Erykah Badu and Jamie XX’s First-Thought-Best-Thought Dance Anthem

I probably don’t need to tell you that Erykah Badu is a legendary performer—this is a jazzy woman who once did an entire tour based on just catching a vibe from the audience and improvising from there. Years of experience have led her to know exactly what to do when the PA goes out, or any other technological malfunction. (The obvious answer here is talk shit and chat, maybe scat, and find a groove.) So in 2019, when Badu was performing in Barcelona at a Primavera afterparty and the turntables broke, she simply began to get down in the Baduiest blues line: “Turntable number one and turntable number two,” she mewled. “Fuck youuu.” 

This sound-system fluke could have been lost to the ages, save the few seconds captured in Badu’s tour video from that year. But ever-reliable dancefloor wizard Jamie XX, who was scheduled to perform at the same Primavera afterparty, recorded the set—shit-chat and all—on his phone and filed it away among his terabytes until he met up with Badu years later. The result is “F.U.,” a propulsive and satisfying club number for the deluxe version of XX’s recent album In Waves.  The song once again proves that even the most rando stuff coming from Ms. Badu’s mouth is as diamond-shiny and chilly-chill as the most regal grilles in her jewelry box.

Badu’s been cast as a dance diva before, at least by the hands of DJs and producers through the ages; her vocals have been remixed, mashed up, spliced and smashed a million times into house, disco, ballroom, trance and more. Every time, it makes me wonder what might have happened if she were a little bit older, if she had cut her teeth in the discotheques of the 1970s or the underground club scenes of the 1980s. Couldn’t you see her, swathed in a lamé kaftan and matching headband, swirling up magic among the fog and gel lights of Studio 54 or Paradise Garage? “F.U.” crafts the fantasy a little bit, turning crowd chants into ghosts of the past, and her ad-libbed vocals—“We in the club, and all the ladies lookin’ real fine”—into a memo for losing yourself in the night, wispy and ethereal, tethered to absolutely nothing but the dancefloor.