BIOGRAPHY
Born Erica Abi Wright in 1971, Erykah Badu changed the spelling of her name and adopted "Badu" from her favorite jazz scat sound. She studied theater at Grambling State University before leaving in 1993 to pursue music, having already freestyled on local radio by age 14 alongside artists like Roy Hargrove. Her 1997 debut Baduizm, released after opening for D'Angelo led to a deal with Kedar Entertainment, went triple platinum and made her a face of the neo soul movement. Follow-ups like Mama's Gun and New Amerykah Part One earned critical acclaim, and she has won five Grammy Awards from twenty nominations, most recently for "3 A.M." with Rapsody. In 2025 she began work on Before The World Blows, a psychedelic neo-soul and alternative R&B album with The Alchemist, her first new album in fifteen years.