BADU: Adding Personal Touch : Erykah Badu, the Mix Mistress

WEST HOLLYWOOD —  Singer Erykah Badu walks onto the stage at Billboard Live wearing a form-fitting dress made of a motley assortment of raglike materials--patches of brown, purple velvet, a pattern of orange and white diamonds.

The dress is symbolic. In her music, Badu takes patches of musical eras, mixes them together and wears them with attitude. “I’m a recycler,” she later explains. “I take other people’s trash and make it art.”

When the elegant, regal performer begins to sing her hit single “On & On” in a voice that resembles Billie Holiday’s, the crowd roars in recognition. Besides Holiday, her songs reflect elements of everything from the jazz scatting of Sarah Vaughan to the funk bravado of Chaka Khan. But her own touches make for a distinctive style. She doesn’t sound like anyone’s rehash.

That versatility is what makes her debut album, “Baduizm,” such an appealing work. And record buyers, primed by the widespread airplay of “On & On,” responded--the collection entered the national album chart last week at No. 2.

Badu, though, views her music more in cosmic than commercial terms.

“That’s why my music is so powerful, because I allow the rhythm of existence to run through me,” she explains in a sultry whisper. “I can touch it and I’m a part of it. I don’t subtract myself from the rhythm of it.”

Badu, 25, is sipping herbal tea in a hotel room. The air is scented by incense and candles. “I create my own calm anywhere I go, my own comfort zone,” she says about the candles, which she also lights on stage.

“I’m very nervous when I perform, and it doesn’t matter how long it takes, or how crazy it looks, I don’t sing until my candle is lit.”

Badu was born Erica Wright and grew up in rough surroundings in South Dallas. (She later changed her first-name spelling; Badu is an adopted Islamic name that means “giver of light.”) Her family never had much money, but music and a strong sense of self-worth gave her everything she really needed.

“I just felt protected,” she says. “My parents always told me I was the best. Not just good, but the best. I’ve danced since I was 4, I’ve been singing for as long as I can remember, and I’ve been drawing since I could clutch a crayon. You could say my religion was art, because I do my best work, the creator’s work, through art.”

The oldest daughter of an actress, Badu performed at the Dallas Theatre Center as a child, and later studied dance at the city’s Arts Magnet High School. She majored in theater at Grambling State University in Louisiana. Singing was always one of her talents, but her teachers asked her to give it up to focus on one discipline.

“I wanted to do it all,” she says. “They said, ‘You can’t do everything.’ Now what would have happened to me if I listened to that?”

In 1995, music executive Kedar Massenberg, who discovered and at one time managed the contemporary soul singer D’Angelo, heard a demo tape Badu had made and signed her to his label, the fledgling Kedar Entertainment, which is distributed by Universal Records.

“Her presence was totally different,” Massenberg remembers. “Her vibe was strictly cultural. And her music went back to the essence--real music. It’s totally opposite of what Toni Braxton and Mary J. Blige are. Erykah’s a young Josephine Baker, a young Eartha Kitt.”

“Baduizm” is a reflection of her influences, but is by no means a regurgitation. It displays not only a vocal sophistication well beyond her years, but also a social consciousness that’s reminiscent of Bob Marley or Nina Simone. (Badu wrote all the album’s lyrics, collaborating on the music with a variety of producers.)

Take the song “Certainly.” At first, the slow, jazzy ballad seems to be the bluesy lament of a woman wronged by a controlling lover:

Who gave you permission to rearrange me?

Certainly not me.

Who told you it was all right to love me?

Certainly not me.

But there are deeper meanings.

“ ‘Certainly’ sounds like a love affair, but it is actually about the relationship between America and African Americans,” Badu explains. Her sleepy eyes suddenly possess a cold, angry glint.

“When I talked about being ‘slipped a mickey,’ I was talking about the ‘mickey’ that was slipped around our necks, the noose, the ‘mickey’ that was put on our legs, the shackles, the ‘mickey’ that was put on our brains, the lies. [African Americans] are of no relation to America--we’re in a relationship. It’s a love affair of sorts, ‘cause we got over here and fell in love with this [expletive].”

The video for “On & On” follows a tattered Badu as she tries desperately to ready the house she has to clean, the kids whose hair she has to braid and the animals whose pens she has to tend--all while she sings her song, hoping to sneak away to a juke joint later that night to perform it.

When her evening gown becomes stained in the process, she doesn’t despair; instead, she turns a couch spread into a matching dress and head-wrap.

“That video is about a woman who has to do a lot of things in a short period of time, and no matter the obstacle, she was never discouraged. She got to the people, and that’s what my purpose is,” she says with a wide smile.

“I will still get to the people, no matter what they put in front of me. Ain’t nothing that can stand in my way.”