110+ Erykah Badu Quotes On Queens, Soulful And Eccentric

Erykah Badu is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and actress. She is noted for her role in the rise of the neo soul sub-genre, and for her eccentric, cerebral musical stylings and sense of fashion. She is best known for her singles "On & On", "Appletree" and "Tyrone". Following is our collection on famous quotes by Erykah Badu on life, queens, soulful.

Top 10 Erykah Badu Quotes

1. I'm a recovering undercover over-lover.
2. Peace and Blessings manifest with every lesson learned. If your knowledge were your wealth then it would be well earned.
3. I think a lot of people have lost respect for the individual, you know, the individual, the person who doesn't conform.
4. So the most natural thing to me is to stay as pure to or real to or close to who I am as possible.
5. I grew up with all mothers, all women. I come from a long line of matriarchs, very strong women.
6. Vegan food is soul food in its truest form. Soul food means to feed the soul. And, to me, your soul is your intent. If your intent is pure, you are pure.
7. I encourage breaking free of self inflicted holding pens. I encourage the use of intelligence in every decision. I encourage creating.
8. 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.
9. You don't have to believe everything you think.
10. That's the moment I learned that the more you believe in yourself, the stronger the vibration touches someone else, and things begin to happen the way you dreamed that they would.

Erykah Badu Short Quotes

• I'm not satisfied with the explanations I get from tv or from school.
• I'm more like an oven than a microwave.
• Honey isn't really that good for you.
• I'm pretty mutable as a human being, period - if you put me on Pluto, I can figure it out.
• I think [ fashion philosophy] it's about your smile and your smell.
• I come from a long line of matriarchal women, and my greatest teachers were my mothers.
• I'm just being who I am and expressing myself as everyone else does.
• All I want to do is give the world my heart... Record label tryina make me compromise my art.
• Man, I don't want to have nothing to do with computers. I don't want the government in my business.
• He definitely does what a partner is supposed to do, that is, evolve you.

Erykah Badu Quotes About Life

What does music mean to me? I don't think I would really be much without it, without it coming through me. It's my means of communication, my means of growth, my means of transportation from one point in my life to another. — Erykah Badu

My work as a doula also extends all the way to the end of life. I sit at the bedsides of people who are passing on in hospices or nursing homes, for the people and families who want that kind of thing. — Erykah Badu

We lock ourselves into our own philosophies, our own religions, our own walks of life, and if we fail, we condemn ourselves and then we get sick. — Erykah Badu

I am not systematic at all when it comes to religion. I just love life. And I'm not judgmental. And I'm a vegetarian. — Erykah Badu

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. — Erykah Badu

The Man That Knowz Something Knowz That He Knowz Nothing At All. — Erykah Badu

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

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. — Erykah Badu

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. — Erykah Badu

Erykah Badu Quotes About Music

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

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. — Erykah Badu

What singing means to me, I never did consider myself a singer, I just let people watch me feel music and how it comes through me. I've worked on it and practiced a lot. I mean, music, I dance to it, and singing is just one way of getting it out of me. — Erykah Badu

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

I consider my musical ability to be a gift from the Creator. It's not that I try to work hard or nothing like that, it's a gift, it was given to me, and I appreciate it. — Erykah Badu

Hip-hop is not something we do, it's something we live. It's the way we dress, the way we talk... everybody bobbing to the same beat. It's a culture, and you have to find your own place in that culture. Top 10 or Top 40 can't dictate that. They can only dictate what's marketable. — Erykah Badu

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

Music and the music business are two different things. — Erykah Badu

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. — Erykah Badu

In music, it makes for a good platform to take time and really mold a piece the way I need to mold it. When it comes to fashion, I create a functional art that moves. — Erykah Badu

Erykah Badu Quotes About People

I strongly believe that the more positive my vibration is, the clearer my message will be. I keep my negative thoughts from infiltrating my pathway and my dreams. Other people's thoughts are none of my business. — Erykah Badu

I have advice for people - period - who are in unhealthy relationships: Follow your heart. It will get you to where you need to be. Sometimes it's hard, sometimes it's easy, the places that your heart takes you. But continue to follow it. Where the train leads you - you'll get there. — Erykah Badu

