Quotes By Erykah Badu

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

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.

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

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

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

Artists need some kind of stimulating experience a lot of times, which crystallizes when you sing about it or paint it or sculpt it. You literally mold the experience the way you want. It's therapy.

It's almost like a lot of black people in America, a lot of young black men, are born with this cloud over their heads. It's their penitentiary cloud, this philosophy we all have, that it's harder for us.

I'm a woman who has gone through many heartaches, enough to dedicate my whole life to trying to figure them out.

When you're in a relationship you want it to work. My parents did, I did. But we are not taught how to make it work.

The music business is motivated by money. Music is motivated by energy and feelings.

The kind of music or the kind of arrangements that I do, the kind of musicians I choose, is just what I like to hear.

I'm free. I just do what I want, say what I want, say how I feel, and I don't try to hurt nobody. I just try to make sure that I don't compromise my art in any kind of way, and I think people respect that.