On February 11, it will officially be 20 years since Erykah Badu released her genre-defining debut, Baduizm. To mark the occasion, I wrote this profile of her, for which I talked to friends and family and collaborators. But unfortunately, as these things go, I wasn’t able to include everyone I interviewed. So here is my conversation with Jeff “Skin” Wade, co-host of The Fan’s Ben & Skin Show and third man in the booth on most Dallas Mavericks broadcasts. When I first met Skin, he was still best known for his role in the local hip-hop scene, which is where he met Ms. Badu.
How long have you known Erykah?
“We started doing stuff with her about a — you know it all kind of runs together because it was so long ago, but about a year before all that went down. We used to do this thing called The Session. It was a freestyle thing. It was me and Ben and Del, the DJ Del Furious, and Erykah, and — at the time I guess he went by Mikey Culture. He was part of IGP. He appeared on some of the Hydro stuff.”
Okay.
“Cold Cris would come through, and it was like a Wednesday night deal. It started at a place called Rebounds, and we would just — it was kind of like a bar and we just sat there and held these long freestyle sessions. Erykah, I guess, had just come back in town from college. I did not know her before she left for college, but a bunch of the people that we were hanging out with in the scene did, because she was so involved in KNON I guess before she left for college.
Was she still rapping, or was she —
“She was singing. She was mostly singing. In fact, there’s a video from that. Do you know Jeff Schroer? We call him Stottle.”
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
“He’s got video of that where she is singing the lyrics and the melody of ‘Appletree’ over The Roots’ instrumental for ‘Proceed’ [from 1995’s Do You Want More?!!!??!]. The Roots had just kind of come out on Geffen, and there was all these promo 12-inches, and I think the version she’s singing over is the Roy Ayers instrumental of ‘Proceed,’ and she’s singing the melody right over it.”
Oh, cool.
“The thing that’s so interesting about that is, I’m pretty sure she was unfamiliar with them. I think we introduced them to her, and a year later she was working with them on her first record.
“The story the way I remember it, when she came out and moved back to town and was doing things, she was doing things with Rob and they were doing shows together, and they were going by the name Erykah Free. It was, Rob was doing beats and rapping, and she was doing her thing. They started gigging.
“I remember I saw them perform one time at SOA, which I don’t even know that it’s called now. It’s down there in Fair Park on Exposition. They used to do these kind of acid jazz nights, because that was still sort of a thing. I remember seeing the perform there, and the way I remember the story was D’Angelo was coming to town on his first record. I went to the show; he played Caravan of Dreams [in Fort Worth]. At the time he was still just kind of a kid. He just sat there in a leather jacket behind his Wurlitzer keyboard. No showmanship, just sat there and sang, right? But, Erykah and Rob got on the bill as the opening act.”
Nice.
“Kedar Massenberg had been touring with D’Angelo, because he was doing A&R for D’Angelo’s first record. I think it was like Christmas, I can’t remember now. But, he was the A&R guy on it and so he was touring and saw Erykah — and they put on a great show that night — and saw Erykah and was like, ‘I want her.’ So Erykah Free was no more. I’m sure you’ll get a better story about that from Rob.”
Right.
“But Rob did end up producing a couple tracks on that first record, including ‘Appletree.’ I think he produced ‘Appletree,’ not 100-percent sure.
“Yeah, it was literally like that, and then — I don’t know man, I’m sure there’s dates on the internet, but a couple months later she was on the High School High soundtrack doing a duet with D’Angelo [“Your Precious Love,” originally recorded by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell].
“Then obviously some people around here got to do production with them, including Ty Macklin had a song on there.”
Yeah, yeah.
“Then I remember very, very vividly — hell, I don’t know it may have even been the same night, dude — but I can remember being in the parking lot of SOA, and Kasaan [the Don from Mad Flava] playing a cassette of Jah’s beat for ‘On & On,’ and at the time it was just like a stick beat and the chopped-up piano parts. When you hear the version it’s got like these, all this added extra instrumentation, and it’s very lush sounding. I can’t remember who co-produced it — might have been Bob Power. I don’t remember. But I remember hearing Jah’s original beat when it was chopped-up piano and a stick drum thing in the parking lot of SOA. And Kasaan was walking around with a tape of all of Jah’s beats, because I think dude, Jah was like 17 or 18 then. He was really young.
“So he was tied in with all the guys that ran Exodus. He was the high-school kid that was hanging out at Exodus when Exodus was still a thing. He’d been around, he was just real young, man.
“Definitely ask him about that, and definitely ask Rob about the D’Angelo show. That was my memory of it. I remember I didn’t know that she was opening that night, and when I went out there I was like, ‘Oh, cool! Wow! That’s great gig for her. That’s awesome.’ Then a month later, dude, it’s on. She’s being whisked away to New York.”
So, what was it like when Badu was hit it big?
“Man, it was really insane because she wasn’t getting any play here. It was like you could see the video for ‘On & On’ on MTV or BET and it wasn’t getting radio play here. Eventually they started playing some of the stuff, but she blew up—I want to say she hit big in Atlanta first, if I remember correctly.”
Yeah.
“But it was real frustrating that if you wanted see her it going to be on MTV or BET, they weren’t playing her here. Oh, they were playing her on KNON, I mean obviously they were going to support. But, K104 was still a really big deal back then, and that was that time period — I’m pretty sure you wrote an article about, a long time ago, about the frustrations of trying to get on.
“So that was part of it. Dallas was the last one to get onboard the Badu train. But it was really exciting, man. It was — you just kind of felt like it was going to pump life … As you know we’d had our little ups and downs where something would happen and you’d think it’s gonna break, and I think people were kind of depressed about the way the whole Mad Flava thing went down. It was just a real nice boost for everybody when that thing happened.
