Art & Soul: Erykah Badu + Q-Tip

This post is dedicated to 2 seriously talented musicians, Erykah Badu & Q-Tip. I love Trace Magazine and I really love whoever thought up this cover, I think it is so beautiful. As a matter of fact, this has to be my favorite magazine cover of all time; I actually had a picture of it hanging on my wall in my dorm room last year. Erykah Badu & Q-Tip are 2 of the most amazing musicians I have ever had the pleasure of listening to. I love both of their music so much.

If you were to go into my iTunes, you would see that Erykah Badu is the musician that I have the most music from; her songs are just so inspiring to me. I am in love with all of her albums but if I had to choose my favorite one I would probably say Mama’s Gun. Erykah Badu has such a beautiful spirit and you really get that supa dupa soulful feeling from her music. One of the things I admire most about Erykah Badu is her love for her art. Even though most record labels try to keep songs about 3-4 minutes long, this woman takes so much liberty with her music. Some of her songs surpass even the 10 minute mark. The only other instance I can think of when musicians ignore the time constraint is in jazz. So I really applaud Miss Badu for ignoring the norms of the music industry and really going with what she feels is right. Here is a little sampling of her music..

(For all you J. Cole fans, this is the song that he sampled from for "Too Deep For The Intro")

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Q-Tip is a rapper near and dear to my heart. A Tribe Called Quest is still one of my favorite, if not my favorite, hip-hop groups of all time. In this issue of Trace Magazine, Erykah Badu actually spoke about how she was greatly influenced by A Tribe Called Quest and the Native Tongues Movement. The music that ATCQ produced is what I would consider to be hip-hop in its purest form. You see, when I think of the word hip-hop, I think of poetry to a beat. If you took a song and silenced all the background noise and you were left with the soulful sound of spoken word on the track, then you have some real hip-hop. I feel that Q-Tip stayed true to this brand of hip-hop once he went solo which makes me very happy. His song “Fight/Love feat. Raphael Saadiq” was actually my ringtone for almost an entire year! Here is a sampling of his music..

If you weren’t hip to Erykah Badu & Q-Tip, hopefully you are now! Enjoy the music :)