Erykah Badu LIVE!

Granada Theater in Dallas, Texas

Another night, Ms. Badu gave us another high octane performance. Mind you this was my third time seeing Ms. Badu live in concert. The last was at The Door AKA the “big side” of Prophet Bar in Deep Ellum, and unfortunately, I couldn’t bring my camera that night. I got lucky at Granada and kept it close as we all took our usual places at the front of the stage. I was also able to snap a few shots back stage during set up.

The concert opened with Dallas’ own dynamic Hip-Hop Duo A.Dd+, who prepared the crowd and stage with high energy performance. Following that was an intermission that seemed to almost last for an eternity. Anxiously awaiting for Ms. Badu to grace the stage, everyone decided to either take shots, smoke in front of the entrance or roll up (which a hipster couple did front and center stage). All goes dark, with the powerful scents of cannabis, incense and sage filling the front end of the stage.

Badu finally blesses us with her presence on stage greeting us with her infamous “Sista’s how y’all feel? Brotha’s y’all alright?” Badu performed a more than generous set of songs even going back through a huge section of the “Baduizm Era” and medleys from just about every other album. It was at one point in the night I realized this was more than just another concert… For the first time, I heard Badu cover “Believe In Yourself” from “The Wiz”. It was as close to church as it could ever get at a Badu concert. It was as if the whole world stopped as she belted not just musical notes, but a blanketing spirit of encouragement, love, peace, energy and light… and yes I shed a tear ‘As I believe in you…’ No words could describe the feeling I had that moment… After that, all I felt was life in every sense of the word. Much love and light to my lady, Erica Abi Wright aka Erykah Badu.

Oh yeah… this time we went to Cafe Brazil afterwards.

-JAkX