When he’s not preoccupied with ruling the Billboard charts and collaborating with some of the biggest names in music, super-producer Mark Ronson is the host of the new podcast, FADER Uncovered.
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Each episode features iconic artists exploring the past, present, and future of music and artistry as they reflect on their careers, their trials and triumphs, and their own cover stories with The FADER. Thus far, Ronson has had the privilege to chop it up with familiar names like The Roots frontman Questlove and DMV rapper Rico Nasty. And in the latest episode, the Grammy Award-winning multi-instrumentalist is joined by the incomparable Erykah Badu to discuss all things Baduizm and Mama’s Gun, as well as her paradigm-shifting career.
“All those records kind of came out the same year,” Badu said of 2000’s Mama’s Gun, which she created among a slew of other legendary artists. “It was Common’s, mine, and D’Angelo’s. But, yeah, we were just all working in that space at the same time, and we were just artists who really admired one another and made sure we locked down all the rooms so nobody else could get in there, and we created our own clubhouse spaceship. I lived there. I lived in my room there, bathed out of the sink, and all that kind of stuff.”
The Godmother of Neo-Soul also touched on her work as a doula and revisited the time she helped deliver Dead Prez rapper stic.man’s son.
“Yeah, it was my main inspiration for knowing that I would be good at being the welcoming committee,” she said. “It was my girlfriend, Afya, who’s stic’s wife, and she went into labor, and I flew to where she was. I was not a doula [then]. I was just her friend. But I ended up, after it was all done, sitting with her 52 hours, never sleeping and understanding. I just had my son two years earlier, and it just came very natural to me. Yeah. It feels good to make the room calm and to make sure that the mother is getting the right amount of nutrients and minerals and enough sun and exercise and that she’s communicating well with her partner and that she’s reading the materials that are going to alleviate her fears and that she’s meditating and she chooses and all those things are very essential in bringing a life.”
And for those wondering if Badu is waiting for her children to follow in her footsteps as a musician, she insists that decision is entirely up to them.
“My kids are pretty hip,” she began. “They know the consequences of their choices and judgments. You can set yourself up for some stuff and just be prepared for it, and if you feel like you’re a winner already, then you’re a good candidate for competition. If you think this is going to ruin your life if you lose, then you don’t need to do it.”
You can listen to the full episode in FADER Uncovered on your podcast platform of choice.
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