggins and features a pulsing groove, soft flute, rugged drums, and a deflty chopped sample. It was written by Badu immediately after receiving Riggins' beat for the song. Riggins likens the song's production style to that of J Dilla and his Detroit hip hop scene, stating "We shared a lot of the same ideas and I was really inspired by his sound. A lot of producers from Detroit have a certain sound, and I think it just comes from being in the city. Erykah definitely connects to that and she wanted that sound." The song's sociopolitical
lyrics have Badu expressing sympathy and solidarity for those facing oppression, with references to black-on-black crime
, police corruption
, and Hurricane Katrina
. "The Cell" was produced by Sa-Ra member Shafiq Husayn and features a lively, choral
style and hard bop
feel. A metaphor for both heridity and confinment, "The Cell" is a tableau of crime, drugs, and desperation in urban decay, streamlined by a stark story about Brenda, a character who falls victim to her environment.
"Twinkle" was co-produced by Mike "Chav" Chavarria and has a dreadful, uneasy mood. Cited by Chavarria as the album's most effects-heavy track, it features a futuristic sound, a convoluted beat, and abstract aural elements such as white noise
bursts, high-pitched voices, abrasive instruments, and layers of twinkling keyboard bass
. Additionally, the song incorporates guitar by Omar Rodríguez-López and Jef Lee Johnson. The song's lyrics lament the plight of the African-American community and the cyclical effects on African Americans by the various failures of the social institutions such as the health care
, education
, and prison systems in the United States. Badu raps in the song's verse, "Children of the matrix be hittin’ them car switches / Seen some virgin Virgos hanging out with Venus bitches", followed by her singing, "They don’t know their language, they don’t know their God". Over humming keyboards, the song's closing minutes feature a speech in the ancient African language of Mdw Ntchr, followed by a rant by a speaker that is modelled after actor Peter Finch
's rant in the 1976 film Network
. The speaker angrily indictes the state of the world and the complacency of people. Philadelphia Weekly
s Craig D. Linsey describes "Twinkle" as a "dense inner-city blues
".
"Master Teacher" was conceived by Georgia Anne Muldrow on her Rhodes piano
at Sa-Ra's Cosmic Dust Studio with Badu present and was originally intended for one of their albums. Its idyllic music blends mellow soul and glitchy hip hop, featuring a chopped sample of Curtis Mayfield's 1972 song "Freddie's Dead
". The song's lyrics envision a higher degree of African-American identity. Its vocalists ask in refrain
, "What if there were no niggas, only master teachers?", and answering "I stay woke", with Badu responding "I’m in the search of something new / Search inside me, searching inside you". Midway through the song, keyboardist James Poyser appears and softens the music's tempo, with a fluid, jazzy sound. "That Hump" concerns the topic of drug dependency. The closing track "Telephone" is a tribute to J Dilla, who died in 2006 from complications with blood disorder, and has themes of sorrow and hope. It serves as a departure from the preceding songs' edgier musical direction, featuring soft melodies and an acoustic feel similar to Badu's live sound. The songs opens with the sound of ominous sirens, referencing J Dilla's 2006 album Donuts
. The song's lyrics are based on a story told to Badu by J Dilla's mother on the day of his death. James Poyser explained in an interview, "Dilla's mom told Erykah about one day when he was telling her about this dream he had where Ol'Dirty
was telling him to get on a different color bus and giving him directions home". Poyser said that the song's music was inspired by Dilla's passing and discussed its recording, stating:
The closing track "Honey
" is a percussive, lighthearted love song that contains a sample of singer Nancy Wilson's 1978 song "I'm in Love". The track opens with a reprise
of "Amerykahn Promise", with an announcer saying, "We hope you enjoyed your journey and now we’re putting control of you back to you", and a countdown leading to "Honey". According to Badu, the song is about "a lover, a fictitious character named Slim, who I'm chasing." Allmusic's Andy Kellman comments that the song is included as an unlisted track as "it doesn't fit into the album's fabric, what with its drifting, deeply sweetened, synth-squish-and-string-drift groove."
. The cover features an abstract portrayal of Badu, who dons vintage nameplate knuckle rings bearing the album title and an Afro
decorated in a bric-a-brac
manner with various emblems. Badu and Emek saught to reflect the former's perspective on various topics, including music, religion, governments, and economics, and incorporate emblems to depict American culture and modern society. Images featured in the Afro include those of flowers, spray cans, dollar signs, power plants, musical notes, toilets, raised fists, needles, laptops, turntables, handcuffs, broken chains, bar codes, drugs, and guns. The album's interior artwork features ominous, psychedelic, futuristic, and apocalyptic imagery. The artwork includes illustrations of a red-eyed Uncle Sam
pointing a gun, robotic creatures tattooing each other, a bar code bearing the alphanumeric
message "50C1AL 5Y5T3M", and a suited skeleton with a dollar sign on its skull lecturing a headless audience from a podium that bears the pyramid image from the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States
. The illustration of a soft melting fork, hypodermic needle, and spoon is an adaptation of Salvador Dalí
's 1931 painting The Persistence of Memory
.
Before its release, the album was tentatively called KahBa, which Badu derived from her name, as a reference to Islam
and Kemetism. The title of the album series, New Amerykah, is a pun
of Badu's name. She has explained one meaning of it as "a statement that simply says, 'This is the beginning of the new world'-for both the slaves and the slave masters. In other words, everybody has to wake up and see. This new world moves much faster. We don't even realize how fast we're moving." In her interview for Remix, Badu said that New Amerykah also means "a very different and new for me" and elaborated on this context, stating "In 1997, a 25-year-old Erykah Badu came out as an artist, pregnant, a mother-to-be. We used to bring cassettes home as our listening from the studio. No one had a cell phone, only a couple people with these great big contraptions. The Internet was not our form of communication; we still had the library. We were creating from sand and scrap. So quickly it's turned into this technological society. I can send the album to millions of fans from Antarctica to Mexico City with one push of the button. The way our children think and the things they see? It's new, and it's happened so quick. And I am in the middle of that. Me on the platform with a microphone — that is how I envision New Amerykah." Part Ones subtitle, 4th World War, reflects the content's objective, political leanings, which Badu explained to be "outside of me [...] What’s going on outside is the left brain
".
on March 11, and on USB stick
format. In an interview for the Chicago Tribune
, Badu discussed the album's accompanying USB stick, stating "I might as well give a digital world what they need and what they want. And that's to just cut out the middle man, which is the CD, which will be extinct, I would say, in about seven to eight years — right along with the record labels." The album was originally intended as a double album, with 18 songs over two discs. A release party for the album took place on February 26 at the House of Blues
in Dallas.
Badu previewed songs from the album as a headlining act at the Barbados Jazz Festival
in January. On February 26, she performed songs from the album on VH1 Soul
's SoulStage.
, "Honey", was released on December 11, 2007. Directed by Badu and Chris Robinson
, the song's music video was released on January 28, and was conceived by Badu as an homage to classic records. Set in a small business
record store, it follows a customer looking through vintage R&B, hip hop, and rock LP albums, with the albums' cover artwork depicted as moving images with Badu cast in them. Robinson said of the video's direction, "We wanted a video that spoke to Badu's eclecticism. Those album covers represent all the influences that she embodies." The video also features a cameo appearance by Sa-Ra member Shafiq Husayn. Albums covers that were recreated in the video are those of Rufus featuring Chaka Khan (album) (1975) by Rufus
, Blue
(2006) by Diana Ross
, Maggot Brain
(1971) by Funkadelic
, Paid in Full
(1987) by Eric B. & Rakim
, Honey
(1975) by Ohio Players
, Perfect Angel
(1975) by Minnie Riperton
, Chameleon
(1976) by Labelle
, 3 Feet High and Rising
(1989) by De La Soul
, Let It Be (1970) by The Beatles
, Illmatic
(1994) by Nas
, Physical (1981) by Olivia Newton-John
, Nightclubbing
(1981) by Grace Jones
, and Head to the Sky
(1973) by Earth, Wind & Fire
. As a video within a video
, the record store's video screen plays an excerpt of the song "Annie" performed by Badu's side project Edith Funker, which features Questlove, James Poyser, Nikka Costa
, Mike Elizondo
, and Wendy Melvoin
. The music video received play on outlets such as MTV
, VH1
, and BET
.
, selling 125,000 copies in its first week. It was Badu's best opening week since her debut album Baduizm
in 1997. In its second week, it fell four spots to number six, selling 41,466 copies. In its third week, it fell to number nine, selling about 35,000 more copies. It has sold 359,000 copies in the United States.
s. At Metacritic
, which assigns a normalized
rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average
score of 83, based on 25 reviews, which indicates "universal acclaim". Allmusic editor Andy Kellman gave it four-and-a-half out of five stars and stated, "Immediately moving and yet rather bewildering, New Amerykah, Pt. 1 is an album that sounds special from the first play, yet it will probably take years before it is known just how special it is." Slant Magazine
's Eric Henderson called the album "intense" and "as sonically ambitious as anything she's done to date." Music writer Piero Scaruffi
commended it for "blending live instrumentation and samples in a fluent and never discordant manner" and wrote that Badu "achieves a sort of classical elegance" with some songs. Sasha Frere-Jones of The New Yorker
described the album as "a brilliant resurgence of black avant-garde
vocal pop, convincing in its doubts and stable in its unmoored ways", and "the work of a restless polymath ignoring the world around her and opting for an idiosyncratic, murky feeling that reflects her impulses." Boston Herald
writer Lauren Carter called it "a journey into a bizarre, brilliant otherworld with spooky-cool Badu as the guide", adding that she "lands so far beyond her peers that legitimate comparisons don’t exist yet."
However, Rolling Stone
writer Christian Hoard found Badu's lyrics ambiguous and stated, "some of the music is gripping [...] but other tunes feel like absent-minded doodles, and Badu's social consciousness nets middling returns." Ben Ratliff of The New York Times
called the album "a deep, murky swim in her brain", commenting that Badu's ideas "can be half-expressed or too well worn", and concluded, "Whether you like it depends in great part on how much you liked her before — the persona as well as the music." Amy Linden of Vibe called it "challenging, fabulously out there, and, maybe sometimes, too hip for its own good", writing that it "is daring even for Badu, at times risky for risk's sake and as alluringly unconventional as it is imperfect." Chicago Tribune
writer Greg Kot
found the album "adventurous" and "anything but an easy listen", adding that "Art this deeply personal seldom is." Sputnikmusic
's Nick Butler commented that the "moments here where Erykah flies off the map entirely [...] add character" to an album that "sees Badu striving so fearlessly for a voice and a sound to distinguish her as a singular, forward-thinking artist." Butler cited the album as "the least accessible thing she's ever done, and perhaps the least accessible album ever associated with the Soulquarians."
Despite noting moments of excessive "static darkness", Pitchfork Media
's Nitsuh Abebe praised Badu as a "recognizable, complex, three-dimensional character" and marvelled at "how she still pulls this off, every bit of it", stating "Even when she seems wrong, or dippy, or maybe a little batty, she's still a ridiculously compelling and likable personality." Los Angeles Times
writer Ernest Hardy commented that Badu "pushes the envelope", but noted "it's her underrated role as wordsmith that most dazzles", and called the album "a collection of demanding, disquieting and beautiful urban hymns that reveal their rewards on repeated listenings." Quentin B. Huff of PopMatters
called New Amerykah Part One "smart and funky as hell" and commended Badu for being "as open and candid as ever, matching her warmth with her wisdom, along with her heightened awareness of what makes people, including herself, tick." Alex Macpherson of The Guardian
called it "as ambitious and insane as its title implies: part state-of-the-nation opus, part eye-opening trawl through the unexplored depths of Badu's brain", and stated, "Each listen to New Amerykah brings fresh rewards: it demands to be explored."
In his consumer guide for MSN Music
, critic Robert Christgau
gave the album an honorable mention rating, indicating "an enjoyable effort consumers attuned to its overriding aesthetic or individual vision may well treasure." Christgau cited "The Cell" and "Amerykahn Promise" as highlights and quipped in his review, "When your funk is this futuristic, not to say abstract, astrology
and Farrakhan sound old, not to say ignorant".
(number 1), Mojo
, Amazon.com
(number 7), The Austin Chronicle (number 9), Cokemachineglow (number 1), Dusted Magazine (number 5), Entertainment Weekly
(number 5), New York
(number 8), The New York Times
(number 4), The A.V. Club
(number 8), PopMatters
(number 4), Slant Magazine
(number 8), and The Guardian
(number 9). Vibe magazine named it one of the ten best albums of 2008. Online music magazine
Pitchfork Media
placed New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) at number 133 on their list of top 200 albums of the 2000s. Rhapsody
named it the best R&B album of the 2000s.
Rolling Stone ranked it number 19 on its list of the 50 Best Albums of 2008, commenting that "Amerykah is a hip-hop update of Funkadelic's brain-melting sonic stews." Spin
ranked the album number 12 on its year-end list, with the publication's Charles Aaron stating, "Laptop R&B that uses hip-hop as its muse, New Amerykah also nods to P-Funk
's agit-slop opuses about America's decay".
