Erykah Badu is scheduled to visit the City of Brotherly Love on March 2nd for an exclusive performance of her debut album Baduizm. Released in February 1997, the album has since attained cult status as a seminal work of game-changing music that broke down the doors of traditional r&b performance to usher in the massively influential but highly debated era of neo-soul. Badu's performance on the album drew comparisons to Billie Holiday and proved to be an evolutionary continuation of the earliest jazz and blues traditions combined with the aesthetic of the hip-hop and the 70s soul movements. Prompting a mass exodus back to the land of live music in the post-new jack swing era of the late 90s, her success facilitated the emergence of artists from the legendary Black Lily jam series - most notably Jill Scott, Jazmine Sullivan, Ledisi and Floetry among others. Badu's presence also aided in the rise of the Soulquarian collective, of which she is the only female member. Widely considered the overall earth-mother of it all, Erykah Badu remains a huge part of the iconography of the soul music revival that began with Baduizm and the debut releases of D'Angelo and Maxwell two years prior. Followed by four major studio releases, Baduizm set a bar that Erykah Badu continues to break. This performance may be the first time Badu has presented her debut material as one body of work since her first tour. It would be an understatement to say that tickets will sell out fast - especially in Philadelphia - the city that served as ground zero for the neo-soul movement at its height and helped produce her signature sound.
