Mamas Gun
Like everyone else, we first fell in love with Erykah Badu on her 1997 debut single, “On & On.” But it was her 2000 sophomore studio album, *Mama’s Gun*—creatively restless, stylistically adventurous, lyrically direct—that made us stay in love. The screaming live-band funk of opener “Penitentiary Philosophy” tells you right away you shouldn’t settle in expecting a rehash of her debut’s smooth R&B. And while a remix of “Bag Lady” was its biggest single, we’ll never get over album closer “Green Eyes,” a wrenching, ravishing song suite narrating the end of a relationship.
Erykah Badu's second album is dense with ideas and sounds that draw from the past and look toward the future. Released in November 2000, it embodies the millennial tensions of that pivotal year.
With 'Mama's Gun,' Erykah Badu is an 'analog girl in a digital world,' but she still finds a way to make it flow.