Bonus tracks
Studio album
A studio album is an album made up of tracks recorded in the controlled environment of a recording studio. A studio album contains newly written and recorded or previously unreleased or remixed material, distinguishing itself from a compilation or reissue album of previously recorded material, or...
by American recording artist Erykah Badu
Erykah Badu
Erica Abi Wright , better known by her stage name Erykah Badu , is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, and actress. Her work includes elements from R&B, hip hop and jazz. She is best known for her role in the rise of the neo soul sub-genre, and for her eccentric, cerebral musical...
, released February 26, 2008, on Universal Motown. It follows her 2003 album Worldwide Underground
Worldwide Underground
Worldwide Underground is the third studio album by American R&B and neo soul musician Erykah Badu, released September 16, 2003 on Motown Records. Recording sessions for the album took place during 2003, following Badu's period of writer's block and her performing on the Frustrated Artist Tour...
and a hiatus from recording music. Communicating with several hip hop producers
Hip hop production
Hip hop production is the creation of hip hop music. Though the term encompasses all aspects of hip hop music, it's most commonly used to refer to the instrumental, non-lyrical aspects of hip hop. This means that hip hop producers are the instrumentalists involved in a work...
over the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
, Badu conceived the album through the GarageBand
GarageBand
GarageBand is a software application for Mac OS X and iOS that allows users to create music or podcasts. It is developed by Apple Inc. as a part of the iLife software package on Mac OS X.-Audio recording:...
software program on her laptop, which led to the album's primary recording sessions at Electric Lady Studios
Electric Lady Studios
Electric Lady Studios, at 52 West 8th Street, in New York City's Greenwich Village, is a recording studio originally built by Jimi Hendrix and designed by John Storyk in 1970...
in New York City.
An esoteric concept album, New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) features social commentary and impersonal lyrics, with subject matter that includes poverty, urban violence, complacency, and cultural identity. It features dense, stylistically-varied music that incorporates funk
Funk
Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...
, soul
Soul music
Soul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of...
, and hip hop
Hip hop music
Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...
genres.
The album debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200
Billboard 200
The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists...
chart, selling 123,884 copies in its first week. It produced three singles and has sold 359,000 copies in the United States. Upon its release, New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) received general acclaim from music critics. The album was ranked in the top-10 of various critics and publications' year-end lists of best albums in 2008. It was named the best album of 2008 by the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
.
Background
Writer's block
Writer's block is a condition, primarily associated with writing as a profession, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work. The condition varies widely in intensity. It can be trivial, a temporary difficulty in dealing with the task at hand. At the other extreme, some "blocked"...
and conflicted about her mainstream success, Erykah Badu embarked on her Frustrated Artist Tour
Frustrated Artist Tour
The Frustrated Artist Tour was a 2003 tour by American R&B singer Erykah Badu. During the summer of 2002, Badu at the time was getting writers block from penning songs for her soon to be album Worldwide Underground. Hoping to find inspiration, she set out on a 2-month trek of mainly theaters and...
in 2003. Her increasing popularity brought upon some backlash towards her public image and expectations of her as "queen of neo soul
Neo soul
The term neo soul was originally coined by Kedar Massenburg of Motown Records in the late 1990s as a marketing category following the commercial breakthroughs of artists such as D'Angelo, Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill, and Maxwell...
", an honorific nickname that she found limiting. Her third studio album, Worldwide Underground
Worldwide Underground
Worldwide Underground is the third studio album by American R&B and neo soul musician Erykah Badu, released September 16, 2003 on Motown Records. Recording sessions for the album took place during 2003, following Badu's period of writer's block and her performing on the Frustrated Artist Tour...
(2003), was released to mostly positive reviews and was certified gold
RIAA certification
In the United States, the Recording Industry Association of America awards certification based on the number of albums and singles sold through retail and other ancillary markets. Other countries have similar awards...
, although it was underpromoted and sold less than her previous albums. Badu herself was not satisfied with the album and felt she had nothing substantial to express with her music at the time. Plagued by a creative block and self-doubt, she took time off from her recording career and focused on caring for her children, although she continued to tour in the period between albums.
In 2004, Badu gave birth to a daughter, Puma Rose, with her former boyfriend, rapper The D.O.C.
The D.O.C.
Tracy Lynn Curry , primarily known by his stage name The D.O.C., is an American rapper from Dallas, Texas. In addition to a solo career, he was a member of the hip hop group Fila Fresh Crew, and a creative force behind the gangsta rap group N.W.A, where he co-wrote many of their releases. He has...
. Later that year, she received her first computer as a Christmas gift from drummer and producer Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, and began communicating with and receiving music from him and other producers such as Q-Tip
Q-Tip (rapper)
Kamaal Ibn John Fareed , better known by his stage name Q-Tip, is an American hip hop artist, producer, singer, and actor from St. Albans, Queens, New York, part of the critically acclaimed group A Tribe Called Quest...
and J Dilla
J Dilla
James Dewitt Yancey , better known by the stage names J Dilla and Jay Dee, was an American record producer who emerged from the mid-1990s underground hip hop scene in Detroit, Michigan...
. Beginning in 2005, Badu worked from her home in Dallas and used the software application GarageBand
GarageBand
GarageBand is a software application for Mac OS X and iOS that allows users to create music or podcasts. It is developed by Apple Inc. as a part of the iLife software package on Mac OS X.-Audio recording:...
as a digital audio workstation
Digital audio workstation
A digital audio workstation is an electronic system designed solely or primarily for recording, editing and playing back digital audio. DAWs were originally tape-less, microprocessor-based systems such as the Synclavier and Fairlight CMI...
, which she was introduced to by her son, Seven. He taught her how to use her laptop as a mini recording studio, and she used it to construct various backing tracks for songs. Using GarageBand, she recorded demos of her vocals by singing into the computer's microphone.
She composed more than 75 songs within the year and intended on splitting them among her planned series of New Amerykah albums. She said of her productivity with her laptop, "I could be here, in my own space, with headphones on, and the kids could be doing what they doing, and I’m cooking dinner still, I’m making juices still, and it’s so easy just to sing. You got an idea — boom! Idea, boom!" Badu's iChat
IChat
iChat is an instant messaging software application developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its Mac OS X operating system. It has audio, video and screen-sharing capabilities as well as text messaging...
buddies, including hip hop producers Questlove, Madlib
Madlib
Otis Jackson Jr. in Oxnard, California, known professionally as Madlib, is a Los Angeles-based DJ, multi-instrumentalist, rapper, and music producer...
, 9th Wonder
9th Wonder
Patrick Douthit , better known as 9th Wonder is a hip hop record producer, record executive, DJ, professor, and lyricist from Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S.A. He began his career as the main producer for the hip hop group Little Brother, and has also worked with Mary J...
, and J Dilla
J Dilla
James Dewitt Yancey , better known by the stage names J Dilla and Jay Dee, was an American record producer who emerged from the mid-1990s underground hip hop scene in Detroit, Michigan...
, IMed her to get back into the studio and sent her tracks. Such exchanges inspired a creative spark for Badu, which she explained in an interview for the Dallas Observer
Dallas Observer
The Dallas Observer is a free alternative weekly newspaper distributed around the Dallas, Texas . At its inception, it was conceived as a weekly local arts and cinema review publication, with the credo "Advocate for Excellence in the Arts" on the cover. For a time during the early years, the paper...
, "I started to accept that maybe it's OK for me to put out music, and it doesn't have to be something dynamic or world-changing. But just as I was accepting that, here comes this burst of light and energy and creativity. And that's the process, I guess, of life—the detachment and the release of something gives you even more room to grow or be creative."
With the album, Badu sought to augment her music's production, expose the work of underground
Underground hip hop
Underground hip hop is an umbrella term for hip hop music outside the general commercial canon. It is typically associated with independent artists, signed toindependent labels or no label at all....
hip hop producers
Hip hop production
Hip hop production is the creation of hip hop music. Though the term encompasses all aspects of hip hop music, it's most commonly used to refer to the instrumental, non-lyrical aspects of hip hop. This means that hip hop producers are the instrumentalists involved in a work...
, and exceed listeners' expectations of contemporary music. She discussed her creative intentions in an interview for Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
, stating "In taking on a project like this, I'm taking the responsibility to talk for my race and my planet." In an interview for the New York Post
New York Post
The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...
, she explained the album to be about "the war against self [...] against your inner being", and said of her hiatus, "I've always taken my time between albums. I'm a performing artist - recording is secondary to me. My performances are what drive me. It's like my therapy. I like to write a lot while I'm on the road before I even think about recording." She also commented on her writer's block in retrospect, saying "Over the course of my career I thought I suffered from writer's block. But then I realized I only want to record an album when I have something relevant enough to say."
Initial recording
For New Amerykah Part One, Badu collaborated principally with Questlove, Madlib, 9th Wonder, Karriem RigginsKarriem Riggins
Karriem Riggins is a jazz drummer, hip hop producer, dj, and sometime rapper. He is a former member of the Ray Brown Trio and Mulgrew Miller trio and currently appears in the Diana Krall quartet....
, James Poyser
James Poyser
James Poyser in Sheffield, England is a multi-Grammy winning songwriter, musician and multi-platinum producer.Poyser has written and produced songs for various legendary and award-winning artists including Erykah Badu, Mariah Carey, John Legend, Lauryn Hill, Common, Anthony Hamilton, D'Angelo,...
, audio engineer Mike "Chav" Chavarria, and the members of musical group Sa-Ra
Sa-Ra
Sa-Ra is a hip-hop group based in Los Angeles, California, also known by its full name, The Sa-Ra Creative Partners. The group is composed of Om'Mas Keith, Taz Arnold, and Shafiq Husayn...
, who made production and lyrical contributions to most of the tracks. She later explained choosing which producers to work with, saying "All of these people have a reputation for being visionaries and knowing them well, I felt 'Okay, now it's time to put together a project that not only takes us to another place, another dimension, but highlights these sights.' And that's what I had in mind for this project". She started the album's initial recording at Luminous Sound Recording in Dallas, where she was assisted by Chavarria in recording vocals and basic tracks to 2-tracks
Multitrack recording
Multitrack recording is a method of sound recording that allows for the separate recording of multiple sound sources to create a cohesive whole...
. Her vocal harmonies were recorded to a Studer
Studer
Studer is a Swiss manufacturer of professional audio equipment, founded in Zurich in 1948 by Willi Studer. It is known primarily for the design and manufacture of analog tape recorders and mixing consoles. Studer also produce other technology solutions, such as telephony management systems and...
A820 ½-inch, an Analog Playback Tape machine, using RMG
Recording Media Group International
Recording Media Group International is a Dutch manufacturer of magnetic tape products based in Oosterhout. This plant was initially built by Philips in 1968, and spun off into a joint venture with DuPont, PDM which lasted until 1993...
magnetic tape
Magnetic tape
Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic recording, made of a thin magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic. It was developed in Germany, based on magnetic wire recording. Devices that record and play back audio and video using magnetic tape are tape recorders and video tape recorders...
. James Poyser, who was heavily involved as musician and producer in all of Badu's previous work, had his role on the album reduced amicably to accommodate her minimalist, beat
Beat (music)
The beat is the basic unit of time in music, the pulse of the mensural level . In popular use, the beat can refer to a variety of related concepts including: tempo, meter, rhythm and groove...
-driven approach in production. He discussed Badu's direction for the album in an interview for Shook
Shook (magazine)
Shook is an underground independently produced British music magazine, based in London, which covers various forms of black music and electronic music.The magazine covers the current black music scene in both the UK and around the rest of the world....
, stating "she wanted a dirtier, more organic underground hip hop sound. So she dealt with cats that brought that sound to the table."
A portion of the album's initial recording and programming
Programming (music)
Programming is a form of music production and performance using electronic devices, often sequencers or computer programs, to generate music. Programming is used in nearly all forms of electronic music and in most hip hop music since the 1990s. It is also frequently used in modern pop and rock...
also took place at Sa-Ra's Cosmic Dust Studio. Om'mas Keith of Sa-Ra said of Badu's role at their studio, "Sometimes she’d come through and pick a skeletal and other times the beats would get made right then and there." Sa-Ra member Shafiq Husayn was bestowed by Badu with the honor of being the only person allowed to write lyrics for her. Husayn discussed the responsibility, saying "She’s never written with anyone on any of her previous releases. She had to go through some personal things to come to the point where she’d let somebody write for her in the manner that we did. It was spontaneous but at the same time there was structure to it. It might not have the right expression, or the right enunciation. Writing is so personal. That was a big thing."
