Quotes By Erykah Badu

I'm kind of a recluse when it comes to going outside.

But now I realize that this record business really needs me. No one else is trying to take a chance or do something different.

What makes me furious, not just because we're in an interview, but I don't like when writers take your words and put them somewhere else, in the wrong context in their own article about you.

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

What I work hard at doing is staying on a path of being kind and showing and proving that I'm a good person to society. That's hard. The talent, that's a gift. I just came here like that.

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.

I love putting the music together. It's like art.

I grew up listening to old soul.

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.

Honey isn't really that good for you.

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.

From then on, I realized this is what I want to do, what I'm supposed to do: Giving energy and receiving it back through applause. I love it. That's my world. I love it. I enjoy it. I live for it.

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 love to leave the interpretation of my music up to the listener. It's fun to see what they'll say it is.

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.

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

I've had two children. I've had three boyfriends. I've had a lot of things happen that can change your opinions and values and philosophies.

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.

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.

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.

Music and the music business are two different things.

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

Anything that had to do with art I been doing all my life. It was a gift. It's nothing I work real hard at doing.

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

I don't feel like I need to preach to the world or nothing like that. I just feel like I share what I say, and if listeners get it, they get it. And I never underestimate the audience's ability to feel me.

I knew it would happen. I knew I'd be No. 1. I'm a new artist; I don't know the rules. Nobody told me it wouldn't happen.

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

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

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

I'm a performance artist first; I'm a recording artist second.