One obvious example: Though the singer has consistently expressed a distaste for politics, the first New Amerykah is an explicitly political album. Her relative disinterest is part of her consistent pattern of inconsistency (something she might attribute to her slippery astrological sign, the dual-natured Pisces). That the artist who pushed woke back into circulation could ignore and even violate the codes of conduct that have emerged around the term speaks to Badu’s iconoclasm: Though she’s long been a charismatic role model, she’s too unpredictable to be a comfortable spokesperson for any set of beliefs.īadu has never expressed a lasting desire to disappear into, or even nurture, the Black Lives Matter movement. The remarks caused an uproar, and though some were willing to grant her the benefit of the doubt, others dismissed Badu immediately as problematic (which is, to some degree, the opposite of woke). In an interview with this magazine, she spoke sympathetically about Adolf Hitler, Bill Cosby, and one of her heroes, Louis Farrakhan.
Acknowledging your privilege in the workplace as a white person or a cis male, for example, is a way to demonstrate that you’re woke, that you get it.īut Badu puzzled many people last week by seeming not to get it.
Among that cohort, wokeness has become something to strive for and to perform. It was then picked up, shorn of the verb, and transformed into a term of approval, most frequently used by young people interested in acknowledging and even remedying various forms of structural inequality.
It was claimed by Black Lives Matter activists whose prowess at organizing online sent it soaring around social media. A prescient, even prophetic, album, its single largest contribution to our political vocabulary comes on the song “Master Teacher,” which includes as part of its hook the mantra “I stay woke.” The refrain revitalized the pro-black meaning of the word woke - a usage introduced in the mid-20th century - for a new generation. February will mark the ten-year anniversary of Erykah Badu’s New Amerykah Part One.
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