Electric Lady sessions
Badu subsequently held recording sessions at Electric Lady StudiosElectric Lady Studios
Electric Lady Studios, at 52 West 8th Street, in New York City's Greenwich Village, is a recording studio originally built by Jimi Hendrix and designed by John Storyk in 1970...
in New York City, where the album was completed. In her interview for Remix, she elaborated on the recording process, stating "Everything that the producers e-mailed me I put into GarageBand. Then we would try to duplicate it at Electric Lady. I did vocals on my laptop, babies crying and everything. I also EQ
Equalization (audio)
Equalization is the process commonly used in sound recording and reproduction to alter the frequency response of an audio system using linear filters. Most hi-fi equipment uses relatively simple filters to make bass and treble adjustments. Graphic and parametric equalizers have much more...
'd the tracks using effects like GarageBand's Vocal Reflection." Badu worked with audio engineers Chris Bell, Tom Soares, and Mike "Chav" Chavarria, who had spent numerous hours with Badu listening to her previous albums, including her 1997 debut Baduizm
Baduizm
Baduizm is the debut album of R&B and neo soul musician Erykah Badu, released February 11, 1997 on Kedar Records. Recording sessions for the album took place during January to October 1996 at Battery Studios in New York City, Sigma Sounds & Ivory Studios in Philadelphia, and Dallas Sound Lab in...
(Kedar, 1997) and its 2000 follow-up Mama's Gun
Mama's Gun
Mama's Gun is the second studio album by American recording artist Erykah Badu, released November 21, 2000, on Motown Records. Recording sessions for the album took place from 1999 to 2000 at Electric Lady Studios in New York City...
, and older albums such as The Dark Side of the Moon
The Dark Side of the Moon
The Dark Side of the Moon is the eighth studio album by English progressive rock band Pink Floyd, released in March 1973. It built on ideas explored in the band's earlier recordings and live shows, but lacks the extended instrumental excursions that characterised their work following the departure...
(1973) by progressive rock band Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd were an English rock band that achieved worldwide success with their progressive and psychedelic rock music. Their work is marked by the use of philosophical lyrics, sonic experimentation, innovative album art, and elaborate live shows. Pink Floyd are one of the most commercially...
and Innervisions
Innervisions
Innervisions is the sixteenth album by American musician Stevie Wonder, released August 3, 1973 on Motown Records; a landmark recording of his "classic period"...
(1973) by Stevie Wonder
Stevie Wonder
Stevland Hardaway Morris , better known by his stage name Stevie Wonder, is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer and activist...
. They worked with the producers' emailed music and embellished their own 2-tracks by using Pro Tools
Pro Tools
Pro Tools is a digital audio workstation platform for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, developed and manufactured by Avid Technology. It is widely used by professionals throughout the audio industries for recording and editing in music production, film scoring, film, and television...
to incorporate live instrumentation such as bass, guitar, flutes, percussion, and keyboards. Contributing musicians included vocalist Georgia Anne Muldrow
Georgia Anne Muldrow
Georgia Anne Muldrow is an American singer and musician signed to Stones Throw Records. She is the first female artist signed to the label and seems to be a close friend of fellow label artist Dudley Perkins...
, trumpeter Roy Hargrove
Roy Hargrove
Roy Anthony Hargrove is an American jazz trumpeter. He won worldwide notice after winning two Grammy Awards for differing types of music, in 1997, and in 2002...
, vibraphonist Roy Ayers
Roy Ayers
Roy Ayers is an American funk, soul, and jazz composer and vibraphone player. Ayers began his career as a post-bop jazz artist, releasing several albums with Atlantic Records, before his tenure at Polydor Records beginning in the 1970s, during which he helped pioneer jazz-funk .- Biography :Ayers...
, guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López
Omar Rodriguez-Lopez
Omar Alfredo Rodríguez-López is a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, producer, writer, actor and film director who was born in Bayamón, Puerto Rico...
, and vocalist Bilal.
Influenced by Badu's creative flow and their time listening to music, Chavarria added special effects and delay
Delay (audio effect)
Delay is an audio effect which records an input signal to an audio storage medium, and then plays it back after a period of time. The delayed signal may either be played back multiple times, or played back into the recording again, to create the sound of a repeating, decaying echo.-Early delay...
s to the tracks by using and manipulating a variety of plug-ins and guitar pedals, subsequently reworking effects frequency and modulation
Modulation
In electronics and telecommunications, modulation is the process of varying one or more properties of a high-frequency periodic waveform, called the carrier signal, with a modulating signal which typically contains information to be transmitted...
parameters. He commented on their handling of the producers' tracks, saying "We were able to build around them. Erykah made this record to display to the world that there is this whole group of producers out there who are outside of the mainstream making great music. She was trying to highlight what they do. We didn't want to change what the producers originally brought to the table. We didn't change it; we just added to it." Badu said of the approach, "I work in layers. The first layer is the track. The second layer is the songs. The third would be the musicians who add a certain nuance. And when they play, they play like they are a sample. Or we take a piece of what they played, and we sample and loop
Music loop
In electroacoustic music, a loop is a repeating section of sound material. Short sections of material can be repeated to create ostinato patterns...
it."
At Electric Lady, Badu applied a multifaceted approach to recording her singing and opted against post-production editing of her vocals. She used her voice impressionistically
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
, and her vocals were characterized by high scales
Musical scale
In music, a scale is a sequence of musical notes in ascending and descending order. Most commonly, especially in the context of the common practice period, the notes of a scale will belong to a single key, thus providing material for or being used to conveniently represent part or all of a musical...
, varied frequencies, wide intervals
Interval (music)
In music theory, an interval is a combination of two notes, or the ratio between their frequencies. Two-note combinations are also called dyads...
, and time-stretched harmonies. Chavarria, who engineered the vocals with Badu, remarked on her singing, "Her voice has so many frequencies, from a subharmonic of her tonic to a thin raspiness, and she wants to hear all of that." Badu used a Shure SM57 dynamic microphone, finding it to have enough bottom for her voice type, and cut vocal takes while situated between two speakers in the studio's control room with the monitor mix
Live sound mixing
Live sound mixing is the art of combining and processing a number of audio signals together to create a "mix" that the audience or performers at a live show hear. There can be a variety of different mixes required, depending on the performance requirements...
playing. She explained this setting to be more comfortable, noting the ability to hear herself sing and hold the microphone when moving around. Badu elaborated on the process in her interview for Remix, stating "I might do a vocal take 100 times and not get it, then come back the next day at 3 a.m., and laying down on the floor, my ears will get it. Pitch
Pitch (music)
Pitch is an auditory perceptual property that allows the ordering of sounds on a frequency-related scale.Pitches are compared as "higher" and "lower" in the sense associated with musical melodies,...
is good but feeling is better. I never cut and paste or punch in, I like a single vocal take. [...] When I do vocals, I am singing with a certain volume in my voice. I am singing the double and triple harmonies at different volumes. You don't have to adjust it; I have already done it. We mix
Audio mixing (recorded music)
In audio recording, audio mixing is the process by which multiple recorded sounds are combined into one or more channels, most commonly two-channel stereo. In the process, the source signals' level, frequency content, dynamics, and panoramic position are manipulated and effects such as reverb may...
as we go, so by the time we put the vocals to ½-inch tape, I know it. If you touch a damn thing, I will know it."
To adjust to potential audio feedback
Audio feedback
Audio feedback is a special kind of positive feedback which occurs when a sound loop exists between an audio input and an audio output...
and leakage
Spill (audio)
Spill is the occurrence in sound recording and live sound mixing whereby sound is picked up by a microphone from a source other than that which is intended. Spill is usually seen as a problem, and various steps are taken to avoid it or reduce it...
and obtain a usable take, Chavarria tried having Badu sit in an overstuffed chair six feet behind the mixing console
Mixing console
In professional audio, a mixing console, or audio mixer, also called a sound board, mixing desk, or mixer is an electronic device for combining , routing, and changing the level, timbre and/or dynamics of audio signals. A mixer can mix analog or digital signals, depending on the type of mixer...
and use alternate microphones such as a Neumann
Georg Neumann
Georg Neumann GmbH , founded in 1928 and based in Berlin, Germany, is a prominent manufacturer of professional recording microphones. Their best-known products are condenser microphones for broadcast, live and music production purposes...
M 269 or AEA R44 ribbon microphone
Ribbon microphone
A ribbon microphone is a type of dynamic microphone that uses a thin aluminum, duraluminum or nanofilm ribbon placed between the poles of a magnet to generate voltages by electromagnetic induction...
with Sony MDR-V900 headphones into a Furman headphone mixer. However, Badu felt she could not perceive all of her voice's frequencies with the headphones and often discarded them to move towards the studio monitor
Studio monitor
Studio monitors, also called reference monitors, are loudspeakers specifically designed for audio production applications such as recording studios, filmmaking, television studios and radio studios where accurate audio reproduction is crucial....
s. He also considered situating her in an equilateral triangle with the two speakers, one of which would be placed out of phase
Phase (waves)
Phase in waves is the fraction of a wave cycle which has elapsed relative to an arbitrary point.-Formula:The phase of an oscillation or wave refers to a sinusoidal function such as the following:...
in order to have the leakage cancel itself. However, according to him, the mic has to be stationary, while Badu "likes to hold the mic like an MC. She is at home as a live performer." He said of working around audio spills and adapting to Badu's methods, "We worked to make her vocals fit into the track, phase
Phase (waves)
Phase in waves is the fraction of a wave cycle which has elapsed relative to an arbitrary point.-Formula:The phase of an oscillation or wave refers to a sinusoidal function such as the following:...
-wise. [...] What did work was to keep the monitors fairly low and turn the microphone out of phase, and we would move her around the room until she found a spot where the leakage was reasonable and where she felt comfortable and could hear herself. But just as often she would just sit in that chair behind the board in the A Room."
As with her previous recordings, Badu used tuning fork
Tuning fork
A tuning fork is an acoustic resonator in the form of a two-pronged fork with the prongs formed from a U-shaped bar of elastic metal . It resonates at a specific constant pitch when set vibrating by striking it against a surface or with an object, and emits a pure musical tone after waiting a...
s when recording the album. She said of her fondness of using the instrument, "According to the message I am trying to get and studying the frequency of sound, each tuning fork has a certain vibrational energy that is conducive to a feeling or a color or a smell. They're related to different chakra
Chakra
Chakra is a concept originating in Hindu texts, featured in tantric and yogic traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism. Its name derives from the Sanskrit word for "wheel" or "turning" .Chakra is a concept referring to wheel-like vortices...
s in the body, too. Some may make you feel good or sexy or conscious of what you're saying. Depending on the song and the frequency I am trying to get over to the people, I use the tuning forks, and I also played talking drum." New Amerykah Part One was mastered
Audio mastering
Mastering, a form of audio post-production, is the process of preparing and transferring recorded audio from a source containing the final mix to a data storage device ; the source from which all copies will be produced...
at Electric Lady Studios in February 2008.
Music and style
Funk
Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...
, soul
Soul music
Soul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of...
, and hip hop
Hip hop music
Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...
genres, as well as jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
and electronica
Electronica
Electronica includes a wide range of contemporary electronic music designed for a wide range of uses, including foreground listening, some forms of dancing, and background music for other activities; however, unlike electronic dance music, it is not specifically made for dancing...
. Alexander Billet of ZNet
Z Communications
Z Communications is a radical left-wing media group founded in 1986 by Michael Albert and Lydia Sargent. It advocates participatory socialism as a replacement for capitalism. Its publications include Z Magazine, ZNet, Z Media, and Z Video.Z Communications is based outside Woods Hole, Massachusetts...
writes that the styles featured on New Amerykah Part One are "woven together into an often mind-bending eclecticism." Music writer Nelson George
Nelson George
Nelson George is an African American author, columnist, music and culture critic, journalist, and filmmaker. He has been nominated twice for the National Book Critics Circle Award....
describes it as "a complicated mesh of soul, electro
Electro (music)
Electro is a genre of electronic dance music directly influenced by the use of TR-808 drum machines, Moog keytar synthesizers and funk sampling...
sounds and references, simple and obscure [...] a musically challenging album that owes much to Radiohead
Radiohead
Radiohead are an English rock band from Abingdon, Oxfordshire, formed in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke , Jonny Greenwood , Ed O'Brien , Colin Greenwood and Phil Selway .Radiohead released their debut single "Creep" in 1992...
and Curtis Mayfield
Curtis Mayfield
Curtis Lee Mayfield was an American soul, R&B, and funk singer, songwriter, and record producer.He is best known for his anthemic music with The Impressions during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's and for composing the soundtrack to the blaxploitation film Super Fly, Mayfield is highly...
". Expanding of the loose, jam-oriented style of Worldwide Underground, it features groove-based instrumentation, murky tones, hip hop musical phrasing, eccentric interludes, and various beats, digital glitches
Glitch (music)
Glitch is a term used to describe a genre of electronic music that emerged in the mid to late 1990s. The glitch aesthetic is characterized by a deliberate use of glitch based sonic artifacts that would normally be viewed as unwanted disturbances reducing the overall sound quality and are thus...
