Day: February 25, 2026

From her beginnings as an outspoken queen of neo-soul to her later politically-charged salvos at the vanguard of contemporary R&B, Erykah Badu’s multi-hued, occasionally controversial career has never been less than captivating. Fusing jazz, soul, funk, and hip-hop in equal measure, here are the 20 best Erykah Badu songs, revealing the depths of her brilliance.

20: Hello

A highlight of Badu’s 2015 mixtape, But You Caint Use My Phone, this brilliant rework of the Todd Rundgren/Isley Brothers hit was a collaboration with former beau André 3000. The pair were a much-celebrated couple in the 90s and the duet was inspired by their son, Seven. It ends with the sound of their voices singing in perfect harmony – a testament to the power of family ties.

19: Other Side Of The Game

The third single released from her debut album, Baduizm, tells the story of a woman grappling with the moral dilemmas involved with supporting a romantic partner involved in criminal activity. Its subtle, slow-burning blend of jazz and R&B, driven by the deepest of bass grooves, typified the baby-makin’ sonics that made Baduizm one of the biggest breakout R&B hits of the 90s.

18: Window Seat

A sensual midtempo groover, New Amerykah Part Two (Return Of The Ankh)’s lead single gained infamy for its music video. Shot guerrilla-style, the film featured Badu walking through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, slowly taking off her clothes before being shot by an unseen sniper – an allusion to President John F Kennedy’s assassination at the same site.

17: Telephone

Written the day after she heard of J Dilla’s passing, “Telephone” is a heartfelt and moving tribute to her former collaborator, who died tragically young from a rare blood disease. The song was inspired by a conversation she’d had with the producer’s mother, who told her that Dilla would experience dreams in which the recently-passed Ol’ Dirty Bastard gave him directions home.

Listen to the best Erykah Badu songs on Apple Music and Spotify.

16: Back In The Day

Released in 2003 as a supposed EP that was actually longer than most artists’ full-length albums, Worldwide Underground’s immaculately executed analog grooves were exemplified by the deep basslines, dreamy keyboard runs and exquisitely funky guitars of this single – a nostalgic ode to youthful days spent smoking weed with friends.

15: Time’s A Wastin’

A highlight from her second album, Mama’s Gun, “Time’s A Wastin’” fuses funky bass lines with lush strings and playful keyboard interjections to underscore Badu’s cautionary tale to a young black man. The track ends with a delicious nod to rare-groove man Johnny Hammond’s “Can’t We Smile.”

14: Soldier

New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) found Badu taking a huge stylistic and thematic detour from her previous efforts. Its cutting-edge hip-hop sound – delivered here in the shape of an ethereal flute sample offset by sharp, clipped minimalist beats by producer Karriem Riggins – formed the backbone for the singer’s hard-hitting meditations on racial inequality and black oppression.

13: Fall In Love (Your Funeral)

Another Karriem Riggins production masterclass, “Fall In Love” epitomizes the warm, analog-soaked grooves that Badu returned to on New Amerykah Part One’s follow-up album, Return Of The Ankh. A luscious melding of R&B grooves and hip-hop swagger.

12: Tyrone (live version)

Flush from the huge success of her debut album, Badu released a live album – a bold move for someone at the start of their career. Towards the end of her set, released as Live in 1997, she tests the recently-written “Tyrone” – an acerbic riposte to a cheapskate partner. Both the performance and its rapturous reception has gone down in legend.

11: Me

Many of Erykah Badu’s best tracks are long-form exercises in riding the good groove – and few are more sumptuous than this effort by Sa-Ra Creative Partners producer Shafiq Hussein. Over a gorgeous wash of shuffling beats, tight basslines, and gentle brass arrangements, Erykah delivers a powerful ode to self-love.

10: Didn’t Cha Know

Mama’s Gun’s second single was created after a fateful visit to J Dilla’s Detroit basement in 1998. It’s based on a sample from jazz-funk ensemble Tarika Blue’s 1977 cut “Dreamflower,” a track she discovered while searching through the producer’s mammoth collection.

