51 Erykah Badu Quotes from the Singer-Songwriter

By Clifton Sankofa | Published October 13, 2021

Here are some Erykah Badu quotes on topics ranging from creativity, religion, control, motherhood, music, spirituality, and self-esteem that can provide insight and inspiration.

Whether you are a fan of hip hop, rock, reggae, r&b, or any genre of music, a smile often appears on the faces of music fans when the name Erykah Badu is mentioned.

It has been almost three decades since Erykah caught the ear of America with her neo-soul sound.

I have seen Ms. Badu perform live on many occasions and she has yet to disappoint.

Her catalog along with her live shows tends to pull the audience into an atmosphere, something larger than music, even indescribably sublime.

Her talent is obvious, but Erykah has had a larger-than-life impact on music and American culture that deserves a deeper look and analysis.

Don’t forget to also check out these Aretha Franklin quotes about love, life and respect.

If you love this quote collection, read out our most popular quote article about short inspirational quotes for daily motivation.

If you need more inspirational quotes, check out our motivational quotes category page.

Erykah Badu quotes about music and art

1. “Baduism is designed to get you high as you can get, through pure music, energy and soul.” – Erykah Badu

2. “I’m really a child of funk music, my uncles grew up listening to funk music most of the time and that’s what I grew up listening to most of the time.” – Erykah Badu

3. “My religion is art, from the time I was a kid I was in dance class or theater or making clothes, doing something pertaining to art.” – Erykah Badu

4. “I don’t know how to read music, I never understood the theory. I am not a great dancer, I am a cool vocalist, but it just feels good to me. I like how it feels, it became my therapy and later my job.” – Erykah Badu

5. “I never underestimate the audience’s ability to connect with me.” – Erykah Badu

6. “If you think about what a tribe-based community is, it’s people that eat the same foods and wear the same clothes. People in the tribe that I’m referring to kinda understand the same music sonically.” – Erykah Badu

7. “Whatever neo-soul is, it’s cool. But me and D’Angelo don’t sound anything alike. Our music sounds nothing alike. But what we had in common is that we were considered brave enough to put out music that hadn’t sounded like that on mainstream radio in America.” – Erykah Badu

8. “I never saw it fit to be my job to fit into any kind of category or label. I just have to do things that feel good. My only job is to be honest, because that’s what music is. That’s what I use it for. It’s a platform for me to express how I feel and be honest. That really didn’t matter. I don’t reject it or claim it or anything. I didn’t know what it was, I was just making music that I liked.” – Erykah Badu

9. “Because the music comes first for me. I don’t write lyrics and then write music, because to me that’s poetry. It’s music first and then I write to the music. I find a place in that music. I can’t write to any old music, it has to touch me in a very special way.” – Erykah Badu

10. “This is the first time in my whole music career that I’ve traveled and I did not have a child with me. I’ve never experienced it like this before. I don’t know what to do with myself. It’s a weird feeling.” – Erykah Badu

Erykah Badu quotes about life

11. “It’s just what I like and as my taste evolves, as I get introduced to more and more things, I understand more things – lyrically, musically, sonically. The whole thing. Taking more chances, evolving. I think that’s the main focus of who I am as an individual person.” – Erykah Badu

12. “Evolving is very important for me. That’s why I do it. I don’t do it to sell records or have a No. 1 Hot 99 single. It’s a movement for me.” – Erykah Badu

13.” I think music is timeless. It shouldn’t have a shelf life, or a disc- life, or a deadline. It’s about a lifeline to me. So whenever I want to bring something back to life, I put a visual to it and put it out for people to enjoy it, give it another face, another turn.” – Erykah Badu

Wise and inspirational Erykah Badu quotes

14. “I’m a blues singer, so I just sing blues over different kinds of music.” – Erykah Badu

15. “When you can control the frequency of the music, you have a lot more control over the sheep or the people, the way they think, the way they feel. Because we’re in such a programmed state where programmers play the same six songs all the time. We are controlling our own frequency, we are deciding what’s in the airwaves, what it sounds like, what it looks like, what it feels like.” – Erykah Badu

16. “Yeah, I know I’m on the FBI list, so I’m careful with the things I say and project to people when I’m on there.” – Erykah Badu

17. “To me, an album is not just about the music but also the artwork, the liner notes, the lyrics, the whole package. That’s what I grew up seeing. There was no video, you just saw the album cover.” – Erykah Badu

18. “If people were to ask my children about who their mother was, I’d hope they could give them Mama’s Gun or New Amerykah and say, “This is who she is, who she was.” – Erykah Badu

19. “I started having babies at 27 years old. Sometimes they say when you’re a career woman, you’re late having children because of the ambition in college and all these things. But this is what we do and it’s just part of it. So follow your heart and don’t miss a beat. They become part of what it is.” – Erykah Badu

20. “If you decide to have a baby, it doesn’t interfere with your career at all. If anything, it becomes an enhancement because if it enhances your life – and your music is your life – it definitely enhances your music. And help comes. It doesn’t matter how much money you have. It’s easy, it’s really easy, especially when you like your kids.” – Erykah Badu

Erykah Badu quotes that will make your day

21. “I’ve been a chain monogamous person my whole career. Long relationships with one partner, and generally the one partner it’s like a marriage and we have a child and we have a home and we have a commitment and there’s a lot of things sacred. And I’m committed to that relationship. My whole career I’ve been in relationships.” – Erykah Badu