, and samples
Sampling (music)
In music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song or piece. Sampling was originally developed by experimental musicians working with musique concrète and electroacoustic music, who physically...
. Sputnikmusic
Sputnikmusic
Sputnikmusic, or simply Sputnik, is a music website offering music criticism and music news alongside features commonly associated with wiki-style websites...
's Nick Butler notes the influence of J Dilla in the album's sound, and compares the music to the work of neo soul
Neo soul
The term neo soul was originally coined by Kedar Massenburg of Motown Records in the late 1990s as a marketing category following the commercial breakthroughs of artists such as D'Angelo, Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill, and Maxwell...
collective Soulquarians
Soulquarians
The Soulquarians is a neo soul and hip hop-informed musical collective with members from Philadelphia, New York, Detroit, Richmond, Brooklyn, Chicago, Dallas, and Oakland. The collective formed during the late 1990s, continuing into the early 2000s, and produced several well-received albums...
, which featured Dilla, Badu, and New Amerykah contributors Questlove, James Poyser, and Bilal. Butler adds that the album is "moved beyond the ideas and conventions that have defined neo-soul over the past decade." Greg Kot
Greg Kot
Greg Kot is an American writer and journalist. Since 1990, Kot has been the music critic at the Chicago Tribune, where he has covered popular music and reported on music-related social, political and business issues...
of the Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
writes that, "Like her peers D'Angelo
D'Angelo
Michael Eugene Archer , better known by his stage name D'Angelo, is an American R&B and neo soul singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and record producer. He is known for his production and songwriting talents as much as for his vocal abilities, and often draws comparisons to his influences,...
(with Voodoo in 2000), Common
Common (rapper)
Lonnie Rashid Lynn, Jr. , better known by his stage name Common , is an American hip-hop artist and actor....
(Electric Circus
Electric Circus (album)
Electric Circus is the fifth studio album by rapper Common, released December 10, 2002 on the now-defunct MCA Records. The album was highly anticipated and praised by many critics for its ambitious vision. However, it was not as commercially successful as his previous album, Like Water for...
in 2002) and the Roots
The Roots
The Roots is an American hip hop/neo soul band formed in 1987 by Tariq "Black Thought" Trotter and Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They are famed for beginning with a jazzy, eclectic approach to hip hop which still includes live instrumentals...
(Phrenology
Phrenology (album)
Phrenology is the fifth studio album by American hip hop band The Roots, released November 26, 2002, on Geffen Records and MCA Records. Recording sessions for the album took place during June 2000 to September 2002...
in 2002), Badu has made a record that defies efforts to categorize it." He adds that its "murkier, funkier vibe" draws on the "hypnotic funk" of early 1970s albums such as Miles Davis
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz,...
's On the Corner
On the Corner
On the Corner is a studio album by jazz musician Miles Davis, recorded in June and July 1972 and released later that year on Columbia Records. It was scorned by critics at the time of its release and was one of Davis's worst-selling recordings...
(1972), Herbie Hancock
Herbie Hancock
Herbert Jeffrey "Herbie" Hancock is an American pianist, bandleader and composer. As part of Miles Davis's "second great quintet," Hancock helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the "post-bop" sound...
's Sextant
Sextant (album)
Sextant is the eleventh album by Herbie Hancock, and the last album with his Mwandishi Band.-About the Album:Released in 1973 but recorded in 1972, Sextant was Herbie Hancock's first album on Columbia Records. It was a complex, harmonically and rhythmically challenging musical statement...
(1973), and Sly & the Family Stone
Sly & the Family Stone
Sly and the Family Stone were an American rock, funk, and soul band from San Francisco, California. Active from 1966 to 1983, the band was pivotal in the development of soul, funk, and psychedelic music...
's There's a Riot Goin' On
There's a Riot Goin' On
There's a Riot Goin' On is the fifth studio album by American funk and soul band Sly & the Family Stone, released November 20, 1971 on Epic Records. Recording sessions for the album took place primarily throughout 1970 to 1971 at Record Plant Studios in Sausalito, California...
(1971).
Similar to Voodoo and On the Corner, New Amerykah Part One emphasizes sound and mood over choruses and verses. The album is unififed by a musical theme, with songs sequenced together and typified by ominous musical elements, minor-key
Minor scale
A minor scale in Western music theory includes any scale that contains, in its tonic triad, at least three essential scale degrees: 1) the tonic , 2) a minor-third, or an interval of a minor third above the tonic, and 3) a perfect-fifth, or an interval of a perfect fifth above the tonic, altogether...
melodies, and atmospheric beats. Greg Kot characterizes it as "heavy on shadowy mood and mesmerizing groove, and short on melody and hooks." Ben Ratliff of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
distinguishes the music's mood as "claustrophobic and sad and sometimes grandiose", with turbid tones and vibrato
Vibrato
Vibrato is a musical effect consisting of a regular, pulsating change of pitch. It is used to add expression to vocal and instrumental music. Vibrato is typically characterised in terms of two factors: the amount of pitch variation and the speed with which the pitch is varied .-Vibrato and...
by Badu. Lauren Carter of the Boston Herald
Boston Herald
The Boston Herald is a daily newspaper that serves Boston, Massachusetts, United States, and its surrounding area. It was started in 1846 and is one of the oldest daily newspapers in the United States...
views that Badu's subtle musical approach led to her "wrapping tracks in a hazy, mellow groove that frequently has the feel of a seance
Séance
A séance is an attempt to communicate with spirits. The word "séance" comes from the French word for "seat," "session" or "sitting," from the Old French "seoir," "to sit." In French, the word's meaning is quite general: one may, for example, speak of "une séance de cinéma"...
." Ken Micallef of Remix compares the album's "fluid bass rhythms" to "the low-down subterfuge of D'Angelo's masterpiece, Voodoo", noting that "Badu's layered vocal harmonies [...] are at times frighteningly bizarre; the music is diverse and exploratory; altogether, the overwhelming underground nature of the record recalls a mad mash of Stevie Wonder
Stevie Wonder
Stevland Hardaway Morris , better known by his stage name Stevie Wonder, is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer and activist...
's Innervisions
Innervisions
Innervisions is the sixteenth album by American musician Stevie Wonder, released August 3, 1973 on Motown Records; a landmark recording of his "classic period"...
, Sly and the Family Stone's Fresh
Fresh (Sly and the Family Stone album)
Fresh is the sixth album by American funk/soul/rock band Sly & the Family Stone, released by Epic/CBS Records on June 30, 1973...
and Quasimoto
Quasimoto
Quasimoto is the alter ego or the side project of hip hop producer Madlib, from Oxnard, California. Quas is known for the raised pitch of his voice as if he was inhaling helium. Another notable characteristic is Quas inter-changing with Madlib's voice. One day in the studio, Madlib decided to...
's The Further Adventures of Lord Quas
The Further Adventures of Lord Quas
The Further Adventures of Lord Quas is the second album by Quasimoto, Madlib's alter ego. The Bus Ride EP was released in late 2004 and featured the singles "Bus Ride", "Rappcats", and "Greenery". "Hydrant Game" was previously available on Madlib's Mind Fusion vol...
." Several writers have compared its sound to the music of Funkadelic
Funkadelic
Funkadelic was an American band most prominent during the 1970s. The band and its sister act Parliament, both led by George Clinton, began the funk music culture of that decade.-History:...
. Viewing both albums as "diffuse", Eric Henderson of Slant Magazine
Slant Magazine
Slant Magazine is an online publication that features reviews of movies, music, TV, DVDs, theater, and video games, as well as interviews with actors, directors, and musicians. The site covers various film festivals like the New York Film Festival.- History :...
comments that "Worldwide Underground was Parliament
Parliament (band)
Parliament was a funk band most prominent during the 1970s. It and its sister act Funkadelic, both led by George Clinton, began the funk music culture of that decade.-History:...
. New AmErykah is Funkadelic", with the latter being more "urgent" and avant-garde
Avant-garde music
Avant-garde music is a term used to characterize music which is thought to be ahead of its time, i.e. containing innovative elements or fusing different genres....
.
Songs on the album incorporate experimental hip hop backing tracks and other hip hop elements in a surrealistic manner. The majority of the beats are dark, blunted, and hazy, and have been noted by music writers as conveying an urban soundscape
Soundscape
A soundscape is a sound or combination of sounds that forms or arises from an immersive environment. The study of soundscape is the subject of acoustic ecology...
and feeling of paranoia. Most of the songs were either produced or co-written by members of Sa-Ra, who are known for their sonically dissonant
Consonance and dissonance
In music, a consonance is a harmony, chord, or interval considered stable, as opposed to a dissonance , which is considered to be unstable...
music, characerized by eccentric chord
Chord (music)
A chord in music is any harmonic set of two–three or more notes that is heard as if sounding simultaneously. These need not actually be played together: arpeggios and broken chords may for many practical and theoretical purposes be understood as chords...
placements and off-time beats. Mildred Fallen of Shook
Shook (magazine)
Shook is an underground independently produced British music magazine, based in London, which covers various forms of black music and electronic music.The magazine covers the current black music scene in both the UK and around the rest of the world....
writes that the album is "as much an inauguration for Sa-Ra as it is a re-emergence for Erykah Badu." Andy Kellman of Allmusic calls its music "varied and layered", noting "plenty of fearless weirdness and a couple relaxed soul-jazz
Soul jazz
Soul jazz is a development of jazz incorporating strong influences from blues, soul, gospel and rhythm and blues in music for small groups, often an organ trio featuring a Hammond organ.- Overview :Soul jazz is often associated with hard bop. Mark C...
backdrops", and cites the album as "easily the most hip-hop and most out-there release from Badu thus far, with beats bumping, knocking, and booming in roughly equal measure, sometimes switching tacks or vanishing midstream, dropping down dark corridors, gradually levitating into direct sunlight." Music writer Sasha Frere-Jones
Sasha Frere-Jones
Sasha Frere-Jones is an American writer, music critic, and musician. He has written for Pretty Decorating, ego trip, Hit It And Quit It, Mean, Slant, The New York Post, The Wire, The Village Voice, Slate, Spin, and The New York Times...
comments on the album's hip hop element, saying that it "isn’t so much hip-hop as it is a reorganization of the historical flotsam and jetsam
Flotsam and jetsam
In maritime law, flotsam, jetsam, lagan and derelict describe specific kinds of wreck.The words have specific nautical meanings, with legal consequences in the law of admiralty and marine salvage....
that were recycled and turned into hip-hop." Music writer Alex V. Cook characterizes the music as heavy on the groove and bass elements that are predominantly found in funk and hip hop.
Lyrical themes
New Amerykah Part One is an esoteric concept album with sociopolitical themes and mostly downbeat subject matter, featuring more impersonal topics and social commentary than on Badu's previous work. Its subject matter deals with social concerns and struggles within the African-American community, exploring topics such as institutional racismInstitutional racism
Institutional racism describes any kind of system of inequality based on race. It can occur in institutions such as public government bodies, private business corporations , and universities . The term was coined by Black Power activist Stokely Carmichael in the late 1960s...
, religion, poverty, urban violence, the abuse of power, complacency, cultural identity
Cultural identity
Cultural identity is the identity of a group or culture, or of an individual as far as one is influenced by one's belonging to a group or culture. Cultural identity is similar to and has overlaps with, but is not synonymous with, identity politics....
, drug addiction, and nihilism
Nihilism
Nihilism is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value...
. Badu has said that the album discusses "religion, [...] poor families, the undermining of the working class, the so-called minority." Andy Gill of The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
denotes the album's subject matter as "the black struggle to find a place of nobility". Greg Kot writes that the album "plays like an extended meditation on the African-American community, streaked with anger, sadness and a pinch of hope", noting that "pleas for perseverance [...] alternate with calls to action". Patrick Taylor of RapReviews calls its subject matter both "contemporary and old school, referencing the psychedelic soul
Psychedelic soul
Psychedelic soul, sometimes called black rock, is a sub-genre of soul music, which mixes the characteristics of soul with psychedelic rock...
of the late sixties and seventies, and realizing the anger and optimism of that era." Ben Ratliff calls it "a political record" and views that most of the "social agenda" in Badu's lyrics has been previously explored by artists such as Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye
Marvin Gaye
Marvin Pentz Gay, Jr. , better known by his stage name Marvin Gaye, was an American singer-songwriter and musician with a three-octave vocal range....
, and Funkadelic, adding that it "suggests that little has changed in nearly 40 years, and perhaps [...] that’s her point."
Music journalist Nitsuh Abebe writes that the album's lyrical content is rooted in the era of "those Civil Rights and post-Civil Rights moments when African-Americans were left with some strange, heavy tasks: sorting out how to have a cultural identity as part of a nation that had, up until very recently, been a dedicated adversary, and sorting out how to clean up the wreckage that had accumulated in the meantime." Quentin B. Huff of PopMatters
PopMatters
PopMatters is an international webzine of cultural criticism that covers many aspects of popular culture. PopMatters publishes reviews, interviews, and detailed essays on most cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, films, books, video games, comics, sports, theater,...
compares its thematic structure to singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega
Suzanne Vega
Suzanne Nadine Vega is an American songwriter and singer known for her eclectic folk-inspired music.Two of Vega's songs reached the top 10 of various international chart listings: "Luka" and "Tom's Diner"...
