Erykah Badu Quotations

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.

I thought the Billie Holiday comparison was beautiful. I think, Wow, what a wonderful, creative, helpful spirit. She's someone who wanted to help others by sharing her emotion. That's what I do, too, so I think that's a great comparison.

I don't feel like I need to preach to the world or nothing like that. I just feel like I share what I say, and if listeners get it, they get it. And I never underestimate the audience's ability to feel me.

I try to be honest and I keep moving.

Artists need some kind of stimulating experience a lot of times, which crystallizes when you sing about it or paint it or sculpt it. You literally mold the experience the way you want. It's therapy.

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

I planned my success. I knew it was going to happen.

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'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.

I'm not trying to win an award for being the best vegetarian, just want to be healthy.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Man, I don't want to have nothing to do with computers. I don't want the government in my business.

I consider my musical ability to be a gift from the Creator. It's not that I try to work hard or nothing like that, it's a gift, it was given to me, and I appreciate it.

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.

Music and the music business are two different things.

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.

Being honest is my job. That's what music is for me.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Hip-hop is the people. What the people are moving toward is what hip-hop is. I think people are moving toward a freer way of thinking. Openness.

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

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

There are millions and billions of atoms of memory of all kinds of musical themes in me.

I love to leave the interpretation of my music up to the listener. It's fun to see what they'll say it is

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.

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.

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.

I started performing at two or three on a tape recorder, one of those little flat recorders where you just push play and record.

I'm kind of a recluse when it comes to going outside.

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

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

Hopefully my music is medicine, some type of antidote for something or some kind of explanation or just to feel good.

I don't read music or anything, so when I produce, I go basically by ear.

I love being an entertainer - not really fond of being a celebrity.

I love putting the music together. It's like art

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

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.

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

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.

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 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 can be Erykah the human being more than the celebrity.

I'm a performance artist first; I'm a recording artist second.

I've been a vegetarian since I was 19.

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.

I don't sing melodically. Rhyme pattern is how I sing. I also write like a lyricist or an MC because that's what I was before I was a singer. I just took those elements and put them into music.

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

I think someone else told him, ... He didn't even know who I was. It made me feel a little proud. I had the opportunity to be brand new. I felt that someone appreciates me and wanted me for my work, not my reputation.

I was given a tremendous gift and a platform, and it is my responsibility to use my platform to do the work of the Most High.

We enjoy each other's company. It was just a really tribal meeting.

I lived in Brooklyn for a couple of years. The community is very close-knit already. I remember it was raining that day, so it was a weird kind of funk on the crowd. It was so endearing to feel everybody coming together. It was almost like a cleansing. It felt super-new, renewing.

He's taking control of his own image. And he's not put in a box in any way. He's getting a chance to represent himself.

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

Be you. Make sure you're saying something when you're saying something. It's important to sound like you, to feel like you, to be like you. Be you.

I think people who vibrate at the same frequency, vibrate toward each other. They call it - in science - sympathetic vibrations.

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

They play it safe, are quick to assassinate what they do not understand. They move in packs ingesting more and more fear with every act of hate on one another. They feel most comfortable in groups, less guilt to swallow. They are us. This is what we have become. Afraid to respect the individual. A single person within a circumstance can move one to change. To love herself. To evolve

I'm only in competition with my last level.

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

I create my own calm and I keep my balance, because I know that it's not really me, by myself... The Creator always gives me the energy.

I'm a recovering undercover over-lover.

If you invite negativity in, you have to feed it and hang out with it. Best not to invite it in.

Time to eliminate things that no longer evolve me.

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

Society has a problem with female nudity when it is not . . . ”—Badu pauses to get her words together; she wants this point to be very clear—“. . . when it is not packaged for the consumption of male entertainment. Then it becomes confusing.

Don't let anybody infiltrate your dream

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.

In the morning, instead of saying to yourself, ‘I got to wake up’ say ‘I get to wake up!’

My hair is an aesthetic choice… At the same time, how you wear your hair is a political statement as well.

I encourage breaking free of self inflicted holding pens. I encourage the use of intelligence in every decision. I encourage creating.

I know that I want to concentrate more on my inside-pretty than my outside-pretty, because thats gonna go away. But if your inside is beautiful, it never wears away. The light always shows on the outside if you are striving to be good inside.

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

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

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

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.

Better think while it's still legal.

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.

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

You don't have to believe everything you think.

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.

The Man That Knowz Something Knowz That He Knowz Nothing At All.

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.

I'm more like an oven than a microwave,

Honey isn't really that good for you.

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

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.

We were all born, and we all came to the music business with everything we had. Some of us just don't get a chance. Now there's a lot of other people like myself, indeed, who are getting heard worldwide. That gives other artists a chance.

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

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.