125 Quotes by Erykah Badu

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Be you. Make sure you're saying something when you're saying something. It's important to sound like you, to feel like you, to be like you. Be you.

The light always shows on the outside if you are striving to be good on the inside.

I'm only in competition with my last level.

Following your heart also means eliminating the things that no longer evolve you.

I think people who vibrate at the same frequency, vibrate toward each other. They call it - in science - sympathetic vibrations.

They play it safe, are quick to assassinate what they do not understand. They move in packs, ingesting more and more fear with every act of hate on one another.

I'm a recovering undercover over-lover.

I create my own calm and I keep my balance, because I know that it's not really me, by myself... The Creator always gives me the energy.

If you invite negativity in, you have to feed it and hang out with it. Best not to invite it in.

I know that I want to concentrate more on my inside-pretty than my outside-pretty, because thats gonna go away. But if your inside is beautiful, it never wears away. The light always shows on the outside if you are striving to be good inside.

Time to eliminate things that no longer evolve me.

My hair is an aesthetic choice… At the same time, how you wear your hair is a political statement as well.

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We as Black people have to tell our own stories. We have to document our history. When we allow someone else to document our history the history becomes twisted and we get written out. We get our noses blown off.

Don't let anybody infiltrate your dream

I think a lot of people have lost respect for the individual, you know, the individual, the person who doesn't conform.

Better think while it's still legal.

I'm a complete human being. I'm very emotional and loving. I feel, I hurt, I give, I take, and also I think. I analyze. I'm a sociologist, anthropologist.

I strongly believe that the more positive my vibration is, the clearer my message will be. I keep my negative thoughts from infiltrating my pathway and my dreams. Other people's thoughts are none of my business.

So the most natural thing to me is to stay as pure to or real to or close to who I am as possible.

I was born to make mistakes, I ain't scared to take the weight.

Vegan food is soul food in its truest form. Soul food means to feed the soul. And, to me, your soul is your intent. If your intent is pure, you are pure.

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.

I encourage breaking free of self inflicted holding pens. I encourage the use of intelligence in every decision. I encourage creating.

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.

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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.

You don't have to believe everything you think.

That's the moment I learned that the more you believe in yourself, the stronger the vibration touches someone else, and things begin to happen the way you dreamed that they would.

It just works better for me to discriminate between which thoughts are mine and which come from elsewhere, before I even talk about them or express them - it helps to keep me focused on my path.

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.

We lock ourselves into our own philosophies, our own religions, our own walks of life, and if we fail, we condemn ourselves and then we get sick.

My work as a doula also extends all the way to the end of life. I sit at the bedsides of people who are passing on in hospices or nursing homes, for the people and families who want that kind of thing.

Art is the absence of fear.

This pain to remain the same outweigh the pain to change... When you get tired enough is when you begin to want to sacrifice everything inside of you—the fear just leaves

I have advice for people - period - who are in unhealthy relationships: Follow your heart. It will get you to where you need to be. Sometimes it's hard, sometimes it's easy, the places that your heart takes you. But continue to follow it. Where the train leads you - you'll get there.

I'm not satisfied with the explanations I get from tv or from school.

I don't require sex for happiness - I need companionship. I need a partner I can depend on, that I can love and grow with.

A lot of people have dementia, which is great, because then they don't recognize me.

I view my hair and clothes as functional art.

I'm more like an oven than a microwave.

In the morning, instead of saying to yourself, ‘I got to wake up’ say ‘I get to wake up!’

My eyes are green, Cause I eat a lot of vegetables, It don't have nothing to do with your new friend

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.

I don't know why, it's just what I feel inside, the thoughts that I sing about. It's just my truth. Sometimes my emotions can be mistaken for messages.

I just keep going. When the water's too still, I start splashing around and things jump out of the water.

Poor is the new black.

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

Honey isn't really that good for you.

My fifth mother is Mother Nature - the things I had to learn on my own, the understanding I had to come to and still have to come to as a young woman, as a responsible mother, a responsible granddaughter and child. She teaches me willpower, honesty, and the things we need to heal ourselves from moment to moment.

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.

I really can't say what inspires me the most, because I'm inspired by just about everything. My feelings and relationships, my family, Scooby-Doo. Opinion of my work. Everything. Not just one thing.

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.

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.

If we were made in his image then call us by our names. Most intellects do not believe in god but they fear us just the same

I'm pretty mutable as a human being, period - if you put me on Pluto, I can figure it out.

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

My paternal grandmother gave me the courage to investigate things and not take things at face value or judge people by what I first imagine them to be.

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

Whenever I think about funk music, it has a look - and that's how it sounds.

Now keep in mind that I'm an artist and I'm sensitive about my sh*t

I planned my success. I knew it was going to happen.

Because you're responsible for [children]. You are there to protect them, not possess them. I tell them, "Watch me and you might learn something."

I have a master plan as an artist. I've always said I'm not going to be punching nobody's clock. I will work as an artist to survive in this world.

What singing means to me, I never did consider myself a singer, I just let people watch me feel music and how it comes through me. I've worked on it and practiced a lot. I mean, music, I dance to it, and singing is just one way of getting it out of me.

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

I try to be honest and I keep moving.

I don't have one song that sounds like another one in my entire catalog.

We were all born, and we all came to the music business with everything we had. Some of us just don't get a chance. Now there's a lot of other people like myself, indeed, who are getting heard worldwide. That gives other artists a chance.

I'm just being who I am and expressing myself as everyone else does.