's Beauty & Crime
Beauty & Crime
Beauty & Crime is the seventh studio album release by New York-based singer/songwriter and musician Suzanne Vega. It is her first album of new material since 2001's Songs in Red and Gray and is also her first for Blue Note Records. It was released on July 17, 2007...
(2007), which was composed by Vega as an ode to her native New York City, and interprets the plot of New Amerykah Part One to be "an amalgam of post-Civil Rights Era experience mixed with a post-9/11
Post-9/11
Post-9/11 is a term used to describe state of living in the United States or other parts of the world after the September 11 attacks, in reference to the many changes that have occurred due to the attacks...
worldview, plus a few shots of community spirit, individual growth, pleas for social activism and spiritual enlightenment, and [...] the realities of death." Huff comments that the album's "clash in musical styles" reinforces the subject matter's "clash between progress and patience", adding that some songs "seem committed to having America honor" the promise of the American Dream
American Dream
The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States in which freedom includes a promise of the possibility of prosperity and success. In the definition of the American Dream by James Truslow Adams in 1931, "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each...
for African-Americans, while other songs "seem to reject the promise, or at least the idea that the promise can be fulfilled without considerable effort".
Badu's songwriting on the album is characterized by austerity, pointillism
Pointillism
Pointillism is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of pure color are applied in patterns to form an image. Georges Seurat developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism. The term Pointillism was first coined by art critics in the late 1880s to ridicule the works...
, stream of consciousness, improvisation, and scenic narrative. Her lyrics are alternately overtly political and deeply personal, interlaced with Five Percenter
The Nation of Gods and Earths
The Nation of Gods and Earths, sometimes referred to as NGE or NOGE, the Five-Percent Nation, or the Five Percenters is an American organization founded in 1964 in the Harlem section of the borough of Manhattan, New York City, by Clarence 13X, a former student of Malcolm X, who left his mosque...
notions and references to the Nation of Islam
Nation of Islam
The Nation of Islam is a mainly African-American new religious movement founded in Detroit, Michigan by Wallace D. Fard Muhammad in July 1930 to improve the spiritual, mental, social, and economic condition of African-Americans in the United States of America. The movement teaches black pride and...
. Alex Macpherson of The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
writes that Badu's lyrics "veer from oblique poetry to direct, full-force observational commentary". Melena Ryzik of The New York Times describes it as "idiosyncratic" and finds Badu's "hard-boiled speechifying" to be "charged by a rambling political fervor and a level of introspection that were only hinted at in her previous work." Badu expresses a motherly perspective and feelings of dismay and empathy for the subjects in the songs. Charles Aaron of Spin
Spin (magazine)
Spin is a music magazine founded in 1985 by publisher Bob Guccione Jr.-History:In its early years, the magazine was noted for its broad music coverage with an emphasis on college-oriented rock music and on the ongoing emergence of hip-hop. The magazine was eclectic and bold, if sometimes haphazard...
comments that "a sense of history and maternal compassion [...] grounds even her most oblique forays." Nitsuh Abebe writes similarly, "her keen writing about people" gives songs "much of their shape" and views that her candor helps communicate the album's "social concerns, which could otherwise sound like a laundry list of black-community struggles".
Content
The opening track "Amerykahn Promise" samples the 1977 song "The American Promise" by American band RAMPRAMP
RAMP was an American soul/jazz band from Cincinnati, Ohio. RAMP has mistakenly been said to stand for "Roy Ayers Music Production" and "Roy Ayers Music Project", but Ayers was not a member, though he did write and produce songs on their debut album....
as its backing track. The original song was co-written and produced by Roy Ayers, who gave Badu the original master tape for her to rework on the album. Ayers and Edwin Birdsong
Edwin Birdsong
Edwin Birdsong is a keyboard/organ player who was known in the 70's and 80's for his experimental funk/disco music. He never achieved chart success, but developed a strong fan base, and has also been sampled by other artists many times, most famously by Daft Punk who sampled "Cola Bottle Baby" in...
were inspired to write the song by President Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson , often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States...
's 1965 speech "The American Promise", which called for justice and equal rights in the United States. "Amerykahn Promise" features explicit political satire and has themes of disfranchisement and the hindrance of the American Dream
American Dream
The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States in which freedom includes a promise of the possibility of prosperity and success. In the definition of the American Dream by James Truslow Adams in 1931, "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each...
. Its tongue-in-cheek
Tongue-in-cheek
Tongue-in-cheek is a phrase used as a figure of speech to imply that a statement or other production is humorously intended and it should not be taken at face value. The facial expression typically indicates that one is joking or making a mental effort. In the past, it may also have indicated...
subject matter portrays America as a land of broken promises. The song opens with a blaxploitation
Blaxploitation
Blaxploitation or blacksploitation is a film genre which emerged in the United States circa 1970. It is considered an ethnic sub-genre of the general category of exploitation films. Blaxploitation films were originally made specifically for an urban black audience, although the genre's audience...
trailer blurb
Blurb
A blurb is a short summary or some words of praise accompanying a creative work, usually used on books without giving away any details, that is usually referring to the words on the back of the book jacket but also commonly seen on DVD and video cases, web portals, and news websites.- History :The...
, saying "more action, more excitement, more everything", and features an improvisatory funk vamp, RAMP vocalists Sibel Thrasher and Sharon Matthews, and an authoritative male voice, performed by Om'mas Keith of Sa-Ra. The authoritative character is portrayed as a circus-barker
Barker (occupation)
A barker is a person who attempts to attract patrons to entertainment events, such as a circus or funfair, by exhorting passing public, describing attractions of show and emphasizing variety, novelty, beauty, or some other feature believed to incite listeners to attend entertainment...
whose smoke and mirrors
Smoke and mirrors
Smoke and mirrors is a metaphor for a deceptive, fraudulent or insubstantial explanation or description. The source of the name is based on magicians' illusions, where magicians make objects appear or disappear by extending or retracting mirrors amid a confusing burst of smoke...
presentation of the American Dream leads to contentious dialogue with Badu. A female voice at the end of the song asks, "Has anyone seen my 42 laws?", an arcane allusion to the 42 divine laws of ancient Egyptian goddess Maat
Maat
Maat is a naval rank of the German navy equivalent to the army rank of Unteroffizier. A Maat is considered the equivalent of a junior Petty Officer in the navies of many other nations....
.
Produced by Madlib, "The Healer" is an ode to hip hop culture and a proclamation of its scope. It opens with a brief snippet from a song by Malcolm McLaren
Malcolm McLaren
Malcolm Robert Andrew McLaren was an English performer, impresario, self-publicist and manager of the Sex Pistols and the New York Dolls...
featuring the World's Famous Supreme Team
World's Famous Supreme Team
The World's Famous Supreme Team was an American hip hop group founded in the 1980s. Members included Larry Price and Ronald Larkins Jr., among others. The group joined forces with Malcolm McLaren on a number of early hit hip hop records. Among the group's most well-known works were the singles...
. Music writer Piero Scaruffi
Piero Scaruffi
Piero Scaruffi received a degree in Mathematics in 1982 from University of Turin, where he did work on the General Theory of Relativity. For a number of years he was the head of the Artificial Intelligence Center at Olivetti, based in Cupertino, California. He has been a visiting scholar at...
describes the song's music as "trancey, exotic and brooding", while Sasha Frere-Jones notes "bells, unidentifiable knocks, a lonesome instrument that might be a sitar, or a guitar, and lots of empty space" in the musical backdrop, adding that "the music flirts with total stasis, though it still has an audible beat." Badu's lyrics, delivered in an incantation
Incantation
An incantation or enchantment is a charm or spell created using words. An incantation may take place during a ritual, either a hymn or prayer, and may invoke or praise a deity. In magic, occultism, witchcraft it may be used with the intention of casting a spell on an object or a person...
style, make reference to various names of God, including Humdililah, Allah, Jehovah, Yahweh, Jah, and Rastafari, while asserting hip hop to be "bigger than" social institutions such as religion and government. She explained the lyrics and religious references, saying "to me, hip-hop is felt in all religions - it has a healing power. I've recently been to Palestine, Jerusalem, Africa and a bunch of other places, and everyone is listening to hip-hop. There's something about that kicking snare sound that all kinds of people find meaning in."
Layered with acoustic guitars, keyboards, and a shuffling drumbeat, the midtempo, autobiographical song "Me" discusses Badu's thoughts and feelings about her life, including the struggle of growing as a public figure. It features multitracked trumpet by Roy Hargrove. She mocks others' perception of her, which she has explained as "everything you can see of Erykah Badu — the Ankh
Ankh
The ankh , also known as key of life, the key of the Nile or crux ansata, was the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic character that read "eternal life", a triliteral sign for the consonants ʻ-n-ḫ...
s, the powers, the 5 Percenters, the mysteries, it’s all true. The lies; it’s all true. Had two babies with different daddies. Thirty-six years old and addicted to a variety of spending." The song's jazz conclusion
Conclusion (music)
In music, the conclusion is the ending of a composition and may take the form of a coda or outro.Pieces using sonata form typically use the recapitulation to conclude a piece, providing closure through the repetition of thematic material from the exposition in the tonic key...
has Badu singing about her mother's life and resilience in unison with a muted trumpet. Piero Scaruffi compares Badu to "the sweetest Diana Ross
Diana Ross
Diana Ernestine Earle Ross is an American singer, record producer, and actress. Ross was lead singer of the Motown group The Supremes during the 1960s. After leaving the group in 1970, Ross began a solo career that included successful ventures into film and Broadway...
" on the song and finds the songwriting "simple and spontaneous". "My People" has a slow beat and righteous lyrics delivered with gospel
Gospel music
Gospel music is music that is written to express either personal, spiritual or a communal belief regarding Christian life, as well as to give a Christian alternative to mainstream secular music....
and chant
Chant
Chant is the rhythmic speaking or singing of words or sounds, often primarily on one or two pitches called reciting tones. Chants may range from a simple melody involving a limited set of notes to highly complex musical structures Chant (from French chanter) is the rhythmic speaking or singing...
-like repetition and call and response
Call and response
Call and response is a form of "spontaneous verbal and non-verbal interaction between speaker and listener in which all of the statements are punctuated by expressions from the listener."...
patterns. It features a sample of singer-songwriter Eddie Kendricks
Eddie Kendricks
Eddie Kendricks was an American singer and songwriter. Noted for his distinctive falsetto singing style, Kendricks co-founded the Motown singing group The Temptations, and was one of their lead singers from 1960 until 1971. His was the lead voice on such famous songs as "The Way You Do The Things...
' 1972 song "My People...Hold On".
"Soldier
Soldier (Erykah Badu song)
"Soldier" is a song by Erykah Badu released as the second single from her fifth album, New Amerykah Part One . The song was produced by Karriem Riggins. This was strictly a promotional single and did not have a commercial single release or music video...
" was produced by Karriem Riggins and features a pulsing groove, soft flute, rugged drums, and a deflty chopped sample. It was written by Badu immediately after receiving Riggins' beat for the song. Riggins likens the song's production style to that of J Dilla and his Detroit hip hop scene, stating "We shared a lot of the same ideas and I was really inspired by his sound. A lot of producers from Detroit have a certain sound, and I think it just comes from being in the city. Erykah definitely connects to that and she wanted that sound." The song's sociopolitical
Political sociology
Contemporary political sociology involves much more than the study of the relations between state and society . Where a typical research question in political sociology might have been: "Why do so few American citizens choose to vote?" or even, "What difference does it make if women get elected?" ...
lyrics have Badu expressing sympathy and solidarity for those facing oppression, with references to black-on-black crime
Race and crime in the United States
The relationship between race and crime in the United States has been a topic of public controversy and scholarly debate for more than a century...
, police corruption
Police corruption
Police corruption is a specific form of police misconduct designed to obtain financial benefits, other personal gain, or career advancement for a police officer or officers in exchange for not pursuing, or selectively pursuing, an investigation or arrest....
, and Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was a powerful Atlantic hurricane. It is the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States. Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall...
. "The Cell" was produced by Sa-Ra member Shafiq Husayn and features a lively, choral
Choir
A choir, chorale or chorus is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform.A body of singers who perform together as a group is called a choir or chorus...
style and hard bop
Hard bop
Hard bop is a style of jazz that is an extension of bebop music. Journalists and record companies began using the term in the mid-1950s to describe a new current within jazz which incorporated influences from rhythm and blues, gospel music, and blues, especially in the saxophone and piano...
feel. A metaphor for both heridity and confinment, "The Cell" is a tableau of crime, drugs, and desperation in urban decay, streamlined by a stark story about Brenda, a character who falls victim to her environment.
