The album met with critical and commercial success, debuting at number two on the Billboard charts and number one on the US Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums. Career Baduizm and Live (1997–99) īaduizm, Badu's debut album, was released in early 1997. He set Badu up to record a duet with D'Angelo, "Your Precious Love", and eventually signed her to a record deal with Universal Records. Working and touring with her cousin, Robert "Free" Bradford, she recorded a 19-song demo, Country Cousins, which attracted the attention of Kedar Massenburg. She taught drama and dance to children at the South Dallas Cultural Center. During this time, Badu took several minimum-wage jobs to support herself. She left the university in 1993 before graduating, to focus more fully on music. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, Badu went on to study theater at Grambling State University, a historically black university. She adopted the surname "Badu" because it is her favorite jazz scat sound also, among the Akan people in Ghana, it is the term for the 10th-born child. In her youth, she had decided to change the spelling of her first name from Erica to Erykah, as she believed her original name was a " slave name". Badu had her first taste of show business at the age of four, singing and dancing at the Dallas Theater Center and The Black Academy of Arts and Letters (TBAAL) under the guidance of her godmother, Gwen Hargrove, and uncle TBAAL founder Curtis King.īy the age of 14, Badu was freestyling for a local radio station alongside such talent as Roy Hargrove. The children's maternal and paternal grandmothers often helped look after them. Her mother raised her, her brother Eevin, and her sister alone after separating from their father, William Wright Jr.
The album was certified triple Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It spawned four singles: " On & On", " Appletree", " Next Lifetime" and " Otherside of the Game".
Her first album, Baduizm, was released in February 1997. Badu's career began after she opened a show for D'Angelo in 1994 in Fort Worth record label executive Kedar Massenburg was highly impressed with her performance and signed her to Kedar Entertainment. She has been called the “Queen of Neo Soul”. Influenced by R&B, 1970s soul, and 1980s hip hop, Badu became associated with the neo soul subgenre in the 1990s and 2000s along with artists such as D'Angelo and Maxwell. Erica Abi Wright (born February 26, 1971), known professionally as Erykah Badu ( / ˈ ɛr ɪ k ə b ɑː ˈ d uː/), is an American singer-songwriter, record producer and actress.
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