Reissued December 9, 2022
Motown
2xLP (Purple Vinyl)
Following a five-year, writer's-block induced hiatus from the music business, Erykah Badu waded back into Electric Ladyland's viscous, extremely funky waters. The last time she was there she recorded Mama's Gun (2000), one of the crown jewels of the Soulquarian era, and one of neo-soul's finest achievements. Her return would result in the New Emerykah duology, a pair of albums extro- and introverted that encompass Badu's idiosyncratic philosophy. Part One: 4th World War, the searing funk and hip-hop crusade; Part Two: Return Of The Ankh the romantic, liberated soul slow burn. The former is an eclectic and uncompromising survey of roughly everything Badu sees wrong with America, and latter a loose, unburdened exploration of love. Alone, they're fantastic albums. As companion pieces to each other, however, they unlock one of the ambitious triumphs in the entire neo-soul oeuvre, which sadly has remained only sporadically fruitful since Badu's first tenure at Electric Ladyland.