To most of us when we listen to a good R&B song were the main theme is about love and relationships, we tend to pick up on the portions that relate to us the most. For the most part a lot of the metaphors are not really complex and it’s clear what the message of the song is. Then there’s the other side of the tracks where artists choose to go a step or two deeper, lyrically, while still providing that smooth melodic feel. On that side of the tracks stands Erykah Badu.

Badu is someone that I enjoy listening to from time to time. She knows how to caress the beat and lace the song with context that provides visuals of the thoughts of people who are on some other sh%t. I would love to have opened that toilet back when she was making ‘New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh)’ There’s a song called “Fall In Love (The Funeral)” that I want you to listen to…

Feel the bounce of the beat and feel the attitude that she had when she spoke the words from the lyrics. Most of the time when a female artist makes a song about telling some trifling a$$ person to hit the road, its blunt and more aggressive. Erykah took a different approach, instead of telling you about threatening to break somebody’s car windows, she decides to borrow some lines from a song that was quite threatening in itself. Does this sound familiar?

Yep “there’s going to be a lot of slow singing, the flower bringing, if my burglar alarm starts ringing..“. I like how Badu used this theme to nurture her metaphor about falling in love with her. It’s something special and very creative. When I listen to ‘Warning’ my thoughts are far from falling in love, that’s for sure. But something clicked in Badu that made her take these words and chisel a masterpiece. It only made it that much better that Eddie Kendrick’s “Intimate Friends” was used in the production, smh. Your head gets lost in songs like these.