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 The first installment in Erykah Badu's New Amerykah series, released two years ago, was an interstellar funk odyssey with room for tons of funny voices and avant-garde tangents. She stays comparatively earthbound on this follow-up, singing mostly about relationships over a set of warm, organic grooves. Some listeners will no doubt wish for more of the risks she took last time around. Ultimately, though, New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh's comfortable style only makes it that much easier to get pleasantly lost in. A–...full text |
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| Avclub |
An Erykah Badu album that feels ad hoc or patchwork-like—a bunch of songs just strung together—doesn’t seem possible. In method and intent (and, often enough, sound), she’s a ’70s woman all the way: Badu’s albums are broad canvases that require endless detail to convey a variety of emotion. So when 2008’s New Amerykah Part One: 4th World War came out, not only was its kaleidoscopic funk and unhinged creativity a thrill in itself, it made people wonder what she could possibly follow it up with.
New Amerykah Part Two: Return Of The Ankh is more than up to the task, and as many expected, it goes in the opposite direction—inwardly directed where Part One interrogated the world, softer sounding rather than jagged and near-random, more acoustic and less processed. It’s smoother than anything since her 1997 debut, Baduizm, which the gliding funk of “Window Seat” announces right at the top. But Badu still takes risks that pay off: “Out My Mind, Just In Time,” the closer, is a three-part, ten-and-a-half-minute meditation on love and sanity that features wracked piano and bass that goes astoundingly low, and “Incense” is a moody, harp-driven instrumental co-produced by Madlib. And “Fall In Love” rides on a swirling, almost psychedelic Eddie Kendricks loop that connects it to Part One as confidently as much of the rest of the new material stands on its own....full text |
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| Tinymixtapes. |
As its cover art would suggest, Erykah Badu has returned her gaze to earthly concerns on the second New Amerykah album, though — as on its predecessor — her work is as idiosyncratic as ever. In "20 Feet Tall," Return of the Ankh's opening cut, Badu reminds herself of her colossal stature: "If I get off my knees, I might recall I’m 20-feet tall," she repeats succinctly, but it's also straightforwardly surreal. It's a fitting primer for the rest of the record, which combines her trademark psychedelia with disarming emotional candor.
This odd concoction marks a break from the paranoia and anger of 4th World War, but it's far from anything resembling a return to her organic, neo-soul roots. There's no place for militancy, political rancor, or five-percenter theology on Return of the Ankh; true to her self-claimed "Bag Lady" identity, Badu sounds baggy — loose and comfortable — when only two years ago, she was tense and truculent. On "Window Seat," as amniotic a slow jam as Badu has ever recorded, she sings yearningly about wanting "A chance to fly/ A chance to cry/ And a long bye bye." Her atypical directness is couched, typically enough, between references to "Star Trek" and time travel. Throughout the whole album, her diction is similarly loopy, but far less arcane and impenetrable than she has been lately. Regardless of the artistic distance that she's covered since her debut, Badu has never crafted a record as emotionally distilled, as full of Baduisms, as Return of the Ankh....full text |
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