9: Gone Baby, Don’t Be Long

The third part of a trilogy of songs told from the viewpoint of a woman in love with an errant hustler, Badu followed “Otherside Of The Game” and Worldwide Underground’s “Danger” with this sensuous denouement. Another brilliant example of her penchant for long-form grooves, the track gets its soulful reggae bump from Wings’ 1979 album track “Arrow Through Me.”

8: On & On

Erykah Badu’s debut single caused a huge impact on its release. A chart hit on both sides of the Atlantic, it earned her a Grammy, brought the emergent neo-soul movement to a wider audience, and established the singer as one of music’s brightest new stars. Its playful fusion of classic jazz and hip-hop still sounds fresh as a daisy.

7: AD 2000

A lament for the tragic death of Amadou Diallo, who was shot by NYPD officers in 1999. Driven by a stunningly-beautiful, Stevie Wonder-esque instrumental backing and featuring lyrical and vocal contributions from soul legend Betty Wright, the track is Badu’s most heartfelt and powerful protest song.

6: Master Teacher Medley

One of New Amerykah Part One’s most left-field, cutting-edge tracks, Badu’s medley duet with Georgia Anne Muldrow has had a lasting lyrical impact, introducing the Stay Woke concept – a call to the black diaspora to remember their origins as a displaced people – to the world.

5: Next Lifetime

One of neo-soul’s finest moments, this sensual ballad comes from the perspective of a woman with conflicted romantic thoughts. Already attached, but with feelings for someone else, it’s a bittersweet tale with a poetic metaphysical slant: “Well I guess I’ll see you next lifetime/Maybe we’ll be butterflies.”

4: Honey

How typical of the playful and idiosyncratic Badu to effectively hide one of her most effervescent and accessible dancefloor bombs. Appearing unlisted at the end of New Amerykah Part One, “Honey” opens with a re-work of RAMP’s “The American Promise” before morphing into a life-affirming, P-funk-heavy workout of the highest order.

3: I Want You

Worldwide Underground’s epic ten-minute centerpiece is a Marvin Gaye-esque sensual ode to lust and longing, with James Poyser’s keyboard rhythms masterfully mimicking the quickened heartbeat of the love-smitten.

2: Green Eyes

Badu’s break-up with André 3000 inspired the ten-minute track that ended her Mama’s Gun album. Taking the form of a three-part suite, “Green Eyes” moves from its playful ragtime beginnings through to smoky jazz and warm, brass-inflected soul to capture the many moods of a failing relationship as Badu delivers one of her most stirring and open-hearted performances.

1: The Healer

Driven by producer Madlib’s brilliantly manipulated sample of The Yamasuki Singers’ Kono Samuarai, “The Healer” is an ode to the unifying power of hip-hop. Of the song’s lyrics, Badu explained to The New York Post: “There are so many ways to worship, no matter what religion you are. And to me, hip-hop is felt in all religions – it has a healing power. I’ve recently been to Palestine, Jerusalem, Africa… and everyone is listening to hip-hop. There’s something about that kicking snare sound that all kinds of people find meaning in.”

Shop Erykah Badu’s music on limited edition vinyl and CDs here.

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Erykah Badu was one of the four R&B vocalists, along with D’Angelo, Maxwell, and Lauryn Hill, who ushered in the neo-soul era of the late 90s. (In fact, the subgenre’s name was originally coined to market Badu). Her voice recalled Billie Holiday, her style recalled the Black pride and Afro-futurism of the 70s, but her sum total was something completely new to R&B. Decades after her 1997 debut, Erykah continues to be a source of inspiration for producers and singers such as SZA, Lion Babe’s Jillian Harvey and Ari Lennox.

Badu has received her flowers in the time she’s reigned as the “First Lady of Neo-Soul”; celebrated for her storytelling through layered and nuanced lyrics; for her persona and style; and her mix of soul, hip-hop, and jazz in her music. As Badu has introduced us to her varied artistic facets; playing with aliases like Badulla Oblongata, Sara Bellum, and Analogue Girl in a Digital World; DJ’ing, rhyming, hosting, and delivering babies, her singing almost gets lost in the conversation. But one listen to a fan favorite such as “Green Eyes,” and it’s easy to see how significant her vocals have been to her legacy, too. Her vocal delivery has always been essential to the ways in which we understand Badu’s artistry.

