Top 100 Erykah Badu Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “I’ve had two children. I’ve had three boyfriends. I’ve had a lot of things happen that can change your opinions and values and philosophies.”

— Erykah Badu

52. “But now I realize that this record business really needs me. No one else is trying to take a chance or do something different.”

— Erykah Badu

53. “Hip-hop was created out of necessity. We needed to create some digitized things to help us understand what we were feeling.”

— Erykah Badu

54. “People who say that music is dead or hip-hop is dead are refusing to evolve.”

— Erykah Badu

55. “What a frequency What a voice. I love Bilal. I couldn’t imagine a music world without his voice.”

— Erykah Badu

56. “When I get ready to do an album, that means I have something to say for the sake of words, and I listen back to all of the things I’ve been creating and pull things from out of the air to go with them. It’s almost like I start creating the album before I even think about creating it.”

— Erykah Badu

57. “I’m not trying to win an award for being the best vegetarian, just want to be healthy. Take a salt bath. Do things that my parents were never able to do. I’m blessed to do anything I want, so I decide to take the best care of my body and my family in the same way. Holistically. Vitally.”

— Erykah Badu

58. “We lock ourselves into our own philosophies, our own religions, our own walks of life, and if we fail, we condemn ourselves and then we get sick.”

— Erykah Badu

59. “Hopefully my music is medicine, some type of antidote for something or some kind of explanation or just to feel good.”

— Erykah Badu

60. “What singing means to me, I never did consider myself a singer, I just let people watch me feel music and how it comes through me. I’ve worked on it and practiced a lot. I mean, music, I dance to it, and singing is just one way of getting it out of me.”

— Erykah Badu

61. “Im a hip-hopper, and its something you live and do. It makes me angry that were misrepresented, that were being killed every day by one another, by the government, by the food we eat, the choices we make. It makes me angry because it doesnt have to be that way and it is.”

— Erykah Badu

62. “No one chooses to raise children alone.”

— Erykah Badu

63. “I thought the Billie Holiday comparison was beautiful. I think, Wow, what a wonderful, creative, helpful spirit. She’s someone who wanted to help others by sharing her emotion. That’s what I do, too, so I think that’s a great comparison.”

— Erykah Badu

64. “During childbirth and hospice I’ll sing gospel songs that my grandma taught me when I was younger, or something I’ve made up, or I’ll hum. I just play things that I think the audience will like.”

— Erykah Badu

65. “I’m a woman who has gone through many heartaches, enough to dedicate my whole life to trying to figure them out.”

— Erykah Badu

66. “The reason why you don’t see people looking like me is because I don’t encourage that. I encourage you to be you.”

— Erykah Badu

67. “Some people come up and ask for an autograph and don’t even look at me. They’re like, ‘Here, do it.’ That don’t bother me, but it doesn’t open my heart.”

— Erykah Badu

68. “I’m kind of a recluse when it comes to going outside.”

— Erykah Badu

69. “When people are going on to the next plateau of whatever this thing is called life, I also want them to breathe easily, even if it’s the last one they take here with us. I guess I’m the welcoming committee and ushering committee.”

— Erykah Badu

70. “Personally, I don’t choose any particular religion or symbol or group of words or teachings to define me. That’s between me and the most high. You know, my higher self. The Creator.”

— Erykah Badu

71. “It’s weird, but if I decide to do an album, then the ideas start fitting themselves together. I consider myself a nice, slow burn. Plus, it’s not a race. And I have a lot to share.”

— Erykah Badu

72. “I believed in myself, and I’ve always worked very, very hard as an artist, and I am an artist in every sense of the word.”

— Erykah Badu

73. “Whenever I think about funk music, it has a look – and that’s how it sounds.”

— Erykah Badu

74. “They play it safe, are quick to assassinate what they do not understand. They move in packs ingesting more and more fear with every act of hate on one another. They feel most comfortable in groups, less guilt to swallow. They are us. This is what we have become. Afraid to respect the individual. A single person within a circumstance can move one to change. To love herself. To evolve.”

