Who is the godmother of soul?

Erica Abi Wright, known professionally as Erykah Badu, is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, and actress. Influenced by R&B, 1970s soul, and 1980s hip hop, Badu became associated with the neo-soul subgenre in the 1990s and 2000s along with artists such as D’Angelo and Maxwell.

When Erykah Badu told Zach Witness, an unheralded producer from East Dallas, that she might like to come to his home studio and work on some music, he didn’t dare believe her. Badu, who is forty-five, has lived in Dallas all her life. But she spends a considerable part of every year on the road, as has been her custom since 1997, when she released her début album, “Baduizm,” which sold millions of copies, earned her a pair of Grammys, and made her one of the most celebrated soul singers of the modern era.

The word people used back then was “neo-soul,” but nowadays it seems appropriate to omit the “neo”—not because her music has grown more old-fashioned but because it has grown harder