Born Erica Abi Wright, Badu was raised by a circle of women—Queenie (who’d separated from Badu’s father when Badu was a girl), and also her grandmothers Thelma Gipson and Viola Wilson, and godmother Gwen Hargrove. They were all educators and caregivers by trade who used humor to navigate life’s ups and downs. “I thought Richard Pryor was my daddy for a long time,” Badu deadpans. “It’s the only male voice I heard in the house.” The family has lived in Dallas for decades, and it was in this near-100-year-old home that the singer-songwriter picked up her ear for music: Chaka Khan, Pink Floyd, Phoebe Snow, Prince, and Rick James. All were a running soundtrack for game nights and birthday parties. “It was a little-girl factory,” Badu remembers.
Today the place is relatively quiet—her younger brother, Eevin, and younger sister, Koryan, have yet to arrive—and Queenie is holding court. “My mother was the historian, she kept every article,” Queenie tells me, referring to her mother, Thelma, who passed away in 2020 at the age of 93. “Every day she would cut out clippings and paste them into different frames.” Several of those lovingly assembled collages of Badu memorabilia hang on the rose-colored walls alongside family photographs, including pictures of Badu’s three children: Seven, 25, the son she shares with OutKast member André 3000; Puma, 18, her daughter by rapper The D.O.C.; and daughter Mars, 14, whose father is the hip-hop artist-producer Jay Electronica. There’s also a sizable portrait of Queenie herself, resplendent with her Cleopatra-style honey blond bob.
She’s recalling the surprise of Badu’s first appearance in the newspaper: a street style picture of her 14-year-old in the lifestyle section of the Dallas Morning News. Badu was an avid theater kid then, and amateur dancer, and was dressed for the photographer in pajamas rolled at the waist and a men’s suit jacket. (Badu would have her first real headline-making moment in 1994—a solo deal with Universal Records—after she opened a D’Angelo show in Fort Worth with her cousin Robert Bradford as a hip-hop duo named Erykah Free.) “I mean, if you saw her then you might have thought she found her clothes rummaging through a donation bin in the church basement,” says Queenie. “She dressed outrageously. And she had this high-top fade.” In Queenie you can see Badu’s meticulous approach to self-presentation, in her black leggings and striped shirt accessorized with chunky tortoiseshell glasses and a necklace of amber and turquoise stones. “I know now that it was her style,” Queenie says. “She always was a trendsetter.”
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