Born-Again Baduizt

IF only this post could fade in with sparkly sounds like "Back in the Day." Writing is just not cool like that.

I had always heard her, but only recently have I come to accept Erykah Badu as my personal savior. As for many born-agains, my Baduizt epiphany came when she performed on Chappelle's Show. She swayed her small hips, she rocked her big afro wig. I fell into a trance.



For Chappelle she performed "I Want You," which proceeded to become my favorite song. It's Badu at her extended-jam finest; the album version runs to ten minutes and fifty-three seconds. The song is so simple and she's just chanting I I I I I I I want you you you you you you you half the time, but it totally works. The lyrics suggest the following archetypically Baduizt prescriptions for the ailment of being sprung on some dude:

1) pray til early May
2) fast for thirty days
3) get a good book and get all in it
4) try a little yoga for a minute
5) turn the sauna up to hotter
and 6) drink a whole jar of holy water (an entire jar!)

I can start the "Back in the Day" glitter intro when I hop on the bus downtown and jam through the city of Oakland on a Badu ride, wrapping up the flight-of-fancy riff at the end of "I Want You" just in time to walk through the gate to my backyard and let the chickens out of the coop. If life gets better, I don't know about it yet.

And I have learned to let Erykah go on her flights of fancy. She has won my trust; I'm willing to take the ride. These days I earnestly and willfully choose to march through all the dense "Bump It" yodeling in order to earn the clear awakening "Back in the Day" intro (about which I won't shut up).


WHEN New Amerykah Part One came out last year I was naturally keen with anticipation. But that album is like *advanced* and, not being a music nerd, it took me a while to break into it. Because the rest is not like "Honey." The rest is some bombastic blaxploitation soundtrack that this whitegirl was not initially prepared to get with. Plus, the vibe struck me at first as ickily political and I don't like music trying to be political (although I have to give it to Erykah that she can pull off even that without much departure into lameness).

But I found a road in, eventually, with the song "Me," which falls on the tender, self-reflective side of the bombastic blaxploitation spectrum. My only problem with it is the part when she says "my ass and legs have gotten thick." If you have seen any recent pictures of stick figure Badu, you'll understand why this is offensive to those of us in the thick community.

My next single was to be "That Hump," a song which promotes my theory that there is an Erykah Badu song for any mood that might befall one. "That Hump" works on feelings of depression or discouragement: If I could get over that hump/Then maybe I wiiiiill feel be-etter. But my latest fave off New Amerykah Part One is "Soldier," which is actually a gentle groove track despite the name. It includes classic Baduing around à la: Break it down say mhm whooooaho hey hey (repeat). Turns out "Twinkle" is the dark, disturbing song. (Oh, Erykah, how you love to thwart my easy expectations!) It has the hoped-for sparkle sounds, but they come off spooky somehow.


WOULD that this post could blast out on a Hendrixy riff like "I Want You." But writing is just not cool like that.

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Ode to the Bitchy British Songbirds

Now I know you feel betrayed But it's been weeks since I got laid
This doesn't mean
I don't think you're a fool
-"Never Gonna Happen"

He left no time to regret
Kept his dick wet
With his same old safe bet
-"Back to Black"

Wrap it up cause I ain't
Carrying your embryo
-"Wait a Minute (Just a Touch)"

If you can imbue caustic, obscene lyrics like those above with easy charm, you must be a Bitchy British Songbird. These ladies can don fabulous earrings, deball a man, and write a fetching song about it on any given afternoon. They can also do the vulnerable vocal equivalent of languishing on the couch with an ice cream pint. That's range.

No matter how much of a laughingstock she becomes, I keep loving Amy Winehouse. When someone is willing to rip open her soul for my listening pleasure, I forgive just about anything. Hence I still want to set Amy up in a little hutch in the backyard with some fresh straw and clean water and care for her until she gets better. Sure it's irrational. But if you were off listening to Mary Wells and the Shangri-Las when the other little girls were on Tiffany and Debbie Gibson, hearing that Motowny girl group sound coming from a sassy, contemporary London Jewgirl is too much to resist. In interviews about her hypothetical next album, Winehouse has said it will be like Back to Black, "but with more ska." Which makes me want to cry, because I would like to hear that so very, very much, and its future existence is dubious.

