Out Her Mind, Just in Time: Erykah Badu Flows Into a New Era on Juneteenth

Erykah Badu is never in one place for long.

There is a sense of flowing water about the woman born Erica Wright 54 years ago in Dallas — that deceptive sense of stillness, even as she’s rushing forward, changing and expanding and growing and becoming.

Given that, the notion of looking back at Badu’s work feels a bit futile, as she herself has already moved well beyond whatever moment of inspiration conjured the song or record or concert in question.

She may carry traces of it with her, but Badu looks resolutely forward, rarely backward.

“I want to focus, I want to be in the moment of the foreplay,” Badu told Billboard in March. “Creating the music. The tragedy. The love. The experience of the whole thing. Then I go somewhere else after this is done. This is a movie and the studio audience is cracking up and crying and shit.”

The “studio audience,” then, is gathering again.

This is a moment of anticipation, as the long drought between her full-length studio albums appears to be reaching its conclusion. This year marks the 15th anniversary of her most recent LP, New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh), the second half of a forceful, psychedelic diptych that has only deepened and become more revelatory (and relevant) in the years since its release.

Compact at less than an hour total, but profoundly expansive, Return of the Ankh showcases the spiritual, sensual sides of Badu, mixing spaced-out imagery — the album-opening “20 Feet Tall” and the album-closing “Out My Mind, Just in Time” — with an elemental sense of funkiness (“Window Seat,” “Gone Baby, Don’t Be Long”). (And talk about a moment in time: The kerfuffle around Badu's daring, single-take video for "Window Seat," filmed in Dealey Plaza, seems like it was centuries ago.)

On Thursday, Juneteenth, Badu will give the world its first glimpse of her next direction as she performs a free concert titled "Badu Presents: Echos 19" at the Bomb Factory. The performance will be live-streamed on Amazon Prime Video and will undoubtedly contain new music performed by Badu and her full band.

“For the last four years, Rotation has made it our mission to livestream the most important cultural moments during Black Music Month,” said Sierra Lever, head of hip-hop and R&B for Amazon Music, in a statement. “This year, we’re excited to provide fans with a front-row seat to Erykah Badu’s hometown show in Dallas. Erykah is a true, one-of-one innovator, a visionary who has redefined music multiple times over, and we couldn’t be more excited to bring this moment to her fans around the world.”

What is seen and heard Thursday in Deep Ellum will be a moment in time, fleeting, fertile and full of possibility. A new album, her first full-length studio effort in 15 years, waits in the wings, fully produced by the Alchemist, to arrive later this year on her own Control Freaq Records, an independent label she founded two decades ago. While Badu may tease what’s to come, it will only ever take the form it’s given on Thursday once — and then it will live only in memory.

“I tour eight months out of the year for the past 25 years,” Badu told Billboard in March. “That’s what I do. I am a performance artist. I am not a recording artist. I come from the theater. It’s the immediate reaction between you and the audience and the immediate feeling. 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 happens only once.”

Such a sentiment illuminates why those clamoring for new music from Badu — nothing has materialized since her 2015 mixtape But You Caint Use My Phone — misses what motivates her to begin with.

The studio was only ever a starting point, not a conclusion.

Time, and its passage, is kind of irrelevant here.

Spin the new record when it arrives, sure, but what Badu really wants you to savor is the stage, the alchemy between audience and artist, where you can truly hear her as she intends.

After all, Badu never stops for long — you’ve gotta catch her when you can.