"Twinkle" was co-produced by Mike "Chav" Chavarria and has a dreadful, uneasy mood. Cited by Chavarria as the album's most effects-heavy track, it features a futuristic sound, a convoluted beat, and abstract aural elements such as white noise
White noise
White noise is a random signal with a flat power spectral density. In other words, the signal contains equal power within a fixed bandwidth at any center frequency...
bursts, high-pitched voices, abrasive instruments, and layers of twinkling keyboard bass
Keyboard bass
The keyboard bass is the use of a low-pitched keyboard or pedal keyboard to substitute for the bass guitar or double bass in popular music.-1960s:The earliest keyboard bass instrument was the 1960 Fender Rhodes piano bass, pictured above...
. Additionally, the song incorporates guitar by Omar Rodríguez-López and Jef Lee Johnson. The song's lyrics lament the plight of the African-American community and the cyclical effects on African Americans by the various failures of the social institutions such as the health care
Health care in the United States
Health care in the United States is provided by many separate legal entities. Health care facilities are largely owned and operated by the private sector...
, education
Education in the United States
Education in the United States is mainly provided by the public sector, with control and funding coming from three levels: federal, state, and local. Child education is compulsory.Public education is universally available...
, and prison systems in the United States. Badu raps in the song's verse, "Children of the matrix be hittin’ them car switches / Seen some virgin Virgos hanging out with Venus bitches", followed by her singing, "They don’t know their language, they don’t know their God". Over humming keyboards, the song's closing minutes feature a speech in the ancient African language of Mdw Ntchr, followed by a rant by a speaker that is modelled after actor Peter Finch
Peter Finch
Peter Finch was a British-born Australian actor. He is best remembered for his role as "crazed" television anchorman Howard Beale in the film Network, which earned him a posthumous Academy Award for Best Actor, his fifth Best Actor award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, and a...
's rant in the 1976 film Network
Network (film)
Network is a 1976 American satirical film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer about a fictional television network, Union Broadcasting System , and its struggle with poor ratings. The film was written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Sidney Lumet...
. The speaker angrily indictes the state of the world and the complacency of people. Philadelphia Weekly
Philadelphia Weekly
Philadelphia Weekly , is an award-winning alternative newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, published every Wednesday.The paper was founded in 1971 as a sister publication to the South Philadelphia Press. In 1995, the paper became Philadelphia Weekly...
s Craig D. Linsey describes "Twinkle" as a "dense inner-city blues
Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)
"Inner City Blues ", often shortened to "Inner City Blues", is a song by Marvin Gaye, released as the third and final single from and the climactic song of his 1971 landmark album, What's Going On...
".
"Master Teacher" was conceived by Georgia Anne Muldrow on her Rhodes piano
Rhodes piano
The Rhodes piano is an electro-mechanical piano, invented by Harold Rhodes during the fifties and later manufactured in a number of models, first in collaboration with Fender and after 1965 by CBS....
at Sa-Ra's Cosmic Dust Studio with Badu present and was originally intended for one of their albums. Its idyllic music blends mellow soul and glitchy hip hop, featuring a chopped sample of Curtis Mayfield's 1972 song "Freddie's Dead
Freddie's Dead
"Freddie's Dead" is a song by Curtis Mayfield. It was the first single from his 1972 soundtrack album for the film Super Fly. The single was released before the Super Fly album, and in fact before the film itself was in theaters. The song peaked at #4 on the U.S...
". The song's lyrics envision a higher degree of African-American identity. Its vocalists ask in refrain
Refrain
A refrain is the line or lines that are repeated in music or in verse; the "chorus" of a song...
, "What if there were no niggas, only master teachers?", and answering "I stay woke", with Badu responding "I’m in the search of something new / Search inside me, searching inside you". Midway through the song, keyboardist James Poyser appears and softens the music's tempo, with a fluid, jazzy sound. "That Hump" concerns the topic of drug dependency. The closing track "Telephone" is a tribute to J Dilla, who died in 2006 from complications with blood disorder, and has themes of sorrow and hope. It serves as a departure from the preceding songs' edgier musical direction, featuring soft melodies and an acoustic feel similar to Badu's live sound. The songs opens with the sound of ominous sirens, referencing J Dilla's 2006 album Donuts
Donuts (album)
Donuts is an instrumental hip hop album by producer J Dilla. Donuts was released on February 7, 2006, his 32nd birthday, and only three days before his death...
. The song's lyrics are based on a story told to Badu by J Dilla's mother on the day of his death. James Poyser explained in an interview, "Dilla's mom told Erykah about one day when he was telling her about this dream he had where Ol'Dirty
Ol' Dirty Bastard
Russell Tyrone Jones was an American rapper and occasional producer, who went by the stage name Ol' Dirty Bastard or simply ODB...
was telling him to get on a different color bus and giving him directions home". Poyser said that the song's music was inspired by Dilla's passing and discussed its recording, stating:
The closing track "Honey
Honey (Erykah Badu song)
"Honey" is a song by Erykah Badu, released as the lead single from her third studio album, New Amerykah Part One . The song was produced by 9th Wonder, and samples Nancy Wilson's 1978 song "I'm in Love".-Music video:...
" is a percussive, lighthearted love song that contains a sample of singer Nancy Wilson's 1978 song "I'm in Love". The track opens with a reprise
Reprise
Reprise is a fundamental device in the history of art. In literature, a reprise consists of the rewriting of another work; in music, a reprise is the repetition or reiteration of the opening material later in a composition as occurs in the recapitulation of sonata form, though—originally in the...
of "Amerykahn Promise", with an announcer saying, "We hope you enjoyed your journey and now we’re putting control of you back to you", and a countdown leading to "Honey". According to Badu, the song is about "a lover, a fictitious character named Slim, who I'm chasing." Allmusic's Andy Kellman comments that the song is included as an unlisted track as "it doesn't fit into the album's fabric, what with its drifting, deeply sweetened, synth-squish-and-string-drift groove."
Packaging and title
The album's cover and interior artwork were designed by Badu and graphic artist EmekEmek
Emek is a popular artist/graphic designer/illustrator designs concert posters since the early 1990s. He is widely credited with helping to revive the rock poster scene...
. The cover features an abstract portrayal of Badu, who dons vintage nameplate knuckle rings bearing the album title and an Afro
Afro
Afro, sometimes shortened to fro and also known as a "natural", is a hairstyle worn naturally by people with lengthy kinky hair texture or specifically styled in such a fashion by individuals with naturally curly or straight hair...
decorated in a bric-a-brac
Bric-a-brac
Bric-à-brac , first used in the Victorian era, refers to collections of curios such as elaborately decorated teacups and small vases, feathers, wax flowers under glass domes, eggshells, statuettes, painted miniatures or photographs, and so on...
manner with various emblems. Badu and Emek saught to reflect the former's perspective on various topics, including music, religion, governments, and economics, and incorporate emblems to depict American culture and modern society. Images featured in the Afro include those of flowers, spray cans, dollar signs, power plants, musical notes, toilets, raised fists, needles, laptops, turntables, handcuffs, broken chains, bar codes, drugs, and guns. The album's interior artwork features ominous, psychedelic, futuristic, and apocalyptic imagery. The artwork includes illustrations of a red-eyed Uncle Sam
Uncle Sam
Uncle Sam is a common national personification of the American government originally used during the War of 1812. He is depicted as a stern elderly man with white hair and a goatee beard...
pointing a gun, robotic creatures tattooing each other, a bar code bearing the alphanumeric
Alphanumeric
Alphanumeric is a combination of alphabetic and numeric characters, and is used to describe the collection of Latin letters and Arabic digits or a text constructed from this collection. There are either 36 or 62 alphanumeric characters. The alphanumeric character set consists of the numbers 0 to...
message "50C1AL 5Y5T3M", and a suited skeleton with a dollar sign on its skull lecturing a headless audience from a podium that bears the pyramid image from the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States
Great Seal of the United States
The Great Seal of the United States is used to authenticate certain documents issued by the United States federal government. The phrase is used both for the physical seal itself , and more generally for the design impressed upon it...
. The illustration of a soft melting fork, hypodermic needle, and spoon is an adaptation of Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....
's 1931 painting The Persistence of Memory
The Persistence of Memory
The Persistence of Memory is a 1931 painting by artist Salvador Dalí, and is one of his most recognizable works. The painting has been in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City since 1934...
.
Before its release, the album was tentatively called KahBa, which Badu derived from her name, as a reference to Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
and Kemetism. The title of the album series, New Amerykah, is a pun
Pun
The pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use and abuse of homophonic,...
of Badu's name. She has explained one meaning of it as "a statement that simply says, 'This is the beginning of the new world'-for both the slaves and the slave masters. In other words, everybody has to wake up and see. This new world moves much faster. We don't even realize how fast we're moving." In her interview for Remix, Badu said that New Amerykah also means "a very different and new for me" and elaborated on this context, stating "In 1997, a 25-year-old Erykah Badu came out as an artist, pregnant, a mother-to-be. We used to bring cassettes home as our listening from the studio. No one had a cell phone, only a couple people with these great big contraptions. The Internet was not our form of communication; we still had the library. We were creating from sand and scrap. So quickly it's turned into this technological society. I can send the album to millions of fans from Antarctica to Mexico City with one push of the button. The way our children think and the things they see? It's new, and it's happened so quick. And I am in the middle of that. Me on the platform with a microphone — that is how I envision New Amerykah." Part Ones subtitle, 4th World War, reflects the content's objective, political leanings, which Badu explained to be "outside of me [...] What’s going on outside is the left brain
Lateralization of brain function
A longitudinal fissure separates the human brain into two distinct cerebral hemispheres, connected by the corpus callosum. The sides resemble each other and each hemisphere's structure is generally mirrored by the other side. Yet despite the strong anatomical similarities, the functions of each...
".
Release and promotion
The album was released in the United States on February 26, 2008, Badu's 37th birthday. It was also released as a double vinyl LPLP record
The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...
on March 11, and on USB stick
USB flash drive
A flash drive is a data storage device that consists of flash memory with an integrated Universal Serial Bus interface. flash drives are typically removable and rewritable, and physically much smaller than a floppy disk. Most weigh less than 30 g...
format. In an interview for the Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
, Badu discussed the album's accompanying USB stick, stating "I might as well give a digital world what they need and what they want. And that's to just cut out the middle man, which is the CD, which will be extinct, I would say, in about seven to eight years — right along with the record labels." The album was originally intended as a double album, with 18 songs over two discs. A release party for the album took place on February 26 at the House of Blues
House of Blues
House of Blues is a chain of 13 live music concert halls and restaurants in major markets throughout the United States. House of Blues first location was in Cambridge's Harvard Square. It was opened in 1992 by Isaac Tigrett, co-founder of Hard Rock Cafe, and Dan Aykroyd, star of The Blues Brothers...
in Dallas.
Badu previewed songs from the album as a headlining act at the Barbados Jazz Festival
Barbados Jazz Festival
The Barbados Jazz Festival is an annual jazz festival of the Caribbean island of Barbados. It is a week-long celebration held annually in January, a jubilant affair that attracts a cast of talented musical maestros to the streets of Bridgetown who play for hours every night in festivity...
in January. On February 26, she performed songs from the album on VH1 Soul
VH1 Soul
VH1 Soul is a digital cable and satellite television channel and is the sister network to VH1. It showcases R&B, funk, soul, and Motown music from various periods....
's SoulStage.
Singles
The album's lead singleLead single
A lead single is usually the first single released by a musician or a band before the release of its home album.During the era of the grammophone record, all music arrived in the marketplace as what is now termed a single, one potential hit song backed by an additional song of generally less...
, "Honey", was released on December 11, 2007. Directed by Badu and Chris Robinson
Chris Robinson (director)
Chris Robinson is an American film director working mostly with music videos and commercials. He has directed commercials for brands such as iPod, Coca Cola and Verizon and music videos for songs like "Fallin'" and "You Don't Know My Name" by Alicia Keys, "Roc Boys" by Jay-Z, the grammy nominated...
, the song's music video was released on January 28, and was conceived by Badu as an homage to classic records. Set in a small business
Small business
A small business is a business that is privately owned and operated, with a small number of employees and relatively low volume of sales. Small businesses are normally privately owned corporations, partnerships, or sole proprietorships...
record store, it follows a customer looking through vintage R&B, hip hop, and rock LP albums, with the albums' cover artwork depicted as moving images with Badu cast in them. Robinson said of the video's direction, "We wanted a video that spoke to Badu's eclecticism. Those album covers represent all the influences that she embodies." The video also features a cameo appearance by Sa-Ra member Shafiq Husayn. Albums covers that were recreated in the video are those of Rufus featuring Chaka Khan (album) (1975) by Rufus
Rufus (band)
Rufus was an American funk band from Chicago, Illinois best known for launching the career of lead singer Chaka Khan. They had several hits throughout their career, including "Tell Me Something Good," "Sweet Thing," and "Ain't Nobody."-Origins:...
