How Erica Wright rewrote her name and led neo soul

Erykah Badu began by editing her own name. Born Erica Abi Wright in Dallas, she decided as a young woman to change the spelling to Erykah, because she felt her original name was a “slave name”, and the “kah” stands for the inner self. The surname came from her favourite jazz scat sound. It is a good clue to how she would work: nothing about her career was accepted as inherited.

She grew up performing. Raised by her mother, an actress, she was singing and dancing by four, took the stage at the Dallas Theater Center and was freestyling on a local radio station by fourteen. After studying theatre at Grambling State University, she left in 1993 to focus on music. Opening a show for D’Angelo in Fort Worth in 1994 led to a deal with Kedar Massenburg, and she moved to Brooklyn the following year to finish her first album.

That album, Baduizm, arrived in February 1997 and placed her at the front of the neo soul movement, earning her the nickname “Queen of Neo Soul”. It went triple platinum and produced “On & On”. Her live album, with “Tyrone”, went double platinum the same year. Mama’s Gun followed in 2000 with “Bag Lady”, her first top-ten single on the Billboard Hot 100, and “Didn’t Cha Know?”, then Worldwide Underground in 2003 and the two New Amerykah albums in 2008 and 2010. The video for “Window Seat” sparked controversy.

Critics compared her voice to Billie Holiday, and early in her career she was known for large, colourful headwraps. She was a core member of the Soulquarians, and she has acted in films including Blues Brothers 2000 and The Cider House Rules. What lasts is the mixture she helped make mainstream: R&B, soul and hip-hop, delivered in a voice that sounds unhurried, conversational and entirely her own.