Erykah Badu Quotes

I am not systematic at all when it comes to religion. I just love life. And I'm not judgmental. And I'm a vegetarian.

I'm just being who I am and expressing myself as everyone else does.

Better think while it's still legal.

I grew up with all mothers, all women. I come from a long line of matriarchs, very strong women.

Never knew what a friendship was, Never knew how to really love, You can't be what I need you to, & I don't know why I fuck with you

And I figured out that the reason I couldn't get through the day as well as I can now is because I had too many things on my mind, on my plate, you know, for one person to have. So I started to eliminate some of the things that were too heavy to carry and unnecessary.

I don't want to think too much about how I'm carving and what I'm carving - you are just carving away the excess clay and there's a piece underneath there. And it's kind of like getting out of the way. Maybe that's what the commonality is: It's getting out of the way so that the art can speak.

Some people come up and ask for an autograph and don't even look at me. They're like, 'Here, do it.' That don't bother me, but it doesn't open my heart.

The music business is motivated by money. Music is motivated by energy and feelings.

I have advice for people - period - who are in unhealthy relationships: Follow your heart. It will get you to where you need to be. Sometimes it's hard, sometimes it's easy, the places that your heart takes you. But continue to follow it. Where the train leads you - you'll get there.

My style is a little masculine, and what I loved about Pyer Moss was how well he can make a blazer, the looseness of those pants, or color palette that he chooses from season to season.

I'm a Pisces, so I'm a very closed-book kind of person.

When you're in a relationship you want it to work. My parents did, I did. But we are not taught how to make it work.

It's weird, but if I decide to do an album, then the ideas start fitting themselves together. I consider myself a nice, slow burn. Plus, it's not a race. And I have a lot to share.

During childbirth and hospice I'll sing gospel songs that my grandma taught me when I was younger, or something I've made up, or I'll hum. I just play things that I think the audience will like.

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.

People who say that music is dead or hip-hop is dead are refusing to evolve.

Peace and Blessings manifest with every lesson learned. If your knowledge were your wealth then it would be well earned.

The kind of music or the kind of arrangements that I do, the kind of musicians I choose, is just what I like to hear.

The light always shows on the outside if you are striving to be good on the inside.

People are uncomfortable with sexuality that's not for male consumption.

I'd rather see a person with a natural mind and processed mind than a processed mind and a natural head.

I actually started writing it because I was inspired by my own personal growth.

He definitely does what a partner is supposed to do, that is, evolve you.

I was born to make mistakes, I ain't scared to take the weight.

If we were made in his image then call us by our names.
Most intellects do not believe in god but they fear us just the same

This pain to remain the same outweigh the pain to change ... When you get tired enough is when you begin to want to sacrifice everything inside of you - the fear just leaves

They usually have a piano in every nursing home, and I always wanted to perform for whoever would listen when I learned something. I grew to understand very early that a lot of these people who are in nursing homes are elderly and don't have a lot of things that give them joy from day to day.

As Erykah Badu, it has nothing to do with me, the way I look, my hair wrap, my style, it's about you and what you feel for my music. If I can make you feel like the way that people who influenced me made me feel, that's completion.

I've been a vegetarian since I was 19.

But now I realize that this record business really needs me. No one else is trying to take a chance or do something different.

I'm free. I just do what I want, say what I want, say how I feel, and I don't try to hurt nobody. I just try to make sure that I don't compromise my art in any kind of way, and I think people respect that.

We literally just finished making this gown 20 minutes ago. I love it. It's my favorite color.

Breathing becomes really easy when you're laughing. It kick starts that feeling of joy.

I got a call from a mutual friend of ours, Charles King, who's also the executive producer. [Steven Caple Jr and I] had a conversation about it. I read it. We kind of finished each other's sentences when it came to the nuances and personality flaws that the character had, and some stereotypes and things we were trying to stay away from. We agreed on that as well. He just kind of allowed me to run rampant with the ideas. As we paced ourselves through, we developed Turquoise.

A home birth is about being able to create exactly what you want, because it's such a violent moment inside of the body that you want everything else to be as beautiful as it can be.

The reason why you don't see people looking like me is because I don't encourage that. I encourage you to be you.

I'm more like an oven than a microwave,

I don't have any particular thing I do ritualistically. I do the same thing every day. I get up. Drink a lot of water. Have a wheatgrass shot. Drink some green juice. Eat as healthy as I can.

My eyes are green, Cause I eat a lot of vegetables,
It don't have nothing to do with your new friend

I imagine that when I am creating a song or a project or an album or putting some clothing together or cooking a meal, whatever it is, I don't really have a recipe. The fun part is to throw that big piece of clay in the middle of the table as hard as I can, and whatever shape it takes, that's what shape it takes, and then I start to carve away.

When it come to da: " What it do?! I don't fall for da: "Woop- TeE- WoOoo!

What does music mean to me? I don't think I would really be much without it, without it coming through me. It's my means of communication, my means of growth, my means of transportation from one point in my life to another.

