Erykah Badu transformed Denver’s Ball Arena into Badubotron on 6/26 as part of the Unfollow Me Tour featuring Yasiin Bey (better known as Mos Def). Although widely considered a neo-soul singer, Badu is just as much hip-hop as she is anything else. Weaving traditional 808 beats and funky, electro-style keys into her amalgamations of jazz, soul and R&B, Badu is never too far from hip-hop’s roots. At one point during the show, Badu proudly proclaimed, “Hip-Hop is 50!” before launching into the 2002 hit “Love of My Life (Ode To Hip-Hop)” f/Common. Her respect and love for the culture bounced off the rafters, a reminder to the crowd that this is hip-hop’s year. Bringing Bey along for the ride made perfect sense.

“Yasiin and I are comrades in this beautiful struggle called music,” Badu tells us. “We use music in the same way, as a platform to tell our stories and to document our history. I think we have that in common with our whole tribe. Hip-hop is 50 this year. There’s no other MC I would come out with that can anoint the stage in a way I feel necessary this year than Yasiin, so I convinced him to come out. He’s outside.”

Badu, a Dallas native raised by a single mother, hit the scene in 1997 with her lauded debut album, Baduizm. Songs like “On & On,” “Apple Tree” and “Otherside of the Game”—which she performed early in her set—quickly established Badu as the “Queen of Neo-Soul.” Mama’s Gun, released five years later, employed the production of The Roots’ James Poyser and renowned beat magician J Dilla, lending the project an even richer sonic depth. The hip-hop references became more blatant on ensuing albums like 2003’s Worldwide Underground, 2008’s New Amerykah, Pt. 1 (4th World War) and 2015’s Cain’t Use My Phone. As she chants on “The Healer” from New Amerykah: “Hip-hop is bigger than the government,” something she truly believes.

Much to Badu’s chagrin, most people only want to talk about her first two albums, but Cain’t Use My Phone, which was touted as a mixtape, is one of her favorite bodies of work. The song “Dial A’freaq,” inspired by West Coast electro/hip-hop pioneer Egyptian Lover, rattles with bass, while “Mr. Telephone Man” draws from the New Edition song of the same name. Had more people fully digested it, perhaps they would have realized just how deep Badu’s knowledge of hip-hop and R&B goes.

“It’s one of those children that you love so much, but it’s your ugly child,” Badu says of the mixtape. “Most people only talk about the other albums. I made this one, too. I’m standing here with all my children and everybody keeps complimenting one, so it feels like your ugly child. But it’s my child!”

She admits the project initially started off as a joke. She continues, “What happened was I was only joking about putting something on SoundCloud called Cain’t Use My Phone. It was a joke. People were asking about it, so I decided to make a quick mixtape called But You Cain’t Use My Phone, and it ended up being this labor of love. It was just a fun project. I am so happy I did that.”

While it’s been eight years since Badu has put out new music, she supposedly had another album called This $hit Too Easy ready to go around the same time she was working on the mixtape. When pressed for details, she would only offer, “This $hit Too Easy might come out soon. We will see.”

The fact Badu is even talking to the press is a miracle in itself. In 2018, Vulture ran a story that Badu felt grossly misconstrued her words. She appeared to shy away from interviews completely following the ensuing social media uproar. Now that she’s talking again, Badu has learned to take everything with a grain of salt, including social media.

“Those people don’t know us nor do the people at home,” she tell us. “When you have this attention and platform, you want to sell your shit. ‘I’m sorry for saying blah blah blah blah and buy my album for $9.99.’ That’s how I approach it.”

Badu’s resilience has kept her going for decades and she's more comfortable in her skin.

“I accept the fact that I work very, very hard and earn money," she says. "I accept that, so you can’t Lamborghini shame me. I accept the fact that I was blessed with a certain type of genes that are beneficial in this country. I accept the fact that you can’t pretty shame me. I accept that I am 52 years old in a society that does not respect wisdom and age. I accept that, but you still can’t 52-year-old shame me. None of those things have anything to do with me. We are all trying to work toward something. My journey is mine and your opinion is yours.”

And part of Badu’s journey is enduring cancel culture, which heavily influenced the name of the Unfollow Me Tour.

“We all lost,” she explains. “Following me would be a waste of your time. Follow your own path, your own heart. You’re quite capable of creating. If we on social media and you don’t like what I’m saying, unfollow me.”