All We Know About the New Erykah Badu Album

The Queen of Neo-Soul is back in the studio, creating with one of hip-hop’s legendary producers.

Dallas' own superstar Erykah Badu never left the spotlight. The music and fashion icon keeps hitting milestones, whether it's gracing the cover of Vogue, being named Forbes' No. 1 R&B artist of all time, joining Madonna onstage, getting dragged into online feuds or having her photo wrapped onto buses and trains thanks to DART.

But the artist is back at the mic and back to business. She recently graced the cover of Billboard's Women in Music issue, and revealed in that interview that a new album is finally in the works — a collaboration with esteemed producer The Alchemist, who is based in Los Angeles.

This will mark the first studio album for the Dallas native in 15 years, and the sixth album since the release of New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh) in 2010. While the neo-soul artist is still touring and making larger-than-life splashes in the fashion realm, she’s bringing it all back to the studio in a creative process she has artfully attuned to the likes of “foreplay.”

“I want to focus, I want to be in the moment of the foreplay. Creating the music. The tragedy,” Badu told the publication. “The experience of the whole thing. Then I go somewhere else after this is done.”

Boasting a tour schedule of eight months out of the year, which she's done for the last 25 years, Badu said that she’s more of a performing artist than a recording artist. But working with hip-hop producing legend The Alchemist for this latest album has her singing a new tune. Boasting collaborations with Kendrick Lamar, Eminem, Mobb Deep, and others — it’ll be exciting and interesting to see what spin the critically acclaimed producer will layer in with The Queen’s signature sound.

With no title and no official release date, Badu took to her stories to tease the new album, which is undeniably giving the fans what they want. Finally.

Though she's recorded at Dallas studios The Kitchen, Klearlight and Luminous Sounds in the past, this album was reportedly recorded in LA.

"I'm super excited for Badu on this new release, with her and Alchemist working together you know it's going to be fire," Badu's musical director RC Williams tells the Observer.

The singer also told Billboard that the album has been taking up most of her time, in addition to a few select collaborations, appearances and running her merch and paraphernalia online store, Badu World Market. Always the consummate creative, Badu is known to overdeliver on lyrical prowess, impossible vocals and grand theatrics, and nothing less is to be expected from what she’s currently cooking up in the lab.

In the past few years, Badu collaborated with her friend Rapsody on song "3:AM" and shared an impromptu jam with fellow North Texan Marc Rebillet so, musically speaking, things can go anywhere Badu wants to take them on this album.

“It’s the immediate reaction between you and the audience and the immediate feeling,” the icon shared, reminiscing on the joys of performing. “The point where you become one living, breathing organism with people. That’s what I live for. It’s my therapy. And theirs, too. We’re in it together. And I like the idea that it only happens once.”

Lucky for the fans and for Dallas, just as with any new Badu album — and especially with the one forthcoming — that feeling will reverberate more than once; it’ll undoubtedly go "On and On."