Following 2008’s New Amerykah Part One (4th World War), Erykah Badu’s latest album takes on a completely different tone. Politics are exchanged for passions, experimental funk and electronica for her familiar jazziness, and overall, it’s for the better. Badu is best when she channels her intense energy into coaxing rather than overtly challenging, and she seems to have remembered this since making Part One.
Part Two declares its intimate perspective with the opening two words: “My love.” From there, Badu vacillates effortlessly between the lovesick mistress and the savvy manipulator, really notching up her sound four tracks into the album. From the interpolation of Sylvia Striplin’s seductive “You Can’t Turn Me Away” on “Turn Me Away (Get Munny)”, to the mention of emotion’s “vibratory frequency” on “Love,” to the 10-minute gem “Out My Mind, Just in Time,” the album slinks the listener through the ins and outs of desire without letting up on its groove.
Some of the songs drag on, and the album as a whole feels a little transient, due to both its short length and its inability to merge Badu’s romantic and militant sides as well as she did on classic releases like Mama’s Gun. In the end, though, we can forgive her. Because when Erykah Badu sings “Never ever met a lover quite like you,” her audience can only think of the artist herself and agree.
3.5 Stars
