Erykah Badu livestreams blazing a new trail
Erykah Badu has always been a boss, but now she’s closer to a CEO. When the COVID-19 pandemic halted concerts and the music industry scrambled to adapt, the iconoclastic neo-soul singer and songwriter created a new artistic and business model, creating her own interactive streaming network less than two weeks after the country began shutting down this spring.
‘‘I’ve been touring for eight months out of the year for 22 years. This is the way that I had made my money,’’ Badu said.
She had family to take care of, and crew that have been part of her team for two decades. So she created a high-production, interactive live show from her home (The Quarantine Concert Series: Apocalypse, Live From Badubotron), charging fans $1 to watch. And then she did it twice more, charging a little more each time — three increasingly elaborate livestreamed performances in the space of a month, with costume and lighting changes, and fans voting on the set list and even what room she would perform in. In the last concert, she and her musicians appeared to be inside clear giant bubbles.
‘‘Every day and night, I was working and moving and experimenting and learning from mistakes quickly and fixing them,’’ she said.
According to a spokeswoman, over 100,000 people tuned in. And now she doesn’t even miss being on the road: ‘‘A little piece of me dies every time I have to leave my home.’’
The process energized Badu, 49, a mother of three who lives in Dallas, where she’s also a doula.
In a recent video interview from her living room — thronelike chair from India, DJ setup, a Nefertiti sculpture wearing sunglasses and headphones, a fireplace with an eternal flame — Badu described her vision for a new livestream company. These are edited
excerpts from the conversation.
Question: How did you come up with this idea?
Erykah Badu: First thing we had to figure out was what am I, besides this touring artist? And I quickly found out that I was many more things. It all came simple to me really quickly, as if I had been downloading the program through the Matrix.
Q: What’s the status of your plan to start a livestream company?
Erykah Badu: My livestream company project is very much underway. It’s ambitious, but I think I can do it. I think I can help artists build a platform very similar to mine where everything lives there. We are driving all the traffic to our socials, to our chat rooms, to our merchandise, and to our art, whether it’s performance art or comedy or visual art or fashion. We don’t have to abandon our other social media outlets, but we can incorporate them into our worlds and in ways that make it very easy for the user.
I’m also trying to convince the user or the audience that it’s OK to pay the artist directly. Because they’re so used to using the streaming services to do that, and we only get pennies from the services. But we’re also living in an era where capitalism is one of the enemies. So you have to be very careful to not become something that you didn’t intend to become.
Q: You’ve said that the minimal fee you were initially charging is not sustainable. Have you landed on a better way to price this?
Erykah Badu: I’m coming up with that, and I’m coming up also with the energy to be comfortable with that. Maybe a monthly fee is better than a one-time fee. It’s very important for us to be focused and organized right now, and also having places to release feelings of guilt and the feelings of suppression and pain and distance. And a lot of those things are released through music. Just creating the right vibration around the market will help people understand why it’s valuable to us at all.
Q: You recently did a live show at Dave Chappelle’s house. But we’re still probably months out from regular gigs. What did you miss about tour shows?
Erykah Badu: I didn’t miss it. I’ve always wanted to perform from my bed at home. I’m the laziest artist probably in Dallas. I never wanted to do the packing and going through the car and luggage and the hotel and, ‘‘What’s the password? What’s the internet?’’ You get tired after years and years of doing it, you know?
I enjoyed the moment when the audience and the artist become one living, breathing organism, when the band and I are locked in. I miss that synergy and energy between me and the audience. But I found a new way to express that, and it doesn’t take its place. It just evolved it to another place.
Q: As a woman of color in a white male-dominated industry, do you think owning your own platform, and asking to be paid what you’re worth, directly, is revolutionary and challenging in its own right?
Erykah Badu: Oh yeah. If I was doing a live show anyway, I’m going to get paid what I’m worth at this time in my career. I had to build that reputation from February 1997 when ‘‘Baduizm’’ was released to now. This is a whole new arena, and I’m willing to do the work. I’m going to have to build that reputation again to show this industry that I can deliver the things that I say I’m going to deliver, because there is a network in place already for this.
And me, as a woman and as a nonconformist, building something outside of that network, is always going to be difficult. I know that already. Now, they’ve got to figure out how we’re going to count my streams and deliver on time, and the publishing company had to get involved. I’m building a new machine. I may face a few obstacles.
But I’m not even thinking in those terms. I’m not in a rush — I don’t think it’s a race because I don’t think that there’s anyone else who’s doing exactly what I’m doing. I’m willing to study and learn how this thing works because I definitely want to be in this game.
People are used to seeing Erykah Badu, the brand. But they’re going to have to start getting used to seeing Badu World, the company, because that’s what I’m building.