Erykah Badu Quotes

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.

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

A lot of people have dementia, which is great, because then they don't recognize me.

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

I have advice for people - period - who are in unhealthy relationships: Follow your heart. It will get you to where you need to be. Sometimes it's hard, sometimes it's easy, the places that your heart takes you. But continue to follow it. Where the train leads you - you'll get there.

I think people who vibrate at the same frequency, vibrate toward each other. They call it - in science - sympathetic vibrations.

I don't plan how many people I work with. I don't charge anything. It's for my own learning, and I just enjoy being the welcoming committee. I became a doula by default.

Following your heart also means eliminating the things that no longer evolve you.

I love watching Rihanna in fashion. I like to see her take chances and risks. I like seeing Naomi Campbell in the forefront. They're both women who stand out and use their bodies as canvases to introduce this functional art to the world. They carry it in a way that is very inspiring.

Be you. Make sure you're saying something when you're saying something. It's important to sound like you, to feel like you, to be like you. Be you.

I live in a queendom, ruled by a womb-iverse.

I come from a long line of matriarchal women, and my greatest teachers were my mothers.

What draws me to a project is how sympathetic I am toward it, so that I can relax into it and give up myself.

My work as a doula also extends all the way to the end of life. I sit at the bedsides of people who are passing on in hospices or nursing homes, for the people and families who want that kind of thing.

We as Black people have to tell our own stories. We have to document our history. When we allow someone else to document our history the history becomes twisted and we get written out. We get our noses blown off.

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.

I'm free. I just do what I want, say what I want, say how I feel, and I don't try to hurt nobody. I just try to make sure that I don't compromise my art in any kind of way, and I think people respect that.

Im a hip-hopper, and its something you live and do. It makes me angry that were misrepresented, that were being killed every day by one another, by the government, by the food we eat, the choices we make. It makes me angry because it doesnt have to be that way and it is.

My paternal grandmother gave me the courage to investigate things and not take things at face value or judge people by what I first imagine them to be.

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.

My fifth mother is Mother Nature - the things I had to learn on my own, the understanding I had to come to and still have to come to as a young woman, as a responsible mother, a responsible granddaughter and child. She teaches me willpower, honesty, and the things we need to heal ourselves from moment to moment.

I don't know why, it's just what I feel inside, the thoughts that I sing about. It's just my truth. Sometimes my emotions can be mistaken for messages.

I think the job of an artist is to be honest and fearless.

Things are useless without practice.

The wise healer endures the pain. Cry. Tears bring joy.

Music and the music business are two different things.

Breathing becomes really easy when you're laughing. It kick starts that feeling of joy.

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.

I'm just being who I am and expressing myself as everyone else does.

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.

My eyes are green, Cause I eat a lot of vegetables, It don't have nothing to do with your new friend

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

I think [ fashion philosophy] it's about your smile and your smell.

I just keep going. When the water's too still, I start splashing around and things jump out of the water.

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.

The music business is motivated by money. Music is motivated by energy and feelings.

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

Society has a problem with female nudity when it is not . . . ”—Badu pauses to get her words together; she wants this point to be very clear—“. . . when it is not packaged for the consumption of male entertainment. Then it becomes confusing.

I know the community mostly for its art and culture... and of course its food, I eat at their restaurants." "They make you feel like taking off your shoes... it feels like home.

From then on, I realized this is what I want to do, what I'm supposed to do: Giving energy and receiving it back through applause. I love it. That's my world. I love it. I enjoy it. I live for it.

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.

I'm a Pisces, so I'm a very closed-book kind of person.

Hip-hop is not something we do, it's something we live. It's the way we dress, the way we talk... everybody bobbing to the same beat. It's a culture, and you have to find your own place in that culture. Top 10 or Top 40 can't dictate that. They can only dictate what's marketable.

Better think while it's still legal.

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").

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.

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.

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.