Menu

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Erykah Badu Quotes

I love to leave the interpretation of my music up to the listener. It’s fun to see what they’ll say it is.

– Erykah Badu

I don’t read music or anything, so when I produce, I go basically by ear.

– Erykah Badu

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.

– Erykah Badu

I’m a Pisces, so I’m a very closed-book kind of person.

– Erykah Badu

I thought the Billie Holiday comparison was beautiful. I think, Wow, what a wonderful, creative, helpful spirit. She’s someone who wanted to help others by sharing her emotion. That’s what I do, too, so I think that’s a great comparison.

– Erykah Badu

The music business is motivated by money. Music is motivated by energy and feelings.

– Erykah Badu

I don’t feel like I need to preach to the world or nothing like that. I just feel like I share what I say, and if listeners get it, they get it. And I never underestimate the audience’s ability to feel me.

– Erykah Badu

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.

– Erykah Badu

But now I realize that this record business really needs me. No one else is trying to take a chance or do something different.

– Erykah Badu

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.

– Erykah Badu

I consider my musical ability to be a gift from the Creator. It’s not that I try to work hard or nothing like that, it’s a gift, it was given to me, and I appreciate it.

– Erykah Badu

What makes me furious, not just because we’re in an interview, but I don’t like when writers take your words and put them somewhere else, in the wrong context in their own article about you.

– Erykah Badu

I grew up with all mothers, all women. I come from a long line of matriarchs, very strong women.

– Erykah Badu

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.

– Erykah Badu

I’ll dabble here and there in different forms of the art, but the label has me locked down like a slave so, of course, I’ll be doing albums during this time.

– Erykah Badu

And I figured out that the reason I couldn’t get through the day as well as I can now is because I had too many things on my mind, on my plate, you know, for one person to have. So I started to eliminate some of the things that were too heavy to carry and unnecessary.

– Erykah Badu

Being honest is my job. That’s what music is for me.

– Erykah Badu

I love putting the music together. It’s like art.

– Erykah Badu

I love being an entertainer – not really fond of being a celebrity.

– Erykah Badu

Well, if you look at all of the cultures in America, this is a great opportunity for us to really get acquainted with the rest of the world. America is the only place you can do that, but we don’t have sense enough to take advantage of that.

– Erykah Badu

The kind of music or the kind of arrangements that I do, the kind of musicians I choose, is just what I like to hear.

– Erykah Badu

I’ve had two children. I’ve had three boyfriends. I’ve had a lot of things happen that can change your opinions and values and philosophies.

– Erykah Badu

Marvin Gaye is one of my favorite revolutionaries. He spoke from his heart, his mind. That’s what I want to do.

– Erykah Badu

I grew up listening to old soul.

– Erykah Badu

Hopefully my music is medicine, some type of antidote for something or some kind of explanation or just to feel good.

– Erykah Badu

I can be Erykah the human being more than the celebrity.

– Erykah Badu

Music and the music business are two different things.

– Erykah Badu

I have the ability to sing with emotion and feeling, but if you say I sound like Billie Holiday, that’s cool. Let’s look at who Billie was: she was this person, this singer, this beautiful diva who could move the audience with the slightest gesture of her hand.

– Erykah Badu

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.

– Erykah Badu

No one chooses to raise children alone.

– Erykah Badu

- 1
- 2