, Blue
Blue (Diana Ross album)
Blue, also referred to as The Blue Album, is a 2006 studio album released on Motown by American pop singer Diana Ross.Recorded in late 1971 and early 1972, the album was conceived as follow-up to the successful Lady Sings the Blues soundtrack but was shelved in order to return Ross to the pop...
(2006) by Diana Ross
Diana Ross
Diana Ernestine Earle Ross is an American singer, record producer, and actress. Ross was lead singer of the Motown group The Supremes during the 1960s. After leaving the group in 1970, Ross began a solo career that included successful ventures into film and Broadway...
, Maggot Brain
Maggot Brain
Maggot Brain is the third studio album by the American funk band Funkadelic, released in 1971 on Westbound Records. The album incorporates musical elements of psychedelia, rock, gospel, and soul music, with significant variation between each track. Pitchfork Media named it the seventeenth best...
(1971) by Funkadelic
Funkadelic
Funkadelic was an American band most prominent during the 1970s. The band and its sister act Parliament, both led by George Clinton, began the funk music culture of that decade.-History:...
, Paid in Full
Paid in Full (album)
Paid in Full is the debut album of American hip hop duo Eric B. & Rakim, released July 7, 1987, on the Island-subsidiary label 4th & B'way Records. The duo recorded the album at hip hop producer Marley Marl's home studio and Power Play Studios in New York City, following Rakim's response to Eric...
(1987) by Eric B. & Rakim
Eric B. & Rakim
Eric B. & Rakim were a hip-hop duo composed of DJ Eric Barrier and MC Rakim .Hailing from Long Island, New York, the pair are generally considered by hip hop enthusiasts to be one of the most influential and innovative groups in the genre...
, Honey
Honey (Ohio Players album)
-Track listing:#"Honey" - 5:20#"Fopp" - 3:45#"Let's Do It" - 5:15 #"Ain't Givin' up No Ground" - 1:42#"Sweet Sticky Thing" - 6:14#"Love Rollercoaster" - 4:50#"Alone" - 4:37-Personnel:...
(1975) by Ohio Players
Ohio Players
The Ohio Players were an American funk and R&B band, most popular in the 1970s. They are best known for their double #1 hit songs "Fire" and "Love Rollercoaster".- Biography :...
, Perfect Angel
Perfect Angel
In 1973, a college intern for Epic Records found Riperton in semi-retirement. She had become a homemaker and a mother of two in Gainesville, Florida. After he heard a demo of the song "Seeing You This Way", the rep took the tape to Don Ellis, VP of A&R for Epic...
(1975) by Minnie Riperton
Minnie Riperton
Minnie Julia Riperton was an American singer-songwriter best known for her 1975 single "Lovin' You". She was married to songwriter and music producer Richard Rudolph from 1972 until her death in the summer of 1979. They had two children - music engineer Marc Rudolph and actress/comedienne Maya...
, Chameleon
Chameleon (Labelle album)
Chameleon is the sixth album by American singing trio Labelle. Though Patti LaBelle's autobiography Don't Block The Blessings revealed that LaBelle planned a follow-up to Chameleon entitled Shaman, the album never materialized. The trio would not release another new recording until 2008's Back to Now...
(1976) by Labelle
Labelle
Labelle is an American all female singing group who were a popular vocal group of the 1960s and 1970s. The group was formed after the disbanding of two rival girl groups in the Philadelphia/Trenton areas, the Ordettes and the Del-Capris, forming as a new version of the former group, later changing...
, 3 Feet High and Rising
3 Feet High and Rising
3 Feet High and Rising is the debut album from American hip hop trio De La Soul, released in 1989.The album marked the first of three full-length collaborations with producer Prince Paul, which would become the critical and commercial peak of both parties. It is consistently placed on 'greatest...
(1989) by De La Soul
De La Soul
De La Soul is an American hip hop trio formed in 1987 on Long Island, New York. The band is best known for their eclectic sampling, quirky lyrics, and their contributions to the evolution of the jazz rap and alternative hip hop subgenres...
, Let It Be (1970) by The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
, Illmatic
Illmatic
Illmatic is the debut album of American rapper Nas, released April 19, 1994, on Columbia Records. Following his signing to Columbia with the help of MC Serch, recording sessions for the album took place during 1992 to 1993 at Chung King Studios, D&D Recording, Battery Studios, and Unique Recording...
(1994) by Nas
Nas
Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones, who performs under the name Nas , formerly Nasty Nas, is an American rapper and actor. He is regarded as one of the most important figures in hip hop and one of the most skilled and influential rappers of all-time...
, Physical (1981) by Olivia Newton-John
Olivia Newton-John
Olivia Newton-John AO, OBE is a singer and actress. She is a four-time Grammy award winner who has amassed five No. 1 and ten other Top Ten Billboard Hot 100 singles and two No. 1 Billboard 200 solo albums. Eleven of her singles and 14 of her albums have been certified gold by the RIAA...
, Nightclubbing
Nightclubbing
Nightclubbing is the fifth studio album by Grace Jones, released in 1981. It is the second of three post-disco albums that Jones made at Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas and became Jones' commercial breakthrough and also formed the basis of her groundbreaking concept tour A One Man Show...
(1981) by Grace Jones
Grace Jones
Grace Jones is a Jamaican-American singer, model and actress.Jones secured a record deal with Island Records in 1977, which resulted in a string of dance-club hits. In the late 1970s, she adapted the emerging electronic music style and adopted a severe, androgynous look with square-cut hair and...
, and Head to the Sky
Head to the Sky
Head to the Sky is the 4th studio album by Earth, Wind & Fire, released in 1973. Their second album on Columbia Records, Head to the Sky was EWF's first commercially successful album and it has been certified platinum in the United States for sales of over a million copies...
(1973) by Earth, Wind & Fire
Earth, Wind & Fire
Earth, Wind & Fire is an American soul and R&B band formed in Chicago, Illinois, in 1969 by Verdine and Maurice White. Also known as EWF, the band has won six Grammy Awards and four American Music Awards. They have been inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Vocal Group Hall of...
. As a video within a video
Story within a story
A story within a story, also rendered story-within-a-story, is a literary device in which one narrative is presented during the action of another narrative. Mise en abyme is the French term for a similar literary device...
, the record store's video screen plays an excerpt of the song "Annie" performed by Badu's side project Edith Funker, which features Questlove, James Poyser, Nikka Costa
Nikka Costa
Domenica "Nikka" Costa is an American singer whose music combines elements of funk, soul, and blues. She also had a career as a child singer starting in the early 1980s. She is the daughter of notable music producer Don Costa and is married to Australian producer/songwriter Justin Stanley.- Early...
, Mike Elizondo
Mike Elizondo
Michael "Mike" Elizondo is a well-known songwriter, bassist, keyboardist, and hip hop music producer.-Musical career:Mike Elizondo is especially known for his collaborations with internationally successful producer Dr. Dre and rapper Eminem. He has played the bass for many of Dr...
, and Wendy Melvoin
Wendy Melvoin
Wendy Melvoin is an American guitarist and singer-songwriter, best known for her work with Prince as part of his backing band The Revolution, and for her collaboration with Lisa Coleman as one half of the duo Wendy & Lisa....
. The music video received play on outlets such as MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
, VH1
VH1
VH1 or Vh1 is an American cable television network based in New York City. Launched on January 1, 1985 in the old space of Turner Broadcasting's short-lived Cable Music Channel, the original purpose of the channel was to build on the success of MTV by playing music videos, but targeting a slightly...
, and BET
Black Entertainment Television
Black Entertainment Television is an American, Viacom-owned cable network based in Washington, D.C.. Currently viewed in more than 90 million homes worldwide, it is the most prominent television network targeting young Black-American audiences. The network was launched on January 25, 1980, by its...
.
Commercial performance
The album debuted at number two on the Billboard 200Billboard 200
The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists...
, selling 125,000 copies in its first week. It was Badu's best opening week since her debut album Baduizm
Baduizm
Baduizm is the debut album of R&B and neo soul musician Erykah Badu, released February 11, 1997 on Kedar Records. Recording sessions for the album took place during January to October 1996 at Battery Studios in New York City, Sigma Sounds & Ivory Studios in Philadelphia, and Dallas Sound Lab in...
in 1997. In its second week, it fell four spots to number six, selling 41,466 copies. In its third week, it fell to number nine, selling about 35,000 more copies. It has sold 359,000 copies in the United States.
Critical response
New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) received general acclaim from music criticMusic criticism
See also Music journalism for reporting on classical and popular music in the media.The Oxford Companion to Music defines music criticism as 'the intellectual activity of formulating judgments on the value and degree of excellence of individual works of music, or whole groups or genres'. In this...
s. At Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
, which assigns a normalized
Standard score
In statistics, a standard score indicates how many standard deviations an observation or datum is above or below the mean. It is a dimensionless quantity derived by subtracting the population mean from an individual raw score and then dividing the difference by the population standard deviation...
rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average
Weighted mean
The weighted mean is similar to an arithmetic mean , where instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others...
score of 83, based on 25 reviews, which indicates "universal acclaim". Allmusic editor Andy Kellman gave it four-and-a-half out of five stars and stated, "Immediately moving and yet rather bewildering, New Amerykah, Pt. 1 is an album that sounds special from the first play, yet it will probably take years before it is known just how special it is." Slant Magazine
Slant Magazine
Slant Magazine is an online publication that features reviews of movies, music, TV, DVDs, theater, and video games, as well as interviews with actors, directors, and musicians. The site covers various film festivals like the New York Film Festival.- History :...
's Eric Henderson called the album "intense" and "as sonically ambitious as anything she's done to date." Music writer Piero Scaruffi
Piero Scaruffi
Piero Scaruffi received a degree in Mathematics in 1982 from University of Turin, where he did work on the General Theory of Relativity. For a number of years he was the head of the Artificial Intelligence Center at Olivetti, based in Cupertino, California. He has been a visiting scholar at...
commended it for "blending live instrumentation and samples in a fluent and never discordant manner" and wrote that Badu "achieves a sort of classical elegance" with some songs. Sasha Frere-Jones of The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
described the album as "a brilliant resurgence of black avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
vocal pop, convincing in its doubts and stable in its unmoored ways", and "the work of a restless polymath ignoring the world around her and opting for an idiosyncratic, murky feeling that reflects her impulses." Boston Herald
Boston Herald
The Boston Herald is a daily newspaper that serves Boston, Massachusetts, United States, and its surrounding area. It was started in 1846 and is one of the oldest daily newspapers in the United States...
writer Lauren Carter called it "a journey into a bizarre, brilliant otherworld with spooky-cool Badu as the guide", adding that she "lands so far beyond her peers that legitimate comparisons don’t exist yet."
However, Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
writer Christian Hoard found Badu's lyrics ambiguous and stated, "some of the music is gripping [...] but other tunes feel like absent-minded doodles, and Badu's social consciousness nets middling returns." Ben Ratliff of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
called the album "a deep, murky swim in her brain", commenting that Badu's ideas "can be half-expressed or too well worn", and concluded, "Whether you like it depends in great part on how much you liked her before — the persona as well as the music." Amy Linden of Vibe called it "challenging, fabulously out there, and, maybe sometimes, too hip for its own good", writing that it "is daring even for Badu, at times risky for risk's sake and as alluringly unconventional as it is imperfect." Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
writer Greg Kot
Greg Kot
Greg Kot is an American writer and journalist. Since 1990, Kot has been the music critic at the Chicago Tribune, where he has covered popular music and reported on music-related social, political and business issues...
found the album "adventurous" and "anything but an easy listen", adding that "Art this deeply personal seldom is." Sputnikmusic
Sputnikmusic
Sputnikmusic, or simply Sputnik, is a music website offering music criticism and music news alongside features commonly associated with wiki-style websites...
's Nick Butler commented that the "moments here where Erykah flies off the map entirely [...] add character" to an album that "sees Badu striving so fearlessly for a voice and a sound to distinguish her as a singular, forward-thinking artist." Butler cited the album as "the least accessible thing she's ever done, and perhaps the least accessible album ever associated with the Soulquarians."
Despite noting moments of excessive "static darkness", Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media, usually known simply as Pitchfork or P4k, is a Chicago-based daily Internet publication established in 1995 that is devoted to music criticism and commentary, music news, and artist interviews. Its focus is on underground and independent music, especially indie rock...