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.

Even if the project requires you to have all the ducks in a line, I can't do that. I don't create way.

Oh, yeah, I see the world differently now. Actually, when I first had the baby, I was breast-feeding him for two years straight. So we were together for two years of his life, every single day, all hours of the day. So I was two people, and I eventually morphed back into one.

Well, if you look at all of the cultures in America, this is a great opportunity for us to really get acquainted with the rest of the world. America is the only place you can do that, but we don't have sense enough to take advantage of that.

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.

I don't have one song that sounds like another one in my entire catalog.

I'm pretty mutable as a human being, period - if you put me on Pluto, I can figure it out.

I just keep going. When the water's too still, I start splashing around and things jump out of the water.

From then on, I realized this is what I want to do, what I'm supposed to do: Giving energy and receiving it back through applause. I love it. That's my world. I love it. I enjoy it. I live for it.

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.

I'll dabble here and there in different forms of the art, but the label has me locked down like a slave so, of course, I'll be doing albums during this time.

So the most natural thing to me is to stay as pure to or real to or close to who I am as possible.

We lock ourselves into our own philosophies, our own religions, our own walks of life, and if we fail, we condemn ourselves and then we get sick.

I know the community mostly for its art and culture ... and of course its food, I eat at their restaurants." "They make you feel like taking off your shoes ... it feels like home.

I think a lot of people have lost respect for the individual, you know, the individual, the person who doesn't conform.

I love watching Rihanna in fashion. I like to see her take chances and risks. I like seeing Naomi Campbell in the forefront. They're both women who stand out and use their bodies as canvases to introduce this functional art to the world. They carry it in a way that is very inspiring.

I'm a recovering undercover over-lover.

Following your heart also means eliminating the things that no longer evolve you.

I live in a queendom, ruled by a womb-iverse,

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.

Personally, I don't choose any particular religion or symbol or group of words or teachings to define me. That's between me and the most high. You know, my higher self. The Creator.

All of my children are the same way I am. They're little artists too, in their own ways.

I've had two children. I've had three boyfriends. I've had a lot of things happen that can change your opinions and values and philosophies.

When I get ready to do an album, that means I have something to say for the sake of words, and I listen back to all of the things I've been creating and pull things from out of the air to go with them. It's almost like I start creating the album before I even think about creating it.

All I want to do is give the world my heart ... Record label tryina make me compromise my art.

Erykah Badu projects don't even sound like Erykah Badu projects. I don't even have one album that sounds like another one of my albums.

Marvin Gaye is one of my favorite revolutionaries. He spoke from his heart, his mind. That's what I want to do.

My work as a doula also extends all the way to the end of life. I sit at the bedsides of people who are passing on in hospices or nursing homes, for the people and families who want that kind of thing.

What makes me furious, not just because we're in an interview, but I don't like when writers take your words and put them somewhere else, in the wrong context in their own article about you.

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.

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.

Hip-hop was created out of necessity. We needed to create some digitized things to help us understand what we were feeling.

A lot of people have dementia, which is great, because then they don't recognize me.

I trust the political system to be what it is. It's a structure to keep the country running, a boat to get us [citizens] from one side to the other, and it has the country's best interests at heart. Not the people's.

Anything that had to do with art I been doing all my life. It was a gift. It's nothing I work real hard at doing.

Whenever I think about funk music, it has a look - and that's how it sounds.

I have the ability to sing with emotion and feeling, but if you say I sound like Billie Holiday, that's cool. Let's look at who Billie was: she was this person, this singer, this beautiful diva who could move the audience with the slightest gesture of her hand.

What I work hard at doing is staying on a path of being kind and showing and proving that I'm a good person to society. That's hard. The talent, that's a gift. I just came here like that.

If you want to relate to a certain audience or generation, you have to speak their language. I truly believe that.

Don't let anybody infiltrate your dream

I'm trying to decide
Which way to go
I think I made a wrong turn back there somewhere
Didn't cha know, didn't cha know
Tried to move but I lost my way
Didn't cha know, didn't cha know
Stopped to watch my emotions sway
Didn't cha know, didn't cha know
Knew the toll, but I would not pay
Didn't cha know, didn't cha know
Cause you never know where the cards may lay
Time to save the world
Where in the world is all the time
So many things I still don't know
So many times I've changed my mind
Guess I was born to make mistakes
But I ain't scared to take the weight
So when I stumble off the path
I know my heart will guide me back

Vegan food is soul food in its truest form. Soul food means to feed the soul. And, to me, your soul is your intent. If your intent is pure, you are pure.

I grew up listening to old soul.

I'm not satisfied with the explanations I get from tv or from school.

I knew it would happen. I knew I'd be No. 1. I'm a new artist; I don't know the rules. Nobody told me it wouldn't happen.

I view my hair and clothes as functional art ...

I'm a woman who has gone through many heartaches, enough to dedicate my whole life to trying to figure them out.

Music and the music business are two different things.