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

I come from a long line of matriarchal women, and my greatest teachers were my mothers.

Hip-hop is not something we do, it's something we live. It's the way we dress, the way we talk... everybody bobbing to the same beat. It's a culture, and you have to find your own place in that culture. Top 10 or Top 40 can't dictate that. They can only dictate what's marketable.

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.

I believed in myself, and I've always worked very, very hard as an artist, and I am an artist in every sense of the word.

The reason why you don't see people looking like me is because I don't encourage that. I encourage you to be you.

I don't know... I've been doing it for 17 years now, so of course I've seen pictures and thought, "Oh my god, I wish I would've never worn that." Yeah, but I did! And it was probably because it was my favorite thing at the time - my clothes always have some kind of emotion attached to them.

No one chooses to raise children alone.

When it comes to fashion or any high art, you have to have a combination of delicacy, along with taste.

I grew up listening to old soul

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.

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.

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

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

Music and the music business are two different things.

A home birth is about being able to create exactly what you want, because it's such a violent moment inside of the body that you want everything else to be as beautiful as it can be.

People are uncomfortable with sexuality that’s not for male consumption.

I was the bohemian in my family, the "this is my favorite shoe and I don't care if it has tape around it" kind of person. The tape could become a fashion statement. Or a political statement.

I think the job of an artist is to be honest and fearless.

He definitely does what a partner is supposed to do, that is, evolve you.

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.

People who say that music is dead or hip-hop is dead are refusing to evolve.

Hip-hop is the people. What the people are moving toward is what hip-hop is. I think people are moving toward a freer way of thinking. Openness.

It's weird, but if I decide to do an album, then the ideas start fitting themselves together. I consider myself a nice, slow burn. Plus, it's not a race. And I have a lot to share.

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

Oh, yeah, I see the world differently now. Actually, when I first had the baby, I was breast-feeding him for two years straight. So we were together for two years of his life, every single day, all hours of the day. So I was two people, and I eventually morphed back into one

The wise healer endures the pain. Cry. Tears bring joy.

I'd rather see a person with a natural mind and processed mind than a processed mind and a natural head.

I'm not trying to win an award for being the best vegetarian, just want to be healthy. Take a salt bath. Do things that my parents were never able to do. I'm blessed to do anything I want so I decide to take the best care of my body and my family in the same way. Holistically. Vitally.

My second mother is my maternal grandmother. Her name is Thelma. She also gave me a very powerful medicine; she made sure that I knew my role as a young lady and as someone with moral structures and principles. She taught me that if I was going to be involved with anything, whether it be spirituality, music, or some skill, that I have to practice.

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.

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

I started performing at two or three on a tape recorder, one of those little flat recorders where you just push play and record.

I have a daughter who's four, who's dainty and princess-esque. I still get to dress her like my little accessory. I think I have one more year to do that, then she's going to get her own ideas - so I better move quickly!

Hip-hop was created out of necessity. We needed to create some digitized things to help us understand what we were feeling.

André and I are still best of friends, always have been and always will be. When our 18-year-old son, Seven, started high school, we both agreed to be in the same city, so André is in Dallas all the time, and we're always all together doing something.

I'm not trying to win an award for being the best vegetarian, just want to be healthy.

I don't think it matters what school you go to, but I think it's important for parents to be involved. And to know that when school stops, learning continues, and to continue teaching at home.

The metal or the stone that's helping me .I'll incorporate them into anything I wear - but I think it's about accessories more than anything, because it's how you accessorize yourself that gives you your own unique style.

If you want to relate to a certain audience or generation, you have to speak their language. I truly believe that.

We mainly focus on putting music, art, dance, theater, all forms of art, back into the community, so the community can put it into the world.

I take the same approach in all genres of art, across the board. It's intuitive.

I have an apartment in Brooklyn - I guess I call it my shrine. I go there to create and recoup, or hibernate sometimes, but my home is in Dallas where I live with my children.

When you're performing, you're creating a moment.

I don't plan how many people I work with. I don't charge anything. It's for my own learning, and I just enjoy being the welcoming committee. I became a doula by default.

Some people come up and ask for an autograph and don't even look at me. They're like, 'Here, do it.' That don't bother me, but it doesn't open my heart.

I go through phases of stuff.

Breathing becomes really easy when you're laughing. It kick starts that feeling of joy.

I'm learning from them! Everyone says that, but it's true. You learn more about yourself from them than from any other lesson.

I'm pretty mutable as a human being.

I trust the political system to be what it is. It's a structure to keep the country running, a boat to get us [citizens] from one side to the other, and it has the country's best interests at heart. Not the people's.

Hip-Hop is bigger than the government.

I could do a few more sit-ups and my waistline would be less difficult.

Things are useless without practice.

Different periods, different cultures - it's just the way my mind works. My music is that way as well. There's a foundation but the inspiration comes from everywhere. I've been influenced by so many things.

I have a pair of blue pants that were my favorite for a while and were a part of my show uniform - every night, you know.

I've been a vegetarian since I was 19.

I'm a woman who has gone through many heartaches, enough to dedicate my whole life to trying to figure them out.

When people are going on to the next plateau of whatever this thing is called life, I also want them to breathe easily, even if it's the last one they take here with us. I guess I'm the welcoming committee and ushering committee.

I lived in New York for maybe a year and a half, from '95 to '97, but I live in Dallas. My whole family is there.

My girls are very fashionable. They have a very good eye for marrying style and fashion.