4/14/2023 0 Comments Erykah badu annie![]() ![]() What she learns during an encounter with some of her newest extended-extended-extended family members – getting baptized, so to speak, in the waters of her maternal people – both illuminates some of her own distinctive qualities and changes the way she sees her path forward – helping her to become, as she puts it, a “better Erykah in Amerykah.” For our part, Okayafrica is proud to have played a part in the historic addition of a new name to the illustrious roll call of dopeness that unfolds when Ms. Still, she agreed to be the newest subject of Okayafrica’s “ The Roots Of…” series, in which Erykah Badu aka Badoula Oblongata aka Sara Bellum aka Maria Manuela Mexico aka Annie the Alchemist aka Fat Belly Bella aka DJ Lo Down Loretta Brown aka “She Ill,” aka Analog Girl In A Digital World (okay, player?) – or more simply the Q.U.E.E.N. – takes a DNA test to trace her roots back to the precise region, country, and tribe of her maternal ancestors. As she put it, she was “satisfied with just the knowing that I’m part of the all.” ![]() And although she had been curious – even going so far as to consult with a few shamans – she had never been too concerned with tracing where she was from, physically. ![]() Even the adopted surname ‘Badu’ has a West African pedigree, being a suffix reserved for a 10th-born child among the Akan people of Ghana. Erykah Badu‘s musical and stylistic oeuvre has long played with Afrocentric references, from her personal iconography of ankhs and gracefully patterned headwraps to the poetry of her lyrical allusions to the bright continent (“ They call you indigo, we call you Africa / Go get baptized in the ocean of The People” – “The Healer”).
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