22. “I get inspiration from everything. Fred Flinstone, the Carol Burnett Show, an argument, a broken heart. It all inspires me because my music is therapy and it’s a means for me to express how I feel immediately. I’m inspired by a lot of things.” – Erykah Badu

23. “It makes me feel good that I can sometimes be a person’s voice or sometimes be that relatable thing that helps them solve some problem or evolve or get angry or whatever they need to do.” – Erykah Badu

24. “That makes me feel good because that’s what the music I listen to did for me. And if it’s doing that, that’s good, ‘cause it’s creating some energy in people, some movement.” – Erykah Badu

25. “I desire to evolve in every part of my life. I just desire that and then it comes naturally.” – Erykah Badu

26. “But the earth is changing, the world is changing, the weather is changing, people’s emotions are changing. The time is more urgent. Everything is changing. It’s quite natural to me to evolve with that – what the people need, I need it too.” – Erykah Badu

27. “The community I grew up in was dilapidating right before my eyes. Crack and drugs and liquor stores and prostitution, it was just a really bad thing to see.” – Erykah Badu

28. “The heartbeat of my music became the bass line and the drums.” – Erykah Badu

29. “More than sounding alike, we feel alike and we share emotion and I have the ability to sing with emotion.” – Erykah Badu

30. “I been rapping and flowing since the Sugar Hill Gang was out.” – Erykah Badu

Insightful Erykah Badu quotes

31. “I am a hip-hopper. Hip hop is something you live, rap is something you do. It makes me angry that we are misrepresented as a hip-hop nation.” – Erykah Badu

32. “It makes me angry that we are being killed every day by one another, by the government, by the food we eat, the choices we make, it makes me very angry. Because it doesn’t have to be this way.” – Erykah Badu

33. “My background is in art, period.” – Erykah Badu

34. “Music is kind of sick, music is going through a rebirthing process, and I found myself being one of the midwives aiding in the birthing process.” – Erykah Badu

35. “I don’t have a religion, I don’t think anyone can define anyone’s relationship with the creator.” – Erykah Badu

36. “Wherever I am needed, that is where I want to be.” – Erykah Badu

37. “Baduism is an expression of me. It’s the things that get me high; lighting a candle, loving life, knowing myself, knowing the Creator, building bridges, understanding, destroying bridges, overstanding, using my melanin, and using my power to do the creator’s work and that is what I am here for.” – Erykah Badu

38. “My aesthetic style, I perceive it as dancerish. I have always wanted to feel like a dancer, like a silhouette and float. My music is the same way, it’s very daring and very quirky.” – Erykah Badu

39. “The most rewarding thing I do now is to catch babies. I have assisted babies in their birth, I am a midwife. I have studied it, I wanted to make it part of my life. I started off as a doula. A doula is an ancient art form where an attendant is with the mother pre and postnatal.” – Erykah Badu

40. “B.L.I.N.D is my nonprofit, I set it up in 2004 just to add to my community in a way that people would come to my recreation center in the summer and add to my life as a child through art. We were able to travel all over the world without leaving the gymnasium because of people’s contributions who were giving their time to us. People who were busy, people who were famous, people who were important. It meant a lot to us that these people saw us as important enough to contribute to and that’s what I wanted to do for my community.” – Erykah Badu

More Erykah Badu quotes and sayings

41. “I hope you don’t expect anything, I hope people don’t expect anything from me, I hope people come prepared to eliminate things. I just want people to feel good, or feel bad, but just feel something.” – Erykah Badu

42. “Music is part of the fabric of my skin, my life, it surrounds me everywhere.” – Erykah Badu

43. “The heartbeat is also music to me.” – Erykah Badu

44. “What inspires me as a whole is following my heart, being honest is my only job. I never underestimate people’s ability to follow or deem my truth as being relative.” – Erykah Badu

45. “Over the years people have deemed me as the sister with the head wrap, or the sister who loves the earth, or crochet hats, or incense, don’t look her in the eyes or you gonna change gods, all of those things …but all of those things are me. I have no need to escape any of those things.” – Erykah Badu

46. “I am ever-evolving.” – Erykah Badu

47. “My life is built around my children. They inspire me, motivate me, I enjoy being their mother, teacher, doctor, nutritionist. They know that wherever Mommy is, that is where home is.” – Erykah Badu

48. “When I first came out as an artist in 97, I believe I was trying to achieve some kind of appreciation for African culture.” – Erykah Badu

49. “That’s the whole thing with performing live, you are creating a moment. It used to be where you were creating a moment that will never happen again ever in time. But now people are recording it, it’s almost like now you are almost performing to perfect a moment.” – Erykah Badu

50. People have their version of Erykah Badu, what I am supposed to do, supposed to think, supposed to write, supposed to eat, it’s just their version of me, it’s unfortunate.” – Erykah Badu

51. “Sex is a very spiritual thing. We are spiritual beings.” – Erykah Badu

Which of these Erykah Badu quotes is your favorite?

Erykah Badu has made a career out of being herself and not selling out her values as an artist.

It does not mean that Ms. Badu has never shown off some skin – as a form of protest and expression she famously went completely nude and walked down the streets of Dallas, Texas in her video for Window Seat.

What sets Erykah apart from other artists is her willingness to believe in herself and her ability to connect with her audience.

She expressed the importance of this noting how she never underestimates the audience’s ability to connect with the artist.