Erykah Badu & The Alchemist, with Smino
If patience is indeed a virtue, Erykah Badu is surely one of the most virtuous artists in any musical genre.
Rather than rush her work — or her muse — this five-time Grammy Award-winner makes albums only when she feels truly ready. That is why Badu has released only three albums since 2008’s “New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh),” and why her newest, this year’s “Before the World Blows: The Abi and Alan Experiment,” is her first in 11 years.
But her slow, carefully measured recorded output is only one of the notable qualities about this Dallas native, who has divided her time between music, raising and homeschooling her three daughters, and working as both a birth and death doula.
Badu’s proudly Afrocentric 1997 debut album, “Baduizm,” quickly led to her being hailed as the “queen of neo-soul.” It was an accolade she quickly dismissed, the better to avoid being pigeonholed alongside fellow neo-soul stars D’Angelo, Jill Scott, India.Arie and Musiq Soulchild. By coincidence, Scott this year released her first album in 11 years.
At the time of her 1997 debut album, Badu (born: Erica Abi Wright) appeared poised to become that rare artist who achieved commercial success without sacrificing integrity. Credit for this was due to her mesmerizing blend of retro-soul, hip-hop, funk, jazz and a rare degree of social and political consciousness.
Badu’s San Diego debut concert that same year was a memorable one. Her subsequent collaborations with The Roots, Common and OutKast helped elevate her reputation as a serious artistic force.
Her sporadic recordings since then have been alternately inspired and wildly uneven, and her 2003 album, “Worldwide Underground,” was largely an exercise in noodling. Badu’s 2008 song helped reintroduce the phrase “woke,” which had first appeared in the lyrics to folk-blues pioneer Leadbelly’s 1939 classic, “Scottsboro Boys.”
While her albums have lacked consistency, Badu has not faltered in wanting to achieve lofty creative standards. Or, as she told me in a 1999 San Diego Union-Tribune interview: “I would tell (young music fans) that if they enjoy and understand what I represent as an artist, whose music comes from the depths and soul of my heart, then they have to listen to my elder, Bob Marley, to see what kind of impact his spirituality and music can make on society. That’s that same thing I want to achieve with my music.”
With her new album “Before the World Blows: The Abi and Alan Experiment” — a joint effort with veteran producer and beat-maker The Alchemist — Badu delivers a hazy aural excursion that is admirable for its refusal to pander to her listeners.
The fact that she remains a consistently charismatic live performer is what, I hope, will make her concert here with The Alchemist a show to remember. Ditto the fact that, if her San Diego concert is like other stops on her current tour, attendees will be required to have their phones sealed in pouches for the duration of her performance. One would expect no less from an artist whose 2015 mixtape, “But You Caint Use My Phone,” includes the no-nonsense song, “Phone Down.”
8 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 26. Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theatre at SDSU, 5500 Campanile Drive. $68.95-$302.25 ticketmaster.com
Bassist and composer Linda May Han Oh will perform with drummer Mark Whitfield Jr. and pianist Fabian Almazan at The JAI at the Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center. (La Jolla Music Society)
Linda May Han Oh Trio
The model for the animated, bass-playing character Miho in the Oscar-winning Pixar film, “Soul,” Malaysian-born bassist Linda May Han Oh is one of most gifted and resourceful musicians in jazz.
Linda May Han Oh has all the basses covered: ‘She’s a singular, deeply creative jazz master’
Whether performing alongside such heavyweights as Pat Metheny and Joe Lovano or leading her own bands, she plays with consistent skill, taste and sensitivity. Oh boasts similar attributes as a composer and band leader whose goal is always to serve the music at hand, not let the music serve her.
She is now on tour with her propulsive trio, which teams her with pianist Fabio Almazan and drummer Mark Whitfield Jr. An associate professor at the Berklee College of Music and the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Study, Oh this year received a Guggenheim Fellowship that she will use for the debut of “Dreams of Knowing,” her interdisciplinary work that bridges the worlds of science and data with music.
5:30 and 8 p.m. Friday, Sept. 25. The JAI at The Conrad, 7600 Fay Avenue, La Jolla. $70-$82. 858-459-3728, theconrad.org
England’s Geordie Greep will perform in San Diego next week. (Jennifer Cappuccio Maher)
Geordie Greep
The former guitarist and front man for the freewheeling English art-rock collective Black Midi, Geordie Greep is — at 27 — something of an outlier.
Equally steeped in indie-rock, prog, math-rock, cutting-edge experimentation and the music of Steely Dan, he is an instrumental virtuoso in an age when virtuosity seems increasingly out of vogue in popular music. It comes as no surprise that this genre-leaping songwriter and bandleader cites former San Diegan Frank Zappa as a prime influence.
Greep’s work is brainy, but has a welcome edge. He is happy to provoke listeners, but has also disowned Black Midi’s music as overly complex and he strived to be more straightforward on his first solo album, 2024’s “The New Sound.” But not straightforward enough to keep Greep from considering making his next album a three-hour affair.
Exactly what that bodes for his concert here next week with his band remains to be seen, but I expect it will be anything but boring — or, for that matter — straightforward. Greep is the only current artist I can think of whose concerts sometimes include cover versions of The Beatles’ “Yesterday,” Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie,” George Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone” and he Frank Sinatra-cum-John-Coltrane-and-Johnny Hartman chestnut, “My One and Only Love.”
8 p.m. next Thursday, Oct. 1. Observatory North Park, University Avenue, North Park. $36.10-$47.50. ticketmaster.com