Mama’s Gun

Loved this

She's got a lovely wee voice and it's all very easy to listen to. Would be nice to have on with a car ride with ar Stephanie. But at 75 mins it does go on a wee bit, would maybe rate higher if it was 45 mins. Overall solid tho

Ima nešto u ovom albumu što ne mogu da ne cijenim, valjda je ipak kvalitetno urađeno posebno što se tiče pozadinske muzike, ali sve u svemu ovo je poprilično mučno iskustvo. Nije ni da joj mrzim glas nego je valjda ovaj kontrast između uspavane muzike i dominantnog glasa prejak.

Edit: Erykah je grozna osoba očito pa trenutno dajem jedinicu iz principa.

a few standout tracks, and a lil long. the genre doesnt do anything for me

The genre description for the album put me off at first. But it was supposed to include soul, so I thought I'd give it a try. The best thing about the album is that it's not hip-hop. Other than that, the album wasn't unpleasant, but it was surprisingly boring. I probably won't listen to it again anytime soon. 3/5

I can see the vocals are good and some of the lyrics too, but many of the lyrics are very cringey. The music is nice, but nothing amazing.

Couldn’t really get in to this. Started brightly with Penitentiary Philosophy but after that it all blended into a mass of sameness. The vocals started to grate and the music all began to sound similar from track to track. Found myself flicking to next track in the 2nd half of the disc which is not normal for me.

There are some seriously funky and jazzy R&B rhythms and grooves throughout this album, but I've been finding that I apparently just don't really like pop R&B vocalizations. She's got an interesting and fairly unique voice, which I'm usually drawn to someone whose singing is outside the norm, but I just find it starts to get on my nerves the further into this album I get. And, man does this album drag on.

Not too bad.

A drum clinic. The drums and percussion are the most compelling thing about this album. Really for me, not a huge modern R & B fan, this was entertaining and nicely executed. In an endless sea of soulless pop music this album stands out for its natural feel. Erykah Badu has a unique sound not unlike Diana Ross, though less powerful and dynamic. Not bad.

The Good: Mom will be able to hold off the bad people…
The Bad: Mom doesn’t know what is good, or what is bad…
The Ugly: Seeing mom in front of a judge, getting sentenced for having shot Erykah…

Just as a quick question; if Erykah is phonetic, then is Badu racist as Asian people are being made fun of?

Neo Soul… Neo anything tends to be shit, not much different here. Yes, sure, the beat is fine, while the groove is great… but the damn singing, and attitude, is just enough to make me not want to listen to this again.

My biggest gripe, at the end of the day, is the runtime of this album… they should have made 40-minutes an industry standard when it comes to max album lenghts… CDs just ruined music I guess.

So, should it come as a surprise that I will be dishing out 2* for this album?
Mrs, or Ms, or whatever Badu should not be on this list… IMHO

This has been on my radar for quite a while but it’s honestly left me quite underwhelmed. It’s not bad by any means but a generational album, I wouldn’t say so

According to Wikipedia, Erykah Badu's “Mama's Gun” is an important representative of neo soul. I wasn't familiar with this term, but it apparently describes a reinterpretation of the soul genre under the influence of contemporary R&B. That may be true, because just as contemporary R&B isn't really R&B, the music on this album is, in my opinion, not soul, but rather simple pop with distant inspirations from soul and hip hop. The record isn't bad, but to me it's rather on the unremarkable side. Probably good easy listening background music.

Erykah Badu is someone whom I just started listening to last year. Like with D'Angelo, she is often considered an instrumental figure in the neo-soul movement. In fact, the two of them collaborated in the short-lived Soulquarians collective. Alongside that, Erykah had a son with her then-partner, André 3000, before the two of them split. All these elements together form the background to her second studio record, Mama's Gun, as Erykah embraced a more sonically eclectic sound while addressing her complications with fame, her new motherhood, and her separation from André.

This record does sound tantalizing to me. Erykah's singing voice often gets compared to Billie Holiday, and I can hear the comparison in the hypnotic and swirling nature of the delivery. It helps that the production she worked on with Questlove and Pino Palladino sounded very organic, as tracks vary in style across soul, funk, rock, jazz, and reggae without ever coming across as jarring in transitions, thanks in part to some excellent work from the session musicians.

Adding to the experience are some very introspective lyrics coming from Erykah. The "mama's gun" of the album title serves as a metaphor for how she wants to be a protective mother for her son. As such, she draws on past experiences to explore themes of love, self-worth, and social equity as she wants the best for herself and her loved ones. The forewarnings of street crime on "Penitentiary Philosophy" and "Time's a Wastin'", the desire to seek a righteous path in "Didn't Cha Know" and "My Life", the challenging of perceptions around women on "Cleva" and "Booty", the pursuit of freedom simultaneously with love on "Kiss Me on My Neck", "In Love with You", and especially "Orange Moon" with her desire to find happiness and reinforce her belief in God. The album closes with the ten-minute suite "Green Eyes", in which Erykah explores her heartbreak and separation from André 3000 across three movements. She learns to accept that the relationship is over and must move on as amicably as she can.

For as much as this album resonated well with me, there is still this nagging sense within myself that the album could've been trimmed down a bit. At the very least, it sounds like the back half after the "Hey Sugah" interlude sounded more intriguing in terms of composition and lyrical writing than the earlier tracks. Then again, it's difficult to say what could have been cut, considering how much Erykah made apparent on this record with the changes she went through at this time.

I'm sure that Mama's Gun will grow on me, and it will be interesting to revisit down the line. For now, I think this album is good and worth your time.

