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
~ Erykah Badu
I figure, if the mind just 'has' to be busy,why not make up happy shit?
My eyes are green, Cause I eat a lot of vegetables,It don't have nothing to do with your new friend
But now I realize that this record business really needs me. No one else is trying to take a chance or do something different.
The music business is motivated by money. Music is motivated by energy and feelings.
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 think a lot of people have lost respect for the individual, you know, the individual, the person who doesn't conform.
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.
Man, I don't want to have nothing to do with computers. I don't want the government in my business.
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.
Hopefully my music is medicine, some type of antidote for something or some kind of explanation or just to feel good.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
No one chooses to raise children alone.
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.
