0572. Erykah Badu
Mama's Gun

Despite production by J Dilla, drums by ?uestlove and appearences by Bilal, one of the Marley kids, and a bunch more, I'm still a bit worried what seventy-one minutes of Ms Badu is going to do with my brain, but here goes:

It starts out with the p-funky Penitentiary Philosophy, sampling Stevie Wonder and making a hell of a good song. And as this is another album where a break-up is going on in the background (with André 3000), it's got its fair share of relationship songs (the jazzy first third of Green Eyes reminds me a bit of Van Morrison).

I almost wrote that the album drops it with Booty and never quite get back its grip, due to the getoguttertalk, but as that's not the entireity of the album since Badu's got some pathos too:
The track 2000 A.D. is inspired by the murder of Amadou Diallo, by New York cops and the aforementioned Penitentiary Philosophy is a call for breaking the mental bonds and set the mind free.