Next Lifetime

NEXT LIFETIME, ERYKAH BADU

(March 1997)

Eighth grade: I was doing a history project about the Civil War. I remember that we were doing a video, and we were filming a debate of sorts, and I was playing a Southern plantation owner, I think. We were filming at Rochelle's house, on the other side of Geneva, past Epiphany, on a Friday afternoon. Those of us that were there (I only recall myself, Rochelle (since it was her house), and Christabel being there, but there may have been more) were getting along and had decided that it was time to end the day's filming. Rochelle turned on MTV in her living room as I waited for my dad to pick me up (though I have the sneaking suspicion that my aunt picked me up, but who knows).

There were a variety of late-90s R&B videos playing, and while I think that Dru Hill's "In My Bed" with its then-risque lesbian twist at the end (scandalous for a thirteen-year-old pubescent boy like myself) played at some point, I distinctly remember Erykah Badu's "Next Lifetime" video playing. It was the first time I heard the song, but the video really made an impression on me. I remember mostly the last part of the video, when Erykah and her love object are reborn in "Motherland 20whatever," and they're in this neon tribal makeup and see each other. It's a trippy image, and in a weird way, I haven't watched that video much since then to maintain that feeling of weirdness and wonder that I had when I first saw it.

I really got into the song - and Erykah Badu in general - when I was in my neosoul phase my senior year of high school. There's a really haunting note progression in the background that you don't really notice until you listen to the song cranked super-loud on your headphones on a silent bus trip at 6:30 in the morning, and that progression, which ends on a minor note, embedded itself in my psyche for years, and I didn't really realize it until this past year when I was living in London. I was at work at the horrible shitstorm known as Primark, and I had a habit of playing songs in my head on loop to prevent me from doing something drastic, like shooting somebody or falling asleep, and suddenly that note progression just popped into my head. And I didn't know where the fuck it came from, and it was driving me crazy and I didn't know where it was from until I got home (I was living with Nick at the time) and as I took my shoes off and was about to turn on my laptop to search for the song, it suddenly hit me what it was, and I felt so much better.

There is a really disconcerting line, however. The song is about the woman refusing to cheat on her current partner with this new guy that she knows she has feelings for, and saying that with any luck, they can reincarnate and have a relationship in another lifetime. It's a beautiful notion, filled with beautiful imagery, such as "Maybe we'll be butterflies" and such, but the line that freaks me out is "I know I'm a lot of woman, but not enough to divide the pie." I understand the point, but I just have this image of Erykah Badu's punany served on a silver platter and sliced up like an apple pie. That's kind of a gross image to spoil an otherwise lovely song.