#FoodForThought Thanksgiving Dinner: Erykah Badu

Erykah Badu’s New Amerykah album cover:

When you first take a glimpse of this cover you may associate Badu portraying a “Soul Sister”, but that is not what is happening in this picture. She is portraying Todays America from her mind. When you see the solid black background it represents the dark world of America. The red represents the evil that surrounds the goodwill of what people do and chose to make a living, as well as some of the teachings we know to be bad for us.

If you begin with the outer layer of the Afro you can see how her name is rising out of all of the madness in the form of a brown root. Notice inside of the Afro how Erykah includes everything that has plagued the country over the past decade. She includes the baby boom, along with the infamous chalk outlining of a dead body, basically stressing the level of killings that occur. You can see the handcuffs placed all around representing the high level of African-Americans making visits to metro, state and federal prisons.

In this pictorial you can also see how she is indicating that television, drugs, money, fancy cars, guns and police brutality are apart of a daily life in most ghetto’s or urban communities, but it doesn’t stop there it also heads out to corporate America. She expresses this with the oil wells, tanks and fighter jets and the closing down of plants across the nation all in effort to support a needless war.

So much is being reflected on in this picture. You can also see where the brown and bronze like fist are rising at the top as African Americans are learning, that we have to stick together through these hard times and fight for what is right. As we live in a world that is powered by music, the Internet, drugs, violence, war, oil, greed, high gas and food prices, post Katrina, low graduate numbers and the fear of fading healthcare.

Looking at the polished image of Miss Badu you can see a fierce African American sister ready to fight for the New Amerykah from the perspective of Erykah as she compliments her message with the red, white and blue brass knuckles on the red fingernail painted fist.

*Black Tee DaPromoter*