A lot of people have dementia, which is great, because then they don't recognize me. — Erykah Badu

My paternal grandmother gave me the courage to investigate things and not take things at face value or judge people by what I first imagine them to be. — Erykah Badu

[The Land] is a film that just happens to be directed and written by a Puerto Rican guy with a black dad. It seemed like a very natural, human interaction between people who all just came from one common cesspool of bad luck. — Erykah Badu

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. — Erykah Badu

I don't plan how many people I work with. I don't charge anything. It's for my own learning, and I just enjoy being the welcoming committee. I became a doula by default. — Erykah Badu

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. — Erykah Badu

I think what makes people think that is because of things people write. It really doesn't have anything to do with the artist. — Erykah Badu

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. — Erykah Badu

Erykah Badu Quotes About Kind

I'm a Pisces, so I'm a very closed-book kind of person. — Erykah Badu

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. — Erykah Badu

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

I was the bohemian in my family, the "this is my favorite shoe and I don't care if it has tape around it" kind of person. The tape could become a fashion statement. Or a political statement. — Erykah Badu

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. — Erykah Badu

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. — Erykah Badu

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. — Erykah Badu

There are millions and billions of atoms of memory of all kinds of musical themes in me. — Erykah Badu

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. — Erykah Badu

Erykah Badu Quotes About Feel

I don't know why, it's just what I feel inside, the thoughts that I sing about. It's just my truth. Sometimes my emotions can be mistaken for messages. — Erykah Badu

I really can't say what inspires me the most, because I'm inspired by just about everything. My feelings and relationships, my family, Scooby-Doo. Opinion of my work. Everything. Not just one thing. — Erykah Badu

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. — Erykah Badu

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. — Erykah Badu

Be you. Make sure you're saying something when you're saying something. It's important to sound like you, to feel like you, to be like you. Be you. — Erykah Badu

I'm a complete human being. I'm very emotional and loving. I feel, I hurt, I give, I take, and also I think. I analyze. I'm a sociologist, anthropologist. — Erykah Badu

Hip-hop was created out of necessity. We needed to create some digitized things to help us understand what we were feeling. — Erykah Badu

They play it safe, are quick to assassinate what they do not understand. They move in packs, ingesting more and more fear with every act of hate on one another. — Erykah Badu

I know the community mostly for its art and culture... and of course its food, I eat at their restaurants." "They make you feel like taking off your shoes... it feels like home. — Erykah Badu

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

Erykah Badu Quotes About Work

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. — Erykah Badu

Different periods, different cultures - it's just the way my mind works. My music is that way as well. There's a foundation but the inspiration comes from everywhere. I've been influenced by so many things. — Erykah Badu

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. — Erykah Badu

[Riccardo Tisci ] has an interesting approach to weaving the contemporary with the couture, and blending tribes and collections. It always seems to work. — Erykah Badu

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. — Erykah Badu

It just works better for me to discriminate between which thoughts are mine and which come from elsewhere, before I even talk about them or express them - it helps to keep me focused on my path. — Erykah Badu

Through [my children] patience, they're showing me how much they support what's going on, because I'm having to do a lot of work right now. — Erykah Badu

Erykah Badu Famous Quotes And Sayings

Society has a problem with female nudity when it is not . . . ”—Badu pauses to get her words together; she wants this point to be very clear—“. . . when it is not packaged for the consumption of male entertainment. Then it becomes confusing. — Erykah Badu

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. — Erykah Badu

My eyes are green, Cause I eat a lot of vegetables, It don't have nothing to do with your new friend — Erykah Badu

My fifth mother is Mother Nature - the things I had to learn on my own, the understanding I had to come to and still have to come to as a young woman, as a responsible mother, a responsible granddaughter and child. She teaches me willpower, honesty, and the things we need to heal ourselves from moment to moment. — Erykah Badu

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. — Erykah Badu

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. — Erykah Badu

Im a hip-hopper, and its something you live and do. It makes me angry that were misrepresented, that were being killed every day by one another, by the government, by the food we eat, the choices we make. It makes me angry because it doesnt have to be that way and it is. — Erykah Badu

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. — Erykah Badu

Marvin Gaye is one of my favorite revolutionaries. He spoke from his heart, his mind. That's what I want to do. — Erykah Badu

