New Amerykah Part One (4th World War)

The American media and public have spent a fair bit of the past months being fascinated and appalled by various remarks from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, of Chicago. Those months have also seen a fairly warm critical reception for Erykah Badu's terrific new album-- one whose notions and ideologies sometimes come from the same nexus as Wright's. Badu's theology is different, of course: more personal, more scattered, less Christian, laced with Five-Percenter notions. And Badu salutes Farrakhan explicitly, rather than just nodding politely across the South Side. But there's an odd echo in her wording on that one: "I salute you, Farrakhan/ Because you are me." Less than a month after this record's release, Wright's most notable acquaintance was describing the reverend as someone who "contains within him the contradictions-- the good and the bad-- of the community.... I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community." He is me? Until he hits the press club, anyway.