Listen to Erykah Badu on Apple Music and Spotify.

In the 10-minute “Eyes,” Badu sarcastically insists that her eye color is the result of her vegetable intake – not jealousy over her lover’s new companion. She utilizes an airy delivery to mask the bite in her lyrics over a jazz-influenced production. “You don’t mean nothing to me, so go ahead and be with your friend,” she offers softly, barely able to force out the final word – a sign of her true contempt. On songs such “Other Side of the Game” and “Window Seat” she emotes by stretching her voice, with its signature southern twang, when she’s feeling her most vulnerable and desperate for acceptance. Badu’s signature cut “Tyrone” finds the singer exasperated with a preoccupied lover, her playful, delayed vocal delivery further highlighting her vivid storytelling.

Producer, songwriter, and member of both The Roots and The Soulquarians production collective, James Poyser has been working with Badu since her debut album, Baduizm, co-writing “Other Side of the Game” during one of their first sessions together. He says Badu “sings in a way that’s imperfectly perfect.”

“There’s a rawness to it. The way she emotes, growls and that Billie Holliday tremolo that she has, it all works,” he says. “There’s a gang of singers I’ve heard after she came out that adopted her kind of phrasing.”

Vocalist Durand Barnarr, who started singing backup for the Dallas native after she spotted his cover of her song “That Hump” on YouTube nearly ten years ago, has called the young artists influenced by Erykah’s sound and lyricism the “Badu Babies.” (Not to be confused with the actual babies Badu helps bring into the world in her role as a doula.)

Bernarr says that as a kid he was initially drawn to Badu’s tone, a “floozy, full twang.” “When you take away the band, she’s a blues singer,” he says. Bernarr grew up in a household where his parents only played gospel and jazz. Badu was one of the only pop artists he was allowed to listen to. When he started taking his talent seriously as a teenager, he began “singing and harmonizing” along to Badu’s records, using her songs as vocal warm-ups. He christened himself a Badu Baby through the title of his 2010 release 8ight: The Stepson of Erykah Badu. Badu inspires allegiance from non-vocalists as well; Dallas producer Zach Witness, who was once surprised when Badu showed up on his doorstep to record music after chatting through Instagram, considers the singer to be a second mother. Her pop-up visit led to him producing her 2016 mixtape But You Can’t Use My Phone.

Among the new class of singers influenced by Badu, Ari Lennox stands out as a clear student of and heir. Lennox has her own identity and flair as a performer, but her exaggerated, nasally delivery as a vocalist almost immediately brings young Badu to mind. In “BMO,” Lennox continuously sings “aye,” elongating the word, underneath the verses and choruses. The delivery harkens to popular “hey” adlibs from Badu’s discography, on songs such as “Window Seat.” Like Badu, Lennox’s music is both modern and a nostalgic reimagining of the jazz and soul singers who came before her.

The nasal lilt that catapulted Badu to fame can also be heard in the vocals of artists such as SZA and Jillian Harvey. Even Teyana Taylor, who recently enlisted Badu to help deliver her second child, has been influenced by the singer’s style. The pair recently collaborated on the song “Lowkey,” which features an interpolation of Badu’s “Next Lifetime,” for Taylor’s The Album.

The best thing about “Badu Babies,” as Bernard has dubbed them, is that they’re not intent on replicating Badu’s entire sound. “You have people that can be inspired by something but still sound like themselves. That’s so important,” Bernard says. These artists are infusing their own stylings, which will likely influence future generations of R&B singers, much like Badu inspired them.

This article was first published in 2020. We are re-publishing it today in celebration of Erykah Badu’s birthday.

Shop Erykah Badu’s music on limited edition vinyl and CDs here.

​Discover more about the world’s greatest R&B artists | uDiscover Music