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

Because you're responsible for [children]. You are there to protect them, not possess them. I tell them, "Watch me and you might learn something." — Erykah Badu

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. — Erykah Badu

When it comes to fashion or any high art, you have to have a combination of delicacy, along with taste. — Erykah Badu

I don't have any particular thing I do ritualistically. I do the same thing every day. I get up. Drink a lot of water. Have a wheatgrass shot. Drink some green juice. Eat as healthy as I can. — Erykah Badu

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

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! — Erykah Badu

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. — Erykah Badu

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

The wise healer endures the pain. Cry. Tears bring joy. — Erykah Badu

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. — Erykah Badu

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. — Erykah Badu

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. — Erykah Badu

The metal or the stone that's helping me .I'll incorporate them into anything I wear - but I think it's about accessories more than anything, because it's how you accessorize yourself that gives you your own unique style. — Erykah Badu

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. — Erykah Badu

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. — Erykah Badu

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

I grew up listening to old soul. — Erykah Badu

My hair is an aesthetic choice… At the same time, how you wear your hair is a political statement as well. — Erykah Badu

I'm a performance artist first; I'm a recording artist second. — Erykah Badu

All of my children are the same way I am. They're little artists too, in their own ways. — Erykah Badu

I thought the Billie Holiday comparison was beautiful. I think, Wow, what a wonderful, creative, helpful spirit. She's someone who wanted to help others by sharing her emotion. That's what I do, too, so I think that's a great comparison. — Erykah Badu

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

Don't let anybody infiltrate your dream — Erykah Badu

I don't read music or anything, so when I produce, I go basically by ear. — Erykah Badu

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

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

Time to eliminate things that no longer evolve me. — Erykah Badu

I love being an entertainer - not really fond of being a celebrity. — Erykah Badu

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. — Erykah Badu

I'm only in competition with my last level. — Erykah Badu

I just love expressing my joy and my mind through what I wear, or how I cook, or how I dance, or how I write or perform a song - how I move. — Erykah Badu

No one chooses to raise children alone. — Erykah Badu

I imagine that when I am creating a song or a project or an album or putting some clothing together or cooking a meal, whatever it is, I don't really have a recipe. The fun part is to throw that big piece of clay in the middle of the table as hard as I can, and whatever shape it takes, that's what shape it takes, and then I start to carve away. — Erykah Badu

I don't require sex for happiness - I need companionship. I need a partner I can depend on, that I can love and grow with. — Erykah Badu

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. — Erykah Badu

We as Black people have to tell our own stories. We have to document our history. When we allow someone else to document our history the history becomes twisted and we get written out. We get our noses blown off. — Erykah Badu

What draws me to a project is how sympathetic I am toward it, so that I can relax into it and give up myself. — Erykah Badu

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. — Erykah Badu

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

I know that I want to concentrate more on my inside-pretty than my outside-pretty, because thats gonna go away. But if your inside is beautiful, it never wears away. The light always shows on the outside if you are striving to be good inside. — Erykah Badu

I actually started writing it because I was inspired by my own personal growth. — Erykah Badu

I'm inspired by Earl Sweatshirt. He's a really honest writer, and he's unusually intelligent. — Erykah Badu

I live in a queendom, ruled by a womb-iverse. — Erykah Badu

I was born to make mistakes, I ain't scared to take the weight. — Erykah Badu

They usually have a piano in every nursing home, and I always wanted to perform for whoever would listen when I learned something. I grew to understand very early that a lot of these people who are in nursing homes are elderly and don't have a lot of things that give them joy from day to day. — Erykah Badu

I think that when Riccardo Tisci wanted to bring more attention to the lack of African American presence on the runway, he also wanted to bring attention to the lack of a sensibility of African and Asian art. — Erykah Badu

Life Lessons by Erykah Badu

1. Erykah Badu teaches us to be true to ourselves, to be unapologetic in our expression of identity, and to use our art to create a better world.
2. She encourages us to value our own unique perspectives and to use our talents to create something meaningful.
3. Badu's work emphasizes the importance of self-love and resilience, reminding us to stay true to our values and beliefs no matter what.