Top 221 Quotes & Sayings by Erykah Badu - Page 3

I lived in New York for maybe a year and a half, from '95 to '97, but I live in Dallas. My whole family is there.

Whenever I think about funk music, it has a look - and that's how it sounds.

Some people come up and ask for an autograph and don't even look at me. They're like, 'Here, do it.' That don't bother me, but it doesn't open my heart.

I go through phases of stuff.

André and I are still best of friends, always have been and always will be. When our 18-year-old son, Seven, started high school, we both agreed to be in the same city, so André is in Dallas all the time, and we're always all together doing something.

I love watching Rihanna in fashion. I like to see her take chances and risks. I like seeing Naomi Campbell in the forefront. They're both women who stand out and use their bodies as canvases to introduce this functional art to the world. They carry it in a way that is very inspiring.

When people are going on to the next plateau of whatever this thing is called life, I also want them to breathe easily, even if it's the last one they take here with us. I guess I'm the welcoming committee and ushering committee.

I mean thats a big part of our existence here on earth, the personal relationship we have with the person that we love, with the person that we make love to, with the person that we share our lives with. We expect a lot of things back from our loved one, and the lesson is to accept and not expect.

My style is a little masculine, and what I loved about Pyer Moss was how well he can make a blazer, the looseness of those pants, or color palette that he chooses from season to season.

I'm not trying to win an award for being the best vegetarian, just want to be healthy.

My girls are very fashionable. They have a very good eye for marrying style and fashion.

My fourth mother, my godmother, she passed away a couple years ago - her name was Gwen. She was the theater director over at the gym where I grew up and learned about all those awesome things I told you about already. She was the one who taught me terms like "upstage" and "downstage," all those technical things about the art of what I do - how to breathe what I see, how to move. They were all her tactics, not anything learned or given to me through a theory, but rather by her natural abilities.

I really enjoy being the child's 'welcoming committee' and to help someone usher his or her spirit into the world in a very peaceful way is very effortless to me.

My third mother is my paternal grandmother. Her name is Viola. She gave me my sense of knowing why, or knowing why it was important to ask why. She made me understand that I don't have to believe everything I hear.

It's just that little box in the middle of Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Most of the time I go I don't even leave that apartment. I have just enough: a little bed, a little kitchen with two pots. I make some tea and I look out the window or just lay down.

I trust the political system to be what it is. It's a structure to keep the country running, a boat to get us [citizens] from one side to the other, and it has the country's best interests at heart. Not the people's.

People are uncomfortable with sexuality that’s not for male consumption.

I have so much music that I do. Just like how a visual artist is always sketching something but they might not share it, I'm always writing songs or coming up with melodic lines on piano or guitar. It's therapy. It's always happening.

I have an apartment in Brooklyn - I guess I call it my shrine. I go there to create and recoup, or hibernate sometimes, but my home is in Dallas where I live with my children.

I'm learning from them! Everyone says that, but it's true. You learn more about yourself from them than from any other lesson.

A home birth is about being able to create exactly what you want, because it's such a violent moment inside of the body that you want everything else to be as beautiful as it can be.

Things are useless without practice.

I had the opportunity, as a child, to grow up in a community center where I was exposed to theater, music, art, and computer science; things that I would have never had the opportunity to even meet had it not been for those people taking time out of their schedules, helping us as children to travel all over the world while sitting in a gymnasium. That's what I did before I was a musician, before I was a recording artist, I was a teacher and a community leader.

I grew up listening to old soul

We were all born, and we all came to the music business with everything we had. Some of us just don't get a chance. Now there's a lot of other people like myself, indeed, who are getting heard worldwide. That gives other artists a chance.

I got a call from a mutual friend of ours, Charles King, who's also the executive producer. [Steven Caple Jr and I] had a conversation about it. I read it. We kind of finished each other's sentences when it came to the nuances and personality flaws that the character had, and some stereotypes and things we were trying to stay away from. We agreed on that as well. He just kind of allowed me to run rampant with the ideas. As we paced ourselves through, we developed Turquoise.

