Patrick Griffiths
Erykah Badu @ Somerset House
It was 3am when I finally made it to bed, the lingering whiff of pickled egg attached to the ceiling of my mouth like Artex.
The tube was held at West Kensington for over an hour thanks to a lady caught in between a train and the tracks at the next station. Apparently she was intoxicated, no doubt from a Saturday night of extreme frivolity. Maybe she'd been to the Erykah Badu concert.
Rich was just as excited about it, even as high on it, as I was. To avoid bursting, we hunted around, and found, a few later-license pubs so that we could grab just a little extra time to talk at each other about what we'd just experienced, and a pickled egg, which I pretended to dislike eating.
When she came on stage the crowd roared, but I wasn't even sure it was her. From the infamous high-rise hair wrap to the bald head to the afro, the mad mohican was quite a surprise. She looked cool though. That wasn't a surprise.
I thought it would be a mellow, down-tempo affair. Something similar to the Jools Holland performance many moons ago when, accompanied by candles, she shyly hid behind the microphone stand as the soul oozed out of her. But this was very different – this was funk from the first second, to the last – the best part of two hours later.
It didn't seem like much of her catalogue was covered – On & On, Puff, Bag Lady, Tyrone, but each one was stretched, needed, and rolled as the very special, unique woman played with the music (literally at times, surrounded by a number of musical toys), infusing it with some kind of intoxicating Baduist magic. The crowd was in love.
New songs invoked an itchy impatience for a new album, which surely has a grand potential to be something of a classic.
Covers were few, but the medley of "waaaay-back, waaaay-back" classic hip-hop raps that opened the encore were as cool as you could imagine. It's difficult not to prolifically associate the word "cool" with every aspect of the performance, because it exuded cool. In spades.
It was as if it was a one-off special event, so intense was the passion and energy pumped into the show. I was blown away. It was the greatest gig I've experienced. And more.
Erykah Badu @ Somerset House
It was 3am when I finally made it to bed, the lingering whiff of pickled egg attached to the ceiling of my mouth like Artex.
The tube was held at West Kensington for over an hour thanks to a lady caught in between a train and the tracks at the next station. Apparently she was intoxicated, no doubt from a Saturday night of extreme frivolity. Maybe she'd been to the Erykah Badu concert.
Rich was just as excited about it, even as high on it, as I was. To avoid bursting, we hunted around, and found, a few later-license pubs so that we could grab just a little extra time to talk at each other about what we'd just experienced, and a pickled egg, which I pretended to dislike eating.
When she came on stage the crowd roared, but I wasn't even sure it was her. From the infamous high-rise hair wrap to the bald head to the afro, the mad mohican was quite a surprise. She looked cool though. That wasn't a surprise.
I thought it would be a mellow, down-tempo affair. Something similar to the Jools Holland performance many moons ago when, accompanied by candles, she shyly hid behind the microphone stand as the soul oozed out of her. But this was very different – this was funk from the first second, to the last – the best part of two hours later.
It didn't seem like much of her catalogue was covered – On & On, Puff, Bag Lady, Tyrone, but each one was stretched, needed, and rolled as the very special, unique woman played with the music (literally at times, surrounded by a number of musical toys), infusing it with some kind of intoxicating Baduist magic. The crowd was in love.
New songs invoked an itchy impatience for a new album, which surely has a grand potential to be something of a classic.
Covers were few, but the medley of "waaaay-back, waaaay-back" classic hip-hop raps that opened the encore were as cool as you could imagine. It's difficult not to prolifically associate the word "cool" with every aspect of the performance, because it exuded cool. In spades.
It was as if it was a one-off special event, so intense was the passion and energy pumped into the show. I was blown away. It was the greatest gig I've experienced. And more.