Erykah Badu is featured on the cover of The Fader’s 2016 producers issue. She speaks on, Donald Trump, Black Lives Matter, co-parenting with Andre 3000 and her new record label.
On Trump:
Politics. I don’t know how much we have a say… It’s a show, it’s a game. On the smaller scale, I think that your city reps and district reps are very serious about what they’re doing, and then when they get up a little higher it becomes a show. Everybody gets kinda turned out.
This is the craziest sh*t I’ve ever seen in my life. Is this real? But it will become a reality, if that’s what the plan is.”
On the Black Lives Matter movement:
“I felt it coming on,” she says, of the police violence crisis that sparked and sustained the Black Lives Matter movement. “I was really feeling a strong affinity toward writing about what was going on around me. And I actually wrote about what’s happening right now in that album. So I don’t feel the need to write it now, because I got it out.”
She sees our political present as a test of seriousness on more than one front. “We can organize like a motherf*cker when police beat us up,” she says. “But can we organize to stop black-on-black crime, or poor-on-poor crime? Because, you know, poor is the new black. You don’t have to be black now.”
You can check out the full interview here.
The FADER’s Producers Issue, on stands May 10 and available for pre-order now, also features in-depth interviews with Metro Boomin and Kaytranada.
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