Fourteen years have passed since Erykah Badu sashayed onto the scene in her head wrap, and while in Los Angeles for Rock The Bells, she sat down with Fuse to wax poetic about the making of her first album, Baduizm. In the interview, she explains that “Sometimes” and “The Otherside of the Game” almost didn’t make it on the album: “My most memorable song is ‘Otherside of the Game.’ When I turned in that demo, ‘Otherside of the Game’ was not there, the song ‘Sometimes’ was not there,” she said. “Those songs were done as a collaboration with The Roots. I met The Roots after I got my record deal. The album was ready to go, but I persuaded the label to let me just go to Philly right quick…. We came up with a lot of songs, but those were the ones, ‘Otherside of the Game’ and ‘Sometimes.’ I originally wrote ‘Sometimes [Mix #9]’ for Black Thought to rap on, but I think he thought it was wack. So we just had to keep it going.”
She also shared thoughts about where here head was at while creating the iconic album, which she is performing in its entirety on the Rock the Bells Tour. “I never really thought about a lot of the things people labeled my lyrics for music as. ’94 to ’97, I was at a really interesting place in my life. I was embracing, very much, my culture, my African heritage, which is one part of me. Africa has always been a staple in my household and in my life. The drums mean an awful lot to me. It’s just who I was at the time, and I wanted to be completely who I was when I did what I did.” Following her gut resulted in the album going three times platinum.
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