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 7. Stankonia
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Here's what Mama's Gun is: to get a album on it’s level made by a black woman, I think you have to bypass Lauryn Hill and Mary J and Whitney Houston a go back to albums submitted by Aretha Franklin or Nina Simone or Billie Holiday.
Before you even get to Badu’s historic performance, you have to acknowledge that the production was so good and fresh and forward that it can confound you sometimes.
The Soulquarians have not produced an album this incredible since Mama’s Gun and they hadn’t yet up to that point. ?ues played the best non-jazz drums in the world. Poyser was a master working the synthesizer/organ/Fender Rhodes and piano. And Dilla is mangling the beat production and mood-setting.
No black woman had ever made a song remotely close to “Penitentiary Philosophy“, the albums first track. That was BRAND NEW. It was before artists like, Res and, recently, Alice Smith delved heavy into rock with a soul center. The closest you'll find is “Hollywood”, a track off Lucy Pearl’s self-titled album, where Saadiq has Dawn from En Vogue get a little crazy, but Badu’s joint had lengthy breaks, spaceout moments and hardcore energy.
“Didn't Cha Know” showed Badu’s progression, because it was similar to what you'd hear on Baduizm, but only heightened to really befuddling levels. Dilla's bassline and Ahmir's drum work are nuts, plus Dilla added the willowy guitar in the back and congas. And, what Badu always adds are lyrics from a lyricist. Badu, as we know, has hop roots. Hop may be her biggest influence. And she's also a poet, but of a different vein than, say, Jill Scott. She's not a spoken word chick, she's a poet. So, her lyrics are always doggedly creative. You get ambiguity and wit and insight.
What also made this album incredible is that Badu brought “sass” back. What woman was really sassy on tracks back then? Really, go through 80s and 90s. Other than inconsequential broads like Vanity or Adina Howard, who was really sassy? Whitney and Mariah were too busy doing what they did. Whatever happened to the Chaka Kahn's, ya naa mean? Mary was more gangsta and street than sassy. Badu brought that back, but in a different way on Mama's Gun that wasn't necessarily overtly featured on Baduizm. Next thing you know we got tracks like “...& On”, where she opens up, "Wake the f*ck up it's been too long”. Black singers didn’t curse, much less drop the F-bomb-- definitely not a woman. On “Booty”, the sass bubbles over and she's telling women with big rears, "Your booty might be bigger, but I still can pull your nigga." But hol' up, then Badu has the sassy-audacity to tell these women that "You got sugar on your pita, but your nigga thinks I'm sweeter." This all happening over a blaxploitation-type rhythm with James Brown horn blasts.
Nowadays, every female singer is sassy. Beyonce is sassy. Rihanna is sassy. That may be society, but that’s Badu, too.
“Orange Moon” and “Green Eyes” are crowning achievements of soul music. The emotional peaks that she goes to on those two tracks are actually kinda shocking. We're not talking about regular emotion that Whitney hit us with, we're talking about Mary-esque emotion where its raw and real and so revealing and naked that you almost feel uncomfortable. The difference between Mary-emotion and Badu's new emotion is that Mary's seemed to be an emotion spawned from being broken down and desperate or overwhelmed. Badu's toggles between hurt, anguish, and a deep attachment. They’re both equally honest, but Mary's honesty seems to be the result of the pot boiling over and Badu's seems to be a sought embrace. Which is why it’s perfectly fine and warranted to consider Badu to be every bit the trendsetter as Mary. Mary influenced Badu, but Badu is unique.
Aside from “Green Eyes” being emotional, its just friggin’ creative and forward, even as it reaches back to shake hands with early New Orleans jazz. The song goes through three changes before Badu finally takes off all her clothes in the final two minutes. Plus, jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove blew some of the quaintest horn during the third shift. Next thing we know, he and Russell Gunn and other jazz dudes are making soul-jazz albums.
Perhaps the most powerful endorsement for this album came courtesy of Brolic when he wrote: "I was so astonished and overwhelmed by emotion that I can’t begin to make someone else comprehend. The love she made to her music made me fall in love with her. Till this day I literally love Erykah Badu. Mama’s Gun was something else, something different, something that I had never felt before. It was the most complete oneness of an artist and their music that I had ever heard from a female artist before. This album not only made me fall in love with it and her but more importantly it made me fall head over hills in love with music."
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 4. Mama's Gun
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 2. Voodoo
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 1. Madvillainy
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