“One of the things that’s real cool is when she had her platinum party, platinum disc party, they had it in Deep Ellum, and the whole scene was there just all happy for her. There was no — I think part of it is probably because she hadn’t been in the scene rapping against people, you know. I think everyone was just genuinely happy for her. No one was bitter, nobody was jealous, none of that. It just felt really special. And everyone was happy that Ty Macklin, you know, had a song on a record that went platinum. It was just really good thoughts.”
Weren’t you one of the founding members of the Cannabinoids?
“I was, and that was a little bit out of left field, and a huge honor. I was really shocked that she asked me, man. It made me feel really, really good. That was incredible. I didn’t know what to do with myself, to be honest.”
Had you been in touch with her at all?
“Not really. It was, you know, you would see her at gigs or whatever, and she was nice and friendly and things, but I wasn’t in her inner circle or anything like that.”
Sure.
“So, I think her vision for that was that was going to be her version of Sa-Ra, and I think what she wanted was, she wanted to get that thing up and going and then it become a life of its own. I don’t think she had long-term visions of, ‘Hey, this my group and I’m always going to be with this group.’ I think that was her way to give back to the Dallas hip-hop scene.
“She had donated money to [EZ] Eddie [D]’s show. She was proud of being from here, and that was just another way to give back to people. So, it’s kind of funny, man, when that thing went on, when that first thing started I had about a hour conversation with her on the phone. We did the opening night at the House of Blues, the first time it ever opened, and then I think — I can’t remember why, I might have written up something for — oh, my god I’m blanking on the name of that Belo paper I was writing for.”
Quick.
“Yes, I think it was something for Quick, but anyway I did an hour interview with her. And she pretty much laid it all out what she kind of wanted to do and what the vision was. She’s obviously notorious for — god, I couldn’t even tell you how much unreleased stuff she has. I mean it goes on and on. I’m not doing a pun here, it goes on and on and on. I think it was a great vision, I think it was really cool thing.
“Also, for me, I pulled out of it after about six or seven months just because it just didn’t fit my lifestyle anymore. I had a 3-year-old and a 1-year-old, and I was getting into radio full-time. That was just starring to take off, and I just didn’t really have available time to go to rehearsal space for four or five hours and not know what we were going to do. Basically I was becoming an old man. So, it was really nice. I ended up doing two or three shows with them, and then I said, ‘Hey, it’s probably best for me to step aside.’ But it was a great honor, dude. I just can’t tell you how good it makes me feel that she thought enough of me to involve me in it.”
What’s she like to work with? I mean, is she collaborative, does she have vision, does she have a little bit of both?
“Okay, so the only times I’ve worked with her was in these sessions for the Cannabinoids. I never recorded with her before that or anything like that. But she’s like, my impression of her, and obviously I think Jah, Rob, and RC would give you way better answers, but my impression of her is she’s looking for a spark. So when we would do some of those rehearsal sessions, whoever got there early, it was like ‘Alright, well, instead of just waiting around let’s just do stuff.’ So those early sessions was lot of like, ‘What do you think of this?’ Then someone would play a beat or whatever and someone would kind of start going on top of it. So when she would come in during those sessions, by the time she’d get in, we’d been doing stuff for four or five hours, and so it’s kind of like walk in and just sort of like, so what am I soaking up here, what am I vibing off of?
“I don’t know how different it was from the way she would work with other producers and stuff. But I think she wanted us to come up with stuff and then she would vibe with it.”
Gotcha.
“I don’t know that I think she had a distinct vision for what it would be. She had an idea of what the concept was. The concept was it was going to be collaborative hip-hop — with you know turntablists and keyboard players and beat makers and things like that — and then: Hey, creative people where do we take this thing?
“I don’t know how that compares to her work on any of her other records, but she was sort of like, “Alright, here’s the spark. Where’s this thing going to go, who’s going to grab this?’ And so it’s cool in that regard. It was, I think it was like, honestly I can’t remember it might have been 10 or 11 of us, but I was like, ‘Okay, who’s got this? You start.’ We did settle into that, too, by the way. Where it’d be like, ‘Okay, Jah, you start this.’ And he’d come in with the beat and then, ‘Alright, you’re next.’ We kind of developed a little groove that way. It was really cool.”
That’s cool. Did you ever think she would, after Baduizm started to blow up and she started to get bigger, did you ever think that she would just go away? Move up permanently to New York or LA or something, like generally what people do?
“Honestly, I never gave it any kind of thought. I never really thought about that. I just knew that she was so prideful. So ‘Southern Gul,’ did that come out—that came out after her second album, right? That was a single thing? So, she was always real prideful of being from down here. And I think, too, if you listen to Worldwide Underground, there was like a—you know because what happened was, she also really started to reject the idea of ‘neo-soul’ as a term. She hated that term.”
Right.
“I can remember talking to her specifically and she was repulsed by that term. I think she didn’t—she obviously liked all the Okayplayer kind of folks, and vibed with them, and they were kindred spirits. I think my perception of Worldwide Underground is that that’s a real deliberate move to go, Hey, down in the South we like the sound of the 808 bass and we like that sound of this electronic cowbell, and this is us, and this represents us. Even if she’s doing something with Rahzel, she’s gonna bring this Southern element to it.
“I don’t know that I ever thought that she would leave or not leave, or whatever. I just thought that this was in her DNA. And that even if she was in other places she represented here really well. Which is why I think she did the Cannabinoids and things like that. She’s proud of who she is and where she’s from, and we all cherish that because it’s just a good representation of us.”
