Badu, under her Appletree Café management company and the Beautiful Love Productions nonprofit she helped form, has assumed the Forest's lease and intends to turn the place into a community center. She has all kinds of plans for the Forest: community outreach programs for neighborhood kids, dance classes for children 5 to 12, a soup kitchen for the homeless, a place for parents to drop off their kids on a Saturday night and know they'll be safe and busy. Maybe she'll even show some movies again.
She says the mission is doubly personal because her family was once involved with the legendary Green Parrot, a long-defunct club that sat next to the Forest--a place where Nat "King" Cole and James Brown used to play when they came through Dallas. "We want to bring that block, that area, back to life," she says.
Mark Graham
The funky drummer: Badu's life revolves around her community and her kid. This drum kit was given to her son, Seven, by OutKast's Andre Benjamin, his father.
The queen of "neo-soul": When Baduizm debuted in 1997, Badu's Afrofabulous look became a fashion-world sensation--which wasn't quite her point.
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She knows it's a hell of a job. There is a song on Worldwide Undergroundabout South Dallas, though it could be about any neighborhood anywhere decimated by the using and selling of drugs. Titled "Danger," it tells of a drug dealer's girlfriend pacing the floor in anticipation of her man's imminent, though unlikely, return. It begins with a prison phone call, then degenerates into a tale of simmering fear: "They got the block on lock/The trunk stay locked/Glock on cock the box stay hot." The song's title refers not only to the woman's state of safety, but that of an entire neighborhood bound to the drug trade.
"Danger" is sort of a sequel to words she had put on the Forest's marquee earlier this summer. Drivers passing the joint couldn't help but read the message: "Higher powers bring drugs into our community/You sell them to yo own folks/The hood suffers and soon dies/And all for some rims." Not surprisingly, Badu has told Motown she wants "Danger" to be the first single off the album. This week, she will begin shooting the video all over the city and the old neighborhood.
"I chose that as the single because that is the main focus of the community--making money--and drug sales are the alternative to getting a job," she says. "That's the way it is, and it's as accepted as breast implants and Botox. What I'm talking about is how drugs get into the community, what happens when they do. What happens is the community itself soon dies. It's dilapidated. Other people from other neighborhoods should have to drive through our neighborhoods in South Dallas and Oak Cliff to see. The freeway should exit there, and you are required to drive through South Dallas so you can know who the rest of the people in our city are and how they're suffering."
When Badu was first signed, those who knew her back in the day expected her to carry them to stardom, or at least New York or Los Angeles, on her narrow shoulders. Some went along for the ride, among them Chonita Gilbert, an old friend and extraordinary backup singer now recording as N'Dambi. Some didn't make it to the final destination and became unhappy. Ty Macklin, mastermind of hip-hop band Shabazz 3, even took Badu to court in New York City in 1997 over a song on Baduizm. They agreed in early '98 to dissolve the lawsuit, but it left a wound.
So there is a price to be paid for trying to help; there can often be the bitter residue of failure, which happens whenever people feel something's been promised and yanked away from them. It was bad enough when one or two people counted on her to deliver. What happens when an entire neighborhood starts believing in her?
"Look, when she came along, we were at the height of our unconsciousness as a community," Russell Simmons says. "Her music was greater than her cause. Now her music and her cause are the same. Her lyrics now, we look forward to them, and they've impacted other rappers. Other hip-hop people are now inspired to talk about subject matter that affects others instead of their own game." That, he says, is all you can ask of anyone.
Badu recalls her earliest days as a recording artist, between signing and stardom. After each show, she and N'Dambi would stay and sign autographs, even while the cleanup crew was stacking chairs. It was an honor, she says, a humbling experience she didn't want to take for granted. Now, she says she will do anything butsign a piece of paper for someone. Do not ask. Please, she begs. Anything but that.
"I'm scared to say it, because what you say goes out into the universe, but I don't want to," she says. "I will sign them, and I appreciate people for pushing my energy along, because that's exactly what they're doing, but I lost the desire for certain things in this business."
She's asked if that is because she would rather leave them with something more permanent than a signature. She nods.
"Yeah, but I also have to understand that's important to them." She grins. "Everybody doesn't think like The Weird Girl."