— Erykah Badu

75. “I love to leave the interpretation of my music up to the listener. It’s fun to see what they’ll say it is.”

— Erykah Badu

76. “I love watching Rihanna in fashion. I like to see her take chances and risks. I like seeing Naomi Campbell in the forefront. They’re both women who stand out and use their bodies as canvases to introduce this functional art to the world. They carry it in a way that is very inspiring.”

— Erykah Badu

77. “Breathing becomes really easy when you’re laughing. It kick starts that feeling of joy.”

— Erykah Badu

78. “I don’t plan how many people I work with. I don’t charge anything. It’s for my own learning, and I just enjoy being the welcoming committee. I became a doula by default.”

— Erykah Badu

79. “Poor is the new black.”

— Erykah Badu

80. “I’m a performance artist first; I’m a recording artist second.”

— Erykah Badu

81. “I actually started writing it because I was inspired by my own personal growth.”

— Erykah Badu

82. “I’ll dabble here and there in different forms of the art, but the label has me locked down like a slave so, of course, I’ll be doing albums during this time.”

— Erykah Badu

83. “My truth is relevant and my songs are relevant, but I have to recalibrate myself and speed up my vibrations so that I can communicate with the voice of this generation.”

— Erykah Badu

84. “We literally just finished making this gown 20 minutes ago. I love it. It’s my favorite color.”

— Erykah Badu

85. “We’re all friends, inside the music and outside the music. I mean, we don’t sound anything alike, we don’t approach our music anything alike, but we come from the same genuine place. We want our music to be real and we don’t want to compromise our art.”

— Erykah Badu

86. “Whereas I want everything to be peaceful during a birth, I take the total opposite approach when I’m helping someone come to terms with leaving this place – I play Richard Pryor records.”

— Erykah Badu

87. “Marvin Gaye is one of my favorite revolutionaries. He spoke from his heart, his mind. That’s what I want to do.”

— Erykah Badu

88. “A lot of people have dementia, which is great, because then they don’t recognize me.”

— Erykah Badu

89. “What draws me to a project is how sympathetic I am toward it, so that I can relax into it and give up myself.”

— Erykah Badu

90. “Even if the project requires you to have all the ducks in a line, I can’t do that. I don’t create way.”

— Erykah Badu

91. “If you want to relate to a certain audience or generation, you have to speak their language. I truly believe that.”

— Erykah Badu

92. “All of my children are the same way I am. They’re little artists too, in their own ways.”

— Erykah Badu

93. “I have so much music that I do. Just like how a visual artist is always sketching something but they might not share it, I’m always writing songs or coming up with melodic lines on piano or guitar. It’s therapy. It’s always happening.”

— Erykah Badu

94. “From then on, I realized this is what I want to do, what I’m supposed to do: Giving energy and receiving it back through applause. I love it. That’s my world. I love it. I enjoy it. I live for it.”

— Erykah Badu

95. “What opens my heart is when my son wakes me up in the morning, nudging me and saying, ‘Mommy, mommy!’”

— Erykah Badu

96. “I think what makes people think that is because of things people write. It really doesn’t have anything to do with the artist.”

— Erykah Badu

97. “I can be Erykah the human being more than the celebrity.”

— Erykah Badu

98. “We were all born, and we all came to the music business with everything we had. Some of us just don’t get a chance. Now there’s a lot of other people like myself, indeed, who are getting heard worldwide. That gives other artists a chance.”

— Erykah Badu

99. “My style is a little masculine, and what I loved about Pyer Moss was how well he can make a blazer, the looseness of those pants, or color palette that he chooses from season to season.”

— Erykah Badu

100. “Erykah Badu projects don’t even sound like Erykah Badu projects. I don’t even have one album that sounds like another one of my albums.”

— Erykah Badu