In celebration of Juneteenth, we're reposting our favorite interviews with Black creators. In this interview with Erykah Badu, the artist reflects on music, fearlessness, and becoming a certified doula. blackjoy juneteenth blackcreators erykahbadu
Visionary pop-culture icon Erykah Badu has been breaking barriers since her debut neo-soul album, Baduizm, became a phenomenon in 1997. Here, she reflects on music, motherhood, and living at a higher vibration. Erykah Badu proclaimed “I stay woke” in her song “Master Teacher” a decade before #staywoke became one of the movement mantras of Black Lives Matter, and later, the Trump-era resistance movement.
How do you feel about this moment in history? Are you feeling hopeful or are you feeling concern and despair? Mars, my youngest, is leaving this magical phase where she was so willing to believe in anything that was good—fairies, Santa, Easter, or the Tooth Fairy. She’s just leaving that phase and beginning to ask so many questions and needing some proof. And then I have a 13-year-old girl who is going through her phase of understanding who she is as an individual and a woman and a creator.
Watching my kids experiencing friend groups and popularity and bullying, I’m telling them to make sure that they know it’s OK to believe and think the way that they want. It’s OK to look the way you want, to feel the way you want—it quietly gives others permission to do the same thing. When I do perform, I consider it my vacation, when I get to go sing. It’s my therapy, and I have four to eight thousand therapists in the audience. That’s where I get it all out, and then I go back to work.How do you manage your superpowers? You do so many things: you’re a creator, a caretaker, a doula, a parent, and a producer.
I guess being a doula helps with that point of view. There’s no wrong way to have a baby. You can squat, or you can have a home birth, or you can have a birth in a birthing center, or in a hospital with a cesarean. The goal is for the baby to be healthy and the parents to be healthy.
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