What exactly is Mama’s Gun?
You’d have to bypass Lauryn Hill, Mary J, and Whitney Houston, then go back to Aretha Franklin or Nina Simone or Billie Holiday to find an album by a black woman on the level of Mama's Gun. Even before we get to Erykah Badu’s historic performance on this album, you have to acknowledge that the production is so good and fresh and forward that it can sometimes confound you.
Up until 2000, and not since then, have the Soulquarians produced an album as incredible as Mama’s Gun. ?uestlove played the best non-jazz drums in the world; James Poyser was a master working the synthesizer/organ/Fender Rhodes and piano; and J Dilla mangled the beat production and mood-setting.
No black woman had ever made a song remotely close to “Penitentiary Philosophy“, the album’s first track. That was BRAND NEW. It was before artists like Res and, recently, Alice Smith delved heavily into rock with a soul center. The closest you'll find is “Hollywood”, a track off Lucy Pearl’s self-titled album where Raphael Saadiq has Dawn from En Vogue get a little crazy. Badu’s joint, however, has lengthy breaks, spaced out moments and hardcore energy.
“Didn't Cha Know” showed Badu’s progression because it was similar to her work on Baduizm, but heightened to really befuddling levels. Dilla's bassline and ?uest’s drum work are exemplary plus, Dilla added congas and the willowy guitar in the back. And what Badu always adds are lyrics from a lyricist. As we know, Badu has hip-hop roots. Hop may be her biggest influence. She's also a poet but of a different vein than, say, Jill Scott. She's not a spoken word chick; she's a poet, so her lyrics are doggedly creative. You get ambiguity, wit and insight.
What also makes this album incredible is that Erykah Badu brought back “sass”. What woman was really sassy on tracks back then? Go through the 80s and 90s. Other than inconsequential acts like Vanity or Adina Howard, who was really sassy? What ever happened to the Chaka Kahns of the world? Whitney and Mariah were too busy doing what they did. Mary was more gangsta and street than sassy. It was Badu that brought back “sass” on Mama's Gun, but in a different way that wasn't overtly featured on Baduizm. Next thing you know we got tracks like “...& On”, where she opens up with, "Wake the f*ck up it's been too long”. Black singers, and especially women, didn’t curse, much less drop the F-bomb. On “Booty”, the sass bubbles over and she's telling women with big rears, "Your booty might be bigger, but I still can pull your nigga." But hold up, Badu then has the sassy audacity to tell these women, "You got sugar on your peeter, but your nigga thinks I'm sweeter." This all happening over a blaxploitation-type rhythm with James Brown horn blasts.
Nowadays, every female singer is sassy. Beyonce is sassy; Rihanna is sassy. That may be society but that’s Badu, too.
“Orange Moon” and “Green Eyes” are crowning achievements of soul music. The emotional peaks that Badu attains on those two tracks are shocking. We're not talking about regular emotion with which Whitney hit us; we're talking about Mary-esque emotion that’s raw and real and so revealing and naked that you almost feel uncomfortable. The difference between the two is that Mary's spawned from being broken down and desperate or overwhelmed whereas Badu's toggles between hurt, anguish and a deep attachment. They’re both equally honest, but Mary's honesty seems to be the result of the pot boiling over while Badu's seems to be a sought embrace. …Which is why it’s perfectly fine and warranted to consider Badu as every bit the trendsetter as Mary. Mary influenced Badu, but Badu is unique.
Aside from “Green Eyes” being emotional, it’s just damn creative and forward, even as it reaches back to shake hands with early New Orleans jazz. The song goes through three changes before Badu finally takes off all her clothes in the final two minutes. Plus, jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove blew some of the quaintest horn during the third shift. Next thing we know, he and Russell Gunn and others from the young jazz vanguard are making soul-jazz albums.
I build this argument on the basis that the illest combination of albums was dropped that year by artists we still respect today. Granted, these albums may not be the best of a particular artist or group’s career. I am not arguing that Stakes is High is better than Three Feet High and Rising, nor am I making the argument that It Was Written can touch Illmatic in terms of a hip hop classic. Hell on Earth cannot match the breakthrough appeal of The Infamous. But taken together these albums present a provocative argument for the establishment of 1996 as the pinnacle year in hip hop album production and releases. Many of the albums listed below need no argument- Reasonable Doubt, Illadelph Halflife, and ATLiens are prime examples that are, for all intents and purposes, self-explanatory for the average hip hop head.
This can be partially blamed for what many see as the monotony of her flow (a characterization shared by Guru, who helped produce the album), but her consistency and her self-asserted wordplay skills (“Wordplay” is also a single on that album) are due their fair share of recognition, and that album is part of what makes 1996 a great year in hip hop albums, despite being overshadowed in the mainstream by Kim and Foxy. Then there was Lauryn Hill, who added another dimension to this matrix as the female component of The Fugees, whose album The Score literally overshadowed their previous work Blunted on Reality released in 1994. Lauryn helped blur hip hop and the newly coined “neosoul” with the multidimensionality of her flow and songstress skills.