The backing instrumentals are pretty interesting but I just don’t care for Erykah Badu’s singing. It’s pretty monotonous throughout. 90s/00s soul has never appealed to me. I can only appreciate this so much before getting a bit bored

Not really my thing. Too much Soul, Funk, RnB.

OK enough Neo Soul grooves, but while I appreciate the range of Badu's voice, I can't handle the tone of it... She's no N'dea Davenport for example

The beats were good, and would have been fine as an instrumental album

But this way too long and repetitive. Her voice grated on me a bit and also some of the lyrics (I dont want to hear about your period thanks)

2 ⭐️

I’m at a 10, even with one mild flaw to the album in my mind.

Much like Janelle Monae back in March, Erykah Badu is one of those R&B artists that’s just escaped me, for almost no reason at all. I’ve definitely heard her before, since she’s done a number of features over the years, but this is my first full Erykah Badu album. It’s the only one on the list, and it’s one hell of a pick – I fucking loved this.

It’s hard not to point to “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” at some point while listening to this, but I think that does both albums a disservice. Erykah Badu is not Lauryn Hill, and while their musical sensibilities & production styles might be similar, these albums aren’t going for the same thing. “Miseducation” is a hip-hop / rap album first & foremost, with Lauryn’s singing abilities constantly used to enhance the hip-hop base each track is built on to elevate it to a higher level. This album leans far more into the 70s Stevie Wonder-esque style of R&B and soul music, with Erykah’s rapping abilities occasionally used to enhance the R&B base of each track. This is a *soul* album first & foremost, and that’s a big enough distinction that it places each album distinctly separately from each other, no matter how intertwined they might feel.

So, with all that preamble, how effective is Erykah Badu as a soul singer? Words can’t describe it; you simply have to hear her voice. Yes, sometimes she leans into a sort of Lenny Kravitz-y nasally tone, but it never once brings a track down. When she’s at her finest on this album, she’s evoking the past brilliantly, especially so on “Orange Moon”, which might be one of the most beautiful tracks I’ve ever heard in my life. Her voice blends so well into the instrumentals on this album, working hand-in-hand in a way where it all melts together into a harmony that’s hard to describe but impossible not to feel in the moment. Instrumentally, I adore the production here all the same; this does lean heavily into a “modernized” version of Stevie Wonder’s ‘70s work, combined with some of the overproduction flair that had come to pass in the “quiet storm” era of R&B throughout the 90s. That flair is simplified though, taking the best of its emotional pull while giving it a jazzier & funkier tone to create the grooves that make this album glide.

There’s no better example of this than the 5 tracks that start the album; “Penitentiary Philosophy” is an incredible opener, down to the melodic interpolation of “Ordinary Pain”, the swirling instrumental & the much-needed cooldown of the final minute. “Didn’t Cha Know” has a beat that’s smooth as silk, and J. Dilla’s production work does wonders. The back-to-back-to-back punch of “My Life”, “...& On”, and “Cleva”, all flowing into each other, with one long lingering theme of living your life with a self-confidence that’s too undeniable for people to bring you down, is a highlight of the album for me. Those first 5 tracks set the tone, and they act as such a strong start to the whole album that I fully bought in the rest of the way.

This album’s tracks get longer and longer, so mileage will certainly vary about how willing you are to buy into what this album is selling. Since I’m already accustomed to the sort of Stevie Wonder-esque “bloat” this album has, it was never that big of a deal for me. It is crazy to acknowledge that the final 3 tracks here are longer than the first 5 though; it’s something I felt vaguely aware of while listening, but since I was already DEEP into the groove, it’s not something that affected my experience with the album. However, those final 3 tracks are where my one flaw with this album lies. It’s the track order; very specifically, I think “Green Eyes” & “Time’s a Wastin’” should’ve been flipped.

Within the normal context of the album, “Time’s a Wastin’” feels unnecessary; I think the lyricism is just a little broad to really send a message like she wants to, singing in broader platitudes as opposed to a more focused message like Stevie or others would’ve given. Because the lyrics are so broad, I don’t think they justify the 6 minute runtime; it’s a smooth instrumental, and her vocals glide when they do, but for what it’s actually saying, it’s not saying that much. Overall, I think it’s a bit of a momentum stopper right before the big finish. However, if it had come directly after “Green Eyes”, which is all about a sort of “relapsing” journey based around truly getting over an ex (maybe Andre 3000?), I think its broader messaging would be fine given the specificity of “Green Eyes” as an example of how to stop drifting along in life, and it would feel far more digestible.

There’s lot more I didn’t touch on, like the fun dichotomy of “Booty” & “Kiss Me on My Neck” in terms of subject matter, the backstory behind “A.D. 2000” and my own personal frustration that we’ve moved nowhere in terms of police brutality & racial profiling, the deeper beauty of “Orange Moon” and how I think it’s a ballad to her son (genuinely an all-timer), the slightly long (but fun!) minimalist reggae vibes of “In Love with You”, or the absolute groove of “Bag Lady”, but those are all things that need to be heard once you’re in a full flow state with this album.

If you can’t hit that flow state, you won’t be able to digest this as fully as I did, but I think it’s very achievable. Lyrically, these are about as simple as you can get, hitting you over the head with their meaning. Even if you can’t get into the lyrics, the grooves & her voice are so damn smooth that you can feel each track without a second thought. As a whole, even with my one flaw, I think this stands up as a pinnacle of the neo-soul genre, and I’m once again blown away both by my own stupidity at ignoring someone, and at just how damn good they ended up being for my tastes. It’s a 10. A great, great album.

I gotta listen to Megadeth after this? Talk about a tone shift, jeez.

Not my jazz..