How D’Angelo helped launch the career of Dallas’ Erykah Badu

If not for R&B singer D’Angelo, who died Tuesday of pancreatic cancer at age 51, the world might never have known Erykah Badu.

The year was 1995 and the future “Queen of Neo-Soul” was still Erica Wright. A South Dallas native, she’d graduated from Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and studied theater at Grambling State University in Louisiana. Back home in Dallas, she’d formed Erykah Free, a vocal/rap duo with Robert “Free” Bradford, her older cousin.

In March, they got their first big break: A gig at South By Southwest in Austin, where she gave the duo’s demo CD to Mobb Deep’s manager, who in turn passed it along to Kedar Massenburg, manager of the rising soul singer D’Angelo.

When Massenburg played it for D’Angelo in his car, the singer’s eyes lit up.

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“He was like, ‘Yo, Key,’ man, she’s incredible! You gotta let me produce the album,” Massenburg told Billboard in 2017. “I said, ‘Nah, D, you couldn’t even finish your own album! You think I’m gonna let you produce Erykah?’”

D’Angelo finally released his critically acclaimed debut album, Brown Sugar, in July 1995 and hit the road, including a November show at Caravan of Dreams in Fort Worth. Massenburg quickly arranged for Badu to open for D’Angelo that night, and the producer flew into town to meet her and see her perform.

Massenburg obviously liked what he saw. In short order, he signed her to a management deal, landed her a solo contract with Universal Records and put her in the studio with D’Angelo to duet on the Marvin Gaye/Tammi Terrell hit “Your Precious Love.” Their smoldering version came out in 1996 on the soundtrack to High School High, a quickly-forgotten Jon Lovitz comedy.

But her fortunes flipped months later when she released her debut album, Baduizm. It instantly struck a chord on radio and MTV, selling three million copies and winning Grammys for R&B album and female R&B performance. Looking back, Badu has called D’Angelo a kindred spirit and “a true artist.”

“[Massenburg] understood that what me and D’Angelo had in common was not that we sounded alike, but that we didn’t sound like what was happening [in music at the time],” she told GQ.

Dallas singer Erykah Badu, photographed here for The News in 2005, is celebrating 25 years...

Nearly two decades later, as D’Angelo was putting the final touches on his 14-years-in-the-making Black Messiah album, Badu said she was just as eager as everyone else to hear her old friend’s new record.

“I think we need that,” she said. “The world needs that voice.”

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