Erykah Badu’s latest video, a cover of Roberta Flack’s The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, continues to get mixed reviews while raising eyebrows. On the track the rock band Flaming Lips is featured and both Badu and her sister are fully naked. What is problematic is that Badu has since backed away from the video, saying in an open letter than she did no approve the release of the video. Badu said the video was a “tasteless, meaningless, shock motivated video” and was released “unedited” and “unapproved”. The Washington Post has the story:
By now most music fans have undoubtedly seen Erykah Badu’s latest not-safe-for-work music video, a cover of Roberta Flack’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” in which she once again bears all.
The track features the psychedelic rock band Flaming Lips, and the video further complicates what we thought we knew about Badu, who in the late 1990s playfully told an audience: “Keep in mind that I’m an artist and I’m serious about my [expletive].”
The video features both Badu and her sister in full nudity, and while this is not new territory for the Dallas-born singer, it’s obvious that she’s comfortable with her body in a way that we haven’t seen before. Indeed, the five-minute work displays a sense of play and pleasure with the black female body that’s indulgent, unapologetic and ultimately liberating.
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