Not that I mind listening to Back to Black even yet more. The title track manages to chop and screw chipper Motown into the darkest of lamentations on love lost: We only said goodbye with words/I died a hundred times. (Of course she's talking about that fuckup Blake guy, but never you mind.) And "Wake Up Alone" is a slow jam straight out of the secret Kellerman's staff party in Dirty Dancing. She really croons on that one:

If I was my heart
I'd rather be restless
Second I stop the sleep catches up
And I'm--breathless
This ache in my chest
As my day is done now
The dark covers me
And I cannot run now

The sensational Estelle also harkens back to all my favorite old soul. But if Amy is widely known as cracked-out "Rehab" chick, the general listening public knows Estelle as just the popstar of "American Boy." Only marginally less of an underestimation. Her Shine album reminds me so much of Aretha's Sparkle that I have to wonder if the one-shimmery-word title thing is coincidental. The splendiferous "More Than Friends" samples the Queen of Soul version of "Bridge Over Troubled Waters," so it had me at hello. Then it overclosed with tender lyrics and Estelle's sultrily earthy rapping:

Don't play me like a extra
I got speaking roles
I am not that ho
I am so much more

And the "American Boy" thing is no joke. Seems every big man on the American music campus wants to musically date Estelle. Her "(feat...)" stable includes John Legend, Kanye West, Wyclef and Sean Paul. And the latter sounds especially excited to introduce the two of them (Sean-a-Paul and ESTELLE!) at the beginning of the "Come Over" remix.
Lily Allen's offerings remind me not of my old Motown tapes, but of driving out to Orange County for ska shows in high school. Her first hit "Smile" does, anyway. And come to think of it, I wish her new album, It's Not Me, It's You sounded more like "Smile" and less like microwave popcorn with fake butter. (You can say something mean like that to her, because she can dish it out, hence she can take it.) She may be lightweight, but she is just the perfect confection. A vanilla meringue, spiked with vodka.
Brits are always better at using the language, and Londoners seem to specialize in rich, cussy slang. Why say "lots of diamonds" when you can say "fuckloads" like Lily? (Amy also enjoys nouns that employ the "fuck-" stem, as in, What kind of fuckery is this?) The BBS's use those dirty mouths to dress down men, which is a healthy tonic if you listen to fuckloads of misogynistic rap, as I do. There's nothing quite like Estelle's final blow at the end of "No Substitute Love": You need to grow a couple boy/You ain't bout nothin boy.

It's Not Me, It's You goes ahead and takes it there by having a song entitled "Fuck You." It's about a bigoted individual to whose racism and homophobia Lily Allen is saying "fuck you very much"--but you know that theme was an afterthought. The girl wanted to have a song called "Fuck You." And then she was like, well it would be too obvious if it was another of my deballing tracks, so I'll go in this unexpected political direction. She never tires of using her cherubic voice to say something demonic, and I haven't tired of it yet either. If and when I do tire, I'll write her a saccharine-toned grenade of self-esteem demolition. Because she can dish it out.

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Ode to Demetri Martin

It is a truth universally acknowledged that to talk about comedy is to sound awkward and conspicuously unfunny. But I am willing to sound lame and worse in service of praising the subject of this ode.

Comedians tell jokes, and when Demetri Martin is about to tell some, he admits to it ("Let's go with...jokes.") But he also invents formats. He begins with a kernel of funny and decides later whether this comedic stem cell will become a skit or a slam poem or a pie chart.

Demetri's ability to draw mountains over time.


His new series, "Important Things with Demetri Martin," which premiered on Comedy Central on February 11th, allows him to sprawl across his many pet formats. When the catchy but understated song comes on that goes, "This is a sketch/This is a sketch/It's a sketch," it does not signal a sketch comedy bit, but rather that Demetri is about to bust out Pictionary-style, drawing and writing with both hands at once.

He loves using hand-drawn graphics, especially data charts. He flips the page on his big sketchpad to show a line graph and says, "This is the cuteness of a girl versus how interested I am in hearing about how her intuitive her cat is...You'll notice, at a certain point, I don't care how cute you are, I don't want to hear about your fucking cat anymore."

And when he does plain old stand-up, it has maximum density, no filler. The ratio of setup is miniscule; it's a payoff and then another and another. He always seems to have too many notions and nuggets kicking around his brain, such that when he plays guitar and harmonica and bells while flipping through jokes on the big sketchpad, it seems to mirror his mindstate.

Martin is a comedic philosopher, lifting the stones of our cultural foundation and examining the underneath bits. He specializes in small observations: "What distinguishes man from animals is his ability to reason. Another way is last names. What's his name? Patches? Patches what? No last name? That's a dog, don't waste my time."*

*Joke estimated from memory.

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