![]() From the opening song “Penitentiary Philosophy” to one of the most magnificent closing numbers of all time in “Green Eyes,” I was in awe of just how amazing each record was, from the roota to the toota. What I do remember is IMMEDIATELY falling in love with this album. When “Mama’s Gun” dropped in November 2000, I was a senior in college, and like most folks in the Atlanta University Center (AUC), I either went to Audrey’s to get the album a day early - Audrey’s was a cafe/record store/merch shop located right across from the AUC library that we affectionately referred to as Club Woody - or stood in line at Tower Records near Lenox Mall I can’t remember which. There weren’t names for fans and stans back then, but I imagine Erykah Badu would have had her own club name like Nicki Minaj’s Barbz or Rihanna’s Navy. And then when she dropped the live song “ Tyrone,” well it was pretty much over. I went to college expecting to see Erykah Badu look-a-likes everywhere, and, frankly, I wasn’t wrong. Of course, Erykah didn’t introduce the headwraps and ankhs and all to the world, but her presentation and albums seem to have an effect similar to how the movie “Love Jones” turned all Black men into poets. I was in high school when the first single “On & On” dropped, and the “Other Side of the Game” and “Next Lifetime” videos might as well have inspired a sea change in the style of dress of Black girls and women everywhere. I was introduced to her by my older sister via Badu’s debut album “Baduizm,” which brought about an aesthetic and linguistic wave. This article isn’t even about Lauryn Hill.Īccra, Ghana becoming prime festival site, attracting acts like Chance The Rapper, Erykah Badu, Meek Mill The way her album collided with the feelings and desires of what felt like every person who ever felt a feeling in 1998 is the stuff of legend, and I hate that she’s become more known for her antics than the comet she became back then. Nor is it intended to be an article that devalues the impact of “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill,” Lauryn Hill’s debut album that turned her into an award-winning, accolade-collecting supernova of a superstar there’s a reason that her album sold a bazillion records and ended up on every list of all of the greatest things ever created on planet Earth or something like that. Read more opinions on theGrio.īefore we get started, let me be very, very clear: This is not a Lauryn Hill-hate article. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images for BET)Įditor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. ![]() Erykah Badu performs onstage during the 2018 Soul Train Awards, presented by BET, at the Orleans Arena on Novemin Las Vegas, Nevada.
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