The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #310

#310: "Bag Lady" (2000) - Erykah Badu

Originally, I listed Erykah Badu's "Bag Lady" about twenty-or-so spots lower than its current rank. It's not because of the jazzy, prime Prince-like music, simultaneously loose (the feel) and tight (the band), containing the fantastic "pack light" hook; nor was it because of the singer, as I've admired Badu's hip-hop Billie Holliday, neo-jazz phrasing since both she and her turban debuted a decade ago. In fact, the tune and singing and arrangement and production are all top notch pop music, as good a neo-soul record as anyone's made in the past twenty years. No, the reason I ranked the record so low--and cut it from my list a time or two--was because I hated the lyrics.

I mean, I know Badu focuses many of her rhymes on topics of cultural and socio-political concern, but is she really so cruel and facile--however practical--a therapist as to tell a homeless woman to quit carrying around her shopping sacks of essentials just so she'll know love? Is she so insensitive an artist that she'll transfer her own problems ("One day/He gon' say/You crowdin' my space") onto those of her subject? Apparently so. Apparently, Badu thought that since her song was so sensational, that she could heap upon it the most vile of conceits.

Surely not, though. Badu's an artist, and she's sensitive about her, uh, stuff (just call and ask Tyrone). I know! Badu's using Swifitian satire! She's adopting the persona of a callous (possibly W.A.S.P.) liberal or conservative do-gooder, one who's so concerned about the facade that the all-important interior is swept aside. Badu meant this song to be a metaphor, a criticism of Giulianian urban gentrification. "Bag Lady" is Badu's "A Modest Proposal."

Upon unearthing the deeper meaning of the song, I immediately increased its rank, and I rose it up the charts with a bullet, from the 330 region to somewhere in the Top 20...and rising! Even though it would be more than a year before I would post the entry, I prepared it anyway while the song and ideas therein were fresh in my mind. I found the Badu picture (see above), and I pasted it