Best quotes by Erykah Badu

I don't think it matters what school you go to, but I think it's important for parents to be involved. And to know that when school stops, learning continues, and to continue teaching at home.

Music and the music business are two different things.

We mainly focus on putting music, art, dance, theater, all forms of art, back into the community, so the community can put it into the world.

All I want to do is give the world my heart... Record label tryina make me compromise my art.

I go through phases of stuff.

I have a Pinterest, and if you look there you'll see the things I really like and adore, have crushes on, and there's a lot of stuff from Riccardo's [Tisci] line on there.

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.

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

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.

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.

People who say that music is dead or hip-hop is dead are refusing to evolve.

I lived in New York for maybe a year and a half, from '95 to '97, but I live in Dallas. My whole family is there.

I bring the staple of my culture.

My girls are very fashionable. They have a very good eye for marrying style and fashion.

Hip-hop is the people. What the people are moving toward is what hip-hop is. I think people are moving toward a freer way of thinking. Openness.

It's weird, but if I decide to do an album, then the ideas start fitting themselves together. I consider myself a nice, slow burn. Plus, it's not a race. And I have a lot to share.

I'll dabble here and there in different forms of the art, but the label has me locked down like a slave so, of course, I'll be doing albums during this time

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

I really enjoy being the child's 'welcoming committee' and to help someone usher his or her spirit into the world in a very peaceful way is very effortless to me.

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

If you want to relate to a certain audience or generation, you have to speak their language. I truly believe that.

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

It's just that little box in the middle of Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Most of the time I go I don't even leave that apartment. I have just enough: a little bed, a little kitchen with two pots. I make some tea and I look out the window or just lay down.

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.

It's almost like a lot of black people in America, a lot of young black men, are born with this cloud over their heads. It's their penitentiary cloud, this philosophy we all have, that it's harder for us.

What I like about houses like Givenchy. It's easy to pull from. With Givenchy you can accessorize to build anything, any look.

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.

I've had two children. I've had three boyfriends. I've had a lot of things happen that can change your opinions and values and philosophies.

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

The girls just like to be in the shoes. They like to scuff up the floors and walk around in high-heeled shoes that are too big for them, all over the house.

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.

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

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

I love putting the music together. It's like art

I'm a performance artist first; I'm a recording artist second.

I don't know if I'll ever accomplish most of my dreams - I have so many.

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.

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.

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.

I could do a few more sit-ups and my waistline would be less difficult.

I feel like I haven't done anything. What have I done? I've just made a few records.

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

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.

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

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.

I solidify his [ Riccardo Tisci] vision and what he is trying to manifest, make it a crystal or solid thing because of the relationship I have with my culture and what my music means to him.

All the women in my family were very creative.

I have an organization called BLIND [Beautiful Love Incorporated Nonprofit Development], so named because even though my interest is in the black community, because that's where I grew up and that's where I'm most skilled in fixing things, it doesn't end there.

My nine-year-old daughter is very creative and colorful and trendy.

I thought it was cool how [ Riccardo Tisci] wanted to blend Africa and Asia because they relate to each other in so many different ways.

I think giving is a blind act that should come from a part of me that sees no discrimination (that's why I called it "blind").

I was sitting at home one day and I got a call that Riccardo Tisci was considering me for the face of the Givenchy Spring/Summer 2014 campaign, and I said, "Are you kidding?" and that was the end of the conversation. I'm a really big fan.

Things are useless without practice.

My first, my birth mother - her name is Queenie - she gave me a powerful medicine when I was a child. She told me that, "I was the best," and it helped me so much.

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.

I have a pair of blue pants that were my favorite for a while and were a part of my show uniform - every night, you know.

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.

When you're performing, you're creating a moment.

I'm only in competition with my last level. It don't have nothing to do with music or anything. And the last level is hard competition, the last place you were.

We literally just finished making this gown 20 minutes ago. I love it. It's my favorite color.

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.

Even if the project requires you to have all the ducks in a line, I can't do that. I don't create way.

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 projects don't even sound like Erykah Badu projects. I don't even have one album that sounds like another one of my albums.

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.

I'm a product of its [american] teaching, of its thinking, of its -isms, of its religion, of its education. I am conditioned, raised and developed by America; I am America. And as it changes, my thoughts also change. Because no matter what I believe, what the powers-that-be believe will affect me.

Man, I don't want to have nothing to do with computers. I don't want the government in my business.

What a frequency What a voice. I love Bilal. I couldn't imagine a music world without his voice.

I'm in training to become a midwife. I'm almost there and before I know it I'll be able to open my own practice, if that's what I desire.

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

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