Erykah Badu has provided some insight into her highly-anticipated collaborative album with The Alchemist. Speaking with Billboard for a new interview, she explained that she doesn’t keep up with hip-hop as much as she did when she was younger, but she still loves the genre.
“[The thing I like about rap right now] is the same thing I liked about rap when I first met it,” she explained to the outlet. “Rap is the people. Hip-hop is the people. It’s the folks. It’s the tribe. I have the luxury of experiencing having children who I watch grow up and love and encourage very much, and I cannot separate them when I see artists who are that age coming up. That’s how they feel. They are continuing the tradition.” She added that the new album is taking up a ton of her time and she wants to finally finish it.
When Is Erykah Badu’s New Album Dropping?
Erykah Badu still hasn’t revealed a release date for the project, although she recently previewed some of the new music on Instagram. It’ll be her first studio album since dropping New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh) in 2010.
Prior to the collaboration with The Alchemist, Erykah Badu worked with Rapsody on a track off of her album, Please Don’t Cry. The song, “3:AM,” helped them take home the Grammy Award for Best Melodic Rap Performance. Speaking with VIBE, last year, Badu reflected on how the song came together. “That’s the one record I have enjoyed the most because it was a process, and getting to know her more and building a deeper friendship,” she said at the time. “She’s such a beautiful human being. You know the talent is in this style icon. She FaceTimed me the first time and she didn’t even say hello. She was in bed and she had a microphone and she was just humming melodies, and it was so dope to see her process. And we were speaking the other day and I told her, ‘I appreciate your process. You taught me how to slow down.”
