Erykah Badu & The Cannabinoids journey out of this world

It’s no secret singer Erykah Badu marches to her own theme music. From 1997, when her debut album Baduizm was released, to last year when the filming of her video for the song Window Seat, generated tons of controversy, Erykah has proven time and again she is not afraid to march to her own drum beat.

She has said in the past she doesn’t subscribe to “groupthink,” defined by Wikipedia.com as, “a psychological phenomenon that occurs within groups of people. It is the mode of thinking that happens when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation of alternative ideas or viewpoints. The primary socially negative cost of groupthink is the loss of individual creativity, uniqueness and independent thinking.”

If she cares what other people think about her as a person, her style of dress or her music, it doesn’t show in her actions.

Erykah will never be labeled a pop star; she doesn’t use her body or looks to sell her music – and she doesn’t have to because her voice is enough.

While some may consider her weird, I have always defended her as just being different – in a good way. And that’s one of the many reasons why I absolutely love her. Out of all of the artists I listen to, embrace and admire, Erykah has been at the top of my all-time favorite list for quite awhile. She is someone I can relate to, respect and appreciate for not only being her own woman, but individual as well.

Which brings me to her “Welcome to the Human Brain and Science of Addiction” show Dec. 9, 2011 at The Warfield Theatre in San Francisco. Featuring her group The Cannabinoids, Erkyah took the crowd on a journey some may have found difficult to follow. Others, myself included, found the show to be typically Erykah – unexpected, eclectic and far ahead of anything we could have imagined.

According to Erykah, this group of individuals, “her brothers” as she called them, go way back to 1992 AD when Erkyah Badu was in a group called Erykah Free while also working in a coffee shop.

Erykah continued her story with a tidbit about the time when she was matriculating through college (Grambling State University), where her cousin sent her a cassette tape (remember those?) containing music that inspired her to write Appletree. Another band member supplied her with another beat, and she wrote On & On, the first release of Baduizm.

Consisting of all men (seven total), and Erykah, The Cannabinoids is a live band whose musical instruments consisted of laptops, turn tables, several keyboards and drums. There weren't clearly defined background singers, albeit some band members lent their voices to songs here and there. Just thinking about the lack of real musical instruments (and the model brain on display in front of the stage), I should have realized then the show was going to a new frontier.

Each song performance started out as the track you knew from the album, however, it then quickly evolved into the new Lowdown Loretta Brown, (Erykah’s DJ alias) remix. Sometimes challenging to follow, it still worked beautifully because the new arrangement gave the old some a fresh appeal.

The chopped and screwed Appletree flowed into … & On, where Erykah repeated the lyric “what good do your words do if they can’t understand you,” several times. I could be wrong, but I think she was sending a message.

Recognizing the “superstars” in the house (that would be the audience), she dropped Umm Hmm to a really slow beat, and mellowed out Didn’tCha Know, which had an almost gospel feel. Stating this was one of her favorite songs, Erkyah went on to say, “There will be a brighter day if you believe in brighter days. Believe it not because I told you; believe in yourself as I believe in you.”

Although she mixed A Tribe Called Quest’s Bonita Applebum into Love of My Life (An Ode to Hip Hop), Erykah pretty much stayed true to the original version. Same goes for Danger.

When it was time for Window Seat, she toyed with our emotions by playing a few notes, stopping the song and then moving on to something else. The audience clearly thought she wasn’t going to sing Window Seat, but she eventually came back around to it.

Someone in the audience must have screamed something about Tyrone because she looked down, pointed and said, “No, you call Tyrone!” Erykah turned around to her band and they then launched into the track.

After a new song (several of which were performed throughout the entire show) from the forthcoming Cannabinoids album, and a funky version of Bag Lady, the night came to a close with the lyrics from the performance of NextLifetime, on her Live album.

There also were some comedic moments in the show with Erykah throwing out one liners such as “Money can’t buy me love, but it can keep me in some fresh shit.” When introducing Delta 9, the baby of the group as well as the drummer, the audience went wild when she said it was her son Seven. “I know ya’ll want that to be really bad,” she said through laughter.

Erykah then went on to say Delta 9 was age 17. Turning to him, she said, “That should get you a lot of pussy. You owe me.”

I think the best way to sum up this show is futuristic with a psychedelic feel. There may be a day when live shows don’t have actual guitar players, bassists or saxophonists, but laptops as substitutes. Let’s hope that future never happens because I rather like the sounds of live instruments and the voices of backup singers.

Footnote: It’s fitting that one of the definitions of Cannabinoids is “any of the chemical compounds that are the active principles of marijuana.” Causing feelings of relaxation, there were enough individuals enjoying the drug featuring Cannabinoids that I’m sure those that weren’t partaking couldn’t help but become relaxed. The air was so thick with marijuana smoke that I left with a headache, while Erykah jokingly (or not) asked if she could get some.