Erykah Badu

Erykah Badu garnered a lot of attention earlier last year when she stripped naked on the streets of Dallas for her “Window Seat” video. (Badu confessed on her Twitter feed that it was “shot guerilla style...then [we] ran like hell.”) Still, the queen of neo-soul isn’t so much a provocateur as someone who regularly speaks her mind: At the end of the video, Badu drops dead, presumably showing how the instant we become vulnerable, we get hurt. The song itself—like the rest of the album it comes from, New Amerykah Part Two (Return Of The Ankh), isn’t as experimental or adventurous as previous efforts, especially when compared to its immediate predecessor, 2008’s New Amerykah Part One (4th World War). But it’s soothing and grooving all the same, making plenty of room for a bigger message that can either be embraced or ignored on the dance floor.

Updated 04/12/2011