's Nitsuh Abebe praised Badu as a "recognizable, complex, three-dimensional character" and marvelled at "how she still pulls this off, every bit of it", stating "Even when she seems wrong, or dippy, or maybe a little batty, she's still a ridiculously compelling and likable personality." Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
writer Ernest Hardy commented that Badu "pushes the envelope", but noted "it's her underrated role as wordsmith that most dazzles", and called the album "a collection of demanding, disquieting and beautiful urban hymns that reveal their rewards on repeated listenings." Quentin B. Huff of PopMatters
PopMatters
PopMatters is an international webzine of cultural criticism that covers many aspects of popular culture. PopMatters publishes reviews, interviews, and detailed essays on most cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, films, books, video games, comics, sports, theater,...
called New Amerykah Part One "smart and funky as hell" and commended Badu for being "as open and candid as ever, matching her warmth with her wisdom, along with her heightened awareness of what makes people, including herself, tick." Alex Macpherson of The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
called it "as ambitious and insane as its title implies: part state-of-the-nation opus, part eye-opening trawl through the unexplored depths of Badu's brain", and stated, "Each listen to New Amerykah brings fresh rewards: it demands to be explored."
In his consumer guide for MSN Music
MSN Music
MSN Music was a part of the MSN web services. It delivered music news, music videos, spotlights on new music, artist information, and live performances of artists. In 2004, Microsoft created an MSN Music download store to compete with Apple's iTunes Music Store, though its sales in comparison were...
, critic Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau is an American essayist, music journalist, and self-proclaimed "Dean of American Rock Critics".One of the earliest professional rock critics, Christgau is known for his terse capsule reviews, published since 1969 in his Consumer Guide columns...
gave the album an honorable mention rating, indicating "an enjoyable effort consumers attuned to its overriding aesthetic or individual vision may well treasure." Christgau cited "The Cell" and "Amerykahn Promise" as highlights and quipped in his review, "When your funk is this futuristic, not to say abstract, astrology
Astrology
Astrology consists of a number of belief systems which hold that there is a relationship between astronomical phenomena and events in the human world...
and Farrakhan sound old, not to say ignorant".
Accolades
New Amerykah Part One was included on several publications' "best albums of the year" lists, including the Associated PressAssociated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
(number 1), Mojo
Mojo (magazine)
MOJO is a popular music magazine published initially by Emap, and since January 2008 by Bauer, monthly in the United Kingdom. Following the success of the magazine Q, publishers Emap were looking for a title which would cater for the burgeoning interest in classic rock music...
, Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
(number 7), The Austin Chronicle (number 9), Cokemachineglow (number 1), Dusted Magazine (number 5), Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
(number 5), New York
New York (magazine)
New York is a weekly magazine principally concerned with the life, culture, politics, and style of New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it was brasher and less polite than that magazine, and established itself as a cradle of New...
(number 8), The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
(number 4), The A.V. Club
The A.V. Club
The A.V. Club is an entertainment newspaper and website published by The Onion. Its features include reviews of new films, music, television, books, games and DVDs, as well as interviews and other regular offerings examining both new and classic media and other elements of pop culture. Unlike its...
(number 8), PopMatters
PopMatters
PopMatters is an international webzine of cultural criticism that covers many aspects of popular culture. PopMatters publishes reviews, interviews, and detailed essays on most cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, films, books, video games, comics, sports, theater,...
(number 4), Slant Magazine
Slant Magazine
Slant Magazine is an online publication that features reviews of movies, music, TV, DVDs, theater, and video games, as well as interviews with actors, directors, and musicians. The site covers various film festivals like the New York Film Festival.- History :...
(number 8), and The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
(number 9). Vibe magazine named it one of the ten best albums of 2008. Online music magazine
Online magazine
An online magazine shares some features with a blog and also with online newspapers, but can usually be distinguished by its approach to editorial control...
Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media, usually known simply as Pitchfork or P4k, is a Chicago-based daily Internet publication established in 1995 that is devoted to music criticism and commentary, music news, and artist interviews. Its focus is on underground and independent music, especially indie rock...
placed New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) at number 133 on their list of top 200 albums of the 2000s. Rhapsody
Rhapsody (online music service)
Rhapsody is an online music store subscription service, launched in December 2001, and available in the United States only. On April 6, 2010, Rhapsody officially declared its independence from RealNetworks. Downloaded files come with restrictions on their use, enforced by Helix, Rhapsody's version...
named it the best R&B album of the 2000s.
Rolling Stone ranked it number 19 on its list of the 50 Best Albums of 2008, commenting that "Amerykah is a hip-hop update of Funkadelic's brain-melting sonic stews." Spin
Spin (magazine)
Spin is a music magazine founded in 1985 by publisher Bob Guccione Jr.-History:In its early years, the magazine was noted for its broad music coverage with an emphasis on college-oriented rock music and on the ongoing emergence of hip-hop. The magazine was eclectic and bold, if sometimes haphazard...
ranked the album number 12 on its year-end list, with the publication's Charles Aaron stating, "Laptop R&B that uses hip-hop as its muse, New Amerykah also nods to P-Funk
Parliament-Funkadelic
Parliament-Funkadelic is a funk, soul and rock music collective headed by George Clinton. Their style has been dubbed P-Funk. Collectively the group has existed under various names since the 1960s and has been known for top-notch musicianship, politically charged lyrics, outlandish concept albums...
's agit-slop opuses about America's decay".
Track listing
- "Amerykahn Promise" (E. Badu, W. Allen, R. Ayers, E. Birdsong) – 4:16
- "The Healer" (E. Badu, O. Jackson Jr.MadlibOtis Jackson Jr. in Oxnard, California, known professionally as Madlib, is a Los Angeles-based DJ, multi-instrumentalist, rapper, and music producer...
, D. Vangerde) – 3:59 - "Me" (E. Badu, S. HusaynSa-RaSa-Ra is a hip-hop group based in Los Angeles, California, also known by its full name, The Sa-Ra Creative Partners. The group is composed of Om'Mas Keith, Taz Arnold, and Shafiq Husayn...
) – 5:36 - "My People" (E. Badu, O. Jackson Jr., Leonard Caston, Anita Posee) – 3:25
- "SoldierSoldier (Erykah Badu song)"Soldier" is a song by Erykah Badu released as the second single from her fifth album, New Amerykah Part One . The song was produced by Karriem Riggins. This was strictly a promotional single and did not have a commercial single release or music video...
" (E. Badu, K. RigginsKarriem RigginsKarriem Riggins is a jazz drummer, hip hop producer, dj, and sometime rapper. He is a former member of the Ray Brown Trio and Mulgrew Miller trio and currently appears in the Diana Krall quartet....
, Tom Barlage, Willem Ennes, Hans Waterman, Guus Willemse) – 5:04 - "The Cell" (E. Badu, S. Husayn) – 4:21
- "Twinkle" (E. Badu, S. Husayn, Omar Rodriguez Lopez, T. ArnoldSa-RaSa-Ra is a hip-hop group based in Los Angeles, California, also known by its full name, The Sa-Ra Creative Partners. The group is composed of Om'Mas Keith, Taz Arnold, and Shafiq Husayn...
) – 6:57 - "Master Teacher" (E. Badu, G. A. MuldrowGeorgia Anne MuldrowGeorgia Anne Muldrow is an American singer and musician signed to Stones Throw Records. She is the first female artist signed to the label and seems to be a close friend of fellow label artist Dudley Perkins...
, S. Husayn, C. Mayfield) – 6:48 - "That Hump" (E. Badu, O. KeithSa-RaSa-Ra is a hip-hop group based in Los Angeles, California, also known by its full name, The Sa-Ra Creative Partners. The group is composed of Om'Mas Keith, Taz Arnold, and Shafiq Husayn...
) – 5:25 - "Telephone" (E. Badu, A. Thompson, J. PoyserJames PoyserJames Poyser in Sheffield, England is a multi-Grammy winning songwriter, musician and multi-platinum producer.Poyser has written and produced songs for various legendary and award-winning artists including Erykah Badu, Mariah Carey, John Legend, Lauryn Hill, Common, Anthony Hamilton, D'Angelo,...
, F. Baskett, C. McDonald, D. Shields) – 7:48
Bonus tracks
- "HoneyHoney (Erykah Badu song)"Honey" is a song by Erykah Badu, released as the lead single from her third studio album, New Amerykah Part One . The song was produced by 9th Wonder, and samples Nancy Wilson's 1978 song "I'm in Love".-Music video:...
" (E. Badu, P. Douthit9th WonderPatrick Douthit , better known as 9th Wonder is a hip hop record producer, record executive, DJ, professor, and lyricist from Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S.A. He began his career as the main producer for the hip hop group Little Brother, and has also worked with Mary J...
) – 5:23 (Unlisted hidden track) - "Real Thang (Extended)" – 3:56 (iTunesITunes StoreThe iTunes Store is a software-based online digital media store operated by Apple. Opening as the iTunes Music Store on April 28, 2003, with over 200,000 items to purchase, it is, as of April 2008, the number-one music vendor in the United States...
bonus track) - "Real Thang (Green Lantern Remix)" – 3:12 (iTunes bonus track)
Personnel
- William Allen – arranger, producer
- Taz ArnoldSa-RaSa-Ra is a hip-hop group based in Los Angeles, California, also known by its full name, The Sa-Ra Creative Partners. The group is composed of Om'Mas Keith, Taz Arnold, and Shafiq Husayn...
– producer - Chris Athens – mastering
- Roy AyersRoy AyersRoy Ayers is an American funk, soul, and jazz composer and vibraphone player. Ayers began his career as a post-bop jazz artist, releasing several albums with Atlantic Records, before his tenure at Polydor Records beginning in the 1970s, during which he helped pioneer jazz-funk .- Biography :Ayers...
– arranger, producer - Erykah BaduErykah BaduErica Abi Wright , better known by her stage name Erykah Badu , is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, and actress. Her work includes elements from R&B, hip hop and jazz. She is best known for her role in the rise of the neo soul sub-genre, and for her eccentric, cerebral musical...
– percussion, vocals, lyricist, producer, executive producer, vocal arrangement, remixing, art direction, design, talking drum, re-recording engineer - Marc Baptiste – photography
- Chris Bell – engineer
- Edwin Birdsong – arranger, producer
- Mike "Chav" Chavarria - co-executive producer, engineer, arranger, mastering, guitar, vocals
- Shanti Das – marketing and project management for Universal Motown.
- Paul J. Levatino - marketing director and project management for Badu World.
- James Patrick Green – engineer
- Roy Hargrove – horn
- Shafiq Husayn – keyboards, programming, lyricist, producer, engineer, associate producer, arp strings
- Jef Lee Johnson – guitar
- Ronald Albert Johnson – engineer
- Om'Mas Keith – keyboards, producer, engineer, fender rhodes, synthesizer bass, roland synthesizer, trap kit
- Bilal Oliver – vocals
- James PoyserJames PoyserJames Poyser in Sheffield, England is a multi-Grammy winning songwriter, musician and multi-platinum producer.Poyser has written and produced songs for various legendary and award-winning artists including Erykah Badu, Mariah Carey, John Legend, Lauryn Hill, Common, Anthony Hamilton, D'Angelo,...
– keyboards, producer - Karriem RigginsKarriem RigginsKarriem Riggins is a jazz drummer, hip hop producer, dj, and sometime rapper. He is a former member of the Ray Brown Trio and Mulgrew Miller trio and currently appears in the Diana Krall quartet....
– producer - Otis Jackson Jr.(Madlib) - producer
- Tom Soares – engineer, mixing, re-recording engineer, vocal recording
- Jerry Soloman – engineer
- Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson - drums
Charts
| Chart (2008) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Austrian Albums Chart Ö3 Austria Top 40 Ö3 Austria Top 40 is the name of the official Austrian singles chart, as well as the radio show which presents it, aired Fridays on Hitradio Ö3. The show presents the Austrian singles, ringtones and downloads chart. It premiered on 26 November 1968 as Disc Parade and was presented by Ernst Grissemann... |
39 |
| Belgian Albums Chart | 32 |
| Dutch Albums Chart | 25 |
| Finnish Albums Chart | 30 |
| French Albums Chart | 49 |
| German Albums Chart | 44 |
| Italian Albums Chart | 51 |
| Japanese Albums Chart Oricon , established in 1999, is the holding company at the head of a Japanese corporate group that supplies statistics and information on music and the music industry in Japan. It started as , which was founded by Sōkō Koike in November 1967 and became known for its music charts. Oricon Inc... |
64 |
| Polish Albums Chart Polish Music Charts The Polish Music Charts are two official album charts and seven singles charts in Poland, provided by ZPAV, the Polish Society of the Phonographic Industry . The first, the Top 100, is a monthly chart based on data received from the album companies... |
9 |
| Swedish Albums Chart | 5 |
| Swiss Albums Chart | 10 |
| UK Albums Chart UK Albums Chart The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart... |
55 |
| US Billboard 200 Billboard 200 The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists... |
2 |
| US Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums is a chart published by Billboard magazine that ranks R&B and hip hop albums based on sales compiled by Nielsen SoundScan. The name of the chart was changed from Top R&B Albums in 1999... |
2 |
External links
- New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) at DiscogsDiscogsDiscogs, short for discographies, is a website and database of information about audio recordings, including commercial releases, promotional releases, and bootleg or off-label releases. The Discogs servers, currently hosted under the domain name discogs.com, are owned by Zink Media, Inc., and are...
- New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) at MetacriticMetacriticMetacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...