People who say that music is dead or hip-hop is dead are refusing to evolve.

I'm pretty mutable as a human being.

I take the same approach in all genres of art, across the board. It's intuitive.

My mom was the Diana Ross of our clan. She was always up-to-date, and always knew what to do and what not to do in a fashion sense.

Hip-Hop is bigger than the government.

I'm not trying to win an award for being the best vegetarian, just want to be healthy. Take a salt bath. Do things that my parents were never able to do. I'm blessed to do anything I want so I decide to take the best care of my body and my family in the same way. Holistically. Vitally.

If you want to relate to a certain audience or generation, you have to speak their language. I truly believe that.

We mainly focus on putting music, art, dance, theater, all forms of art, back into the community, so the community can put it into the world.

I don't think it matters what school you go to, but I think it's important for parents to be involved. And to know that when school stops, learning continues, and to continue teaching at home.

I have an organization called BLIND [Beautiful Love Incorporated Nonprofit Development], so named because even though my interest is in the black community, because that's where I grew up and that's where I'm most skilled in fixing things, it doesn't end there.

I bring the staple of my culture.

It's weird, but if I decide to do an album, then the ideas start fitting themselves together. I consider myself a nice, slow burn. Plus, it's not a race. And I have a lot to share.

I remember when I signed with Kedar Entertainment through Universal Records. It was my first record deal and it's the one I still have now. At that time, there had been a couple of opportunities I was almost given, but at the last minute the giver came back and told me it couldn't happen.

I'll dabble here and there in different forms of the art, but the label has me locked down like a slave so, of course, I'll be doing albums during this time

My favorite jewelry, it's just what I'm feeling at the time.

All the women in my family were very creative.

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

He definitely does what a partner is supposed to do, that is, evolve you.

I don't know... I've been doing it for 17 years now, so of course I've seen pictures and thought, "Oh my god, I wish I would've never worn that." Yeah, but I did! And it was probably because it was my favorite thing at the time - my clothes always have some kind of emotion attached to them.

My second mother is my maternal grandmother. Her name is Thelma. She also gave me a very powerful medicine; she made sure that I knew my role as a young lady and as someone with moral structures and principles. She taught me that if I was going to be involved with anything, whether it be spirituality, music, or some skill, that I have to practice.

All I want to do is give the world my heart... Record label tryina make me compromise my art.

I have a daughter who's four, who's dainty and princess-esque. I still get to dress her like my little accessory. I think I have one more year to do that, then she's going to get her own ideas - so I better move quickly!

What I like about houses like Givenchy. It's easy to pull from. With Givenchy you can accessorize to build anything, any look.

...When it come to da: " What it do?! I don't fall for da: "Woop- TeE- WoOoo!

Now my record deal helps me to do things for free or give more time to my community than I could otherwise.

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

I have a Pinterest, and if you look there you'll see the things I really like and adore, have crushes on, and there's a lot of stuff from Riccardo's [Tisci] line on there.

I have a pair of blue pants that were my favorite for a while and were a part of my show uniform - every night, you know.

I relate to that - he inspires me across the board. His music inspires me and reminds me to maintain honesty in the things that I do, to have an absence of fear. Listening to Earl Sweatshirt's music is like therapy to me.

The reason why you don't see people looking like me is because I don't encourage that. I encourage you to be you.

Breathing becomes really easy when you're laughing. It kick starts that feeling of joy.

The girls just like to be in the shoes. They like to scuff up the floors and walk around in high-heeled shoes that are too big for them, all over the house.

During childbirth and hospice I'll sing gospel songs that my grandma taught me when I was younger, or something I've made up, or I'll hum. I just play things that I think the audience will like.

I don't want to think too much about how I'm carving and what I'm carving - you are just carving away the excess clay and there's a piece underneath there. And it's kind of like getting out of the way. Maybe that's what the commonality is: It's getting out of the way so that the art can speak.