Erykah Badu: Worldwide Underground [MOTOWN]

Why you'll love it

This LP holds the original ten-track album, recorded mostly at Electric Lady Studios in New York. It debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 with 143,561 copies sold in its first week, and went gold.

This edition

• Original ten-track album
• Recorded at Electric Lady Studios

About the album

Erykah Badu came out of a spell of writer's block by throwing a party. After Mama's Gun and a long world tour, she and her production crew Freakquency (Badu with James Poyser, RC Williams and Rashad Smith) loosened everything up, letting songs stretch into jams and swapping the riddles of her earlier records for something warmer and more playful.

The album is a love letter to old-school hip hop, soul and funk. "Back in the Day (Puff)" floats on an easy groove with Lenny Kravitz along for the ride, "Danger" brings a harder edge, and "Love of My Life Worldwide" turns her ode to hip hop into a posse cut with Queen Latifah, Angie Stone and Bahamadia. Dead Prez and Common also appear.

It spent 30 weeks on the R&B albums chart and has sold more than 600,000 copies in the US. The intro and outro are both called "World Keeps Turnin'," which is Badu's polite way of telling you to flip the record and start again.

Also at Kops: more Erykah Badu on vinyl · browse Hip Hop / R&B

Tracklist

Listen

On Motown, the 2003 album.