Erykah Badu Quotes
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I don't know... I've been doing it for 17 years now, so of course I've seen pictures and thought, "Oh my god, I wish I would've never worn that." Yeah, but I did! And it was probably because it was my favorite thing at the time - my clothes always have some kind of emotion attached to them.
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I'm a complete human being. I'm very emotional and loving. I feel, I hurt, I give, I take, and also I think. I analyze. I'm a sociologist, anthropologist.
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I really can't say what inspires me the most, because I'm inspired by just about everything. My feelings and relationships, my family, Scooby-Doo. Opinion of my work. Everything. Not just one thing.
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My fourth mother, my godmother, she passed away a couple years ago - her name was Gwen. She was the theater director over at the gym where I grew up and learned about all those awesome things I told you about already. She was the one who taught me terms like "upstage" and "downstage," all those technical things about the art of what I do - how to breathe what I see, how to move. They were all her tactics, not anything learned or given to me through a theory, but rather by her natural abilities.
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I was sitting at home one day and I got a call that Riccardo Tisci was considering me for the face of the Givenchy Spring/Summer 2014 campaign, and I said, "Are you kidding?" and that was the end of the conversation. I'm a really big fan.
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I'd rather see a person with a natural mind and processed mind than a processed mind and a natural head.
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I have a master plan as an artist. I've always said I'm not going to be punching nobody's clock. I will work as an artist to survive in this world.
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I don't require sex for happiness - I need companionship. I need a partner I can depend on, that I can love and grow with.
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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.
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I could do a few more sit-ups and my waistline would be less difficult.
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I bring the staple of my culture.
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I encourage breaking free of self inflicted holding pens. I encourage the use of intelligence in every decision. I encourage creating.
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What draws me to a project is how sympathetic I am toward it, so that I can relax into it and give up myself.
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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.
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My paternal grandmother gave me the courage to investigate things and not take things at face value or judge people by what I first imagine them to be.
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We as Black people have to tell our own stories. We have to document our history. When we allow someone else to document our history the history becomes twisted and we get written out. We get our noses blown off.
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Music and the music business are two different things.
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Discipline is important, we need to be more focused on what we put into our bodies.
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It's almost like a lot of black people in America, a lot of young black men, are born with this cloud over their heads. It's their penitentiary cloud, this philosophy we all have, that it's harder for us.
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I lived in New York for maybe a year and a half, from '95 to '97, but I live in Dallas. My whole family is there.
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All I want to do is give the world my heart... Record label tryina make me compromise my art.
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I'm a product of its [american] teaching, of its thinking, of its -isms, of its religion, of its education. I am conditioned, raised and developed by America; I am America. And as it changes, my thoughts also change. Because no matter what I believe, what the powers-that-be believe will affect me.
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Hip-hop is not something we do, it's something we live. It's the way we dress, the way we talk... everybody bobbing to the same beat. It's a culture, and you have to find your own place in that culture. Top 10 or Top 40 can't dictate that. They can only dictate what's marketable.
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My fifth mother is Mother Nature - the things I had to learn on my own, the understanding I had to come to and still have to come to as a young woman, as a responsible mother, a responsible granddaughter and child. She teaches me willpower, honesty, and the things we need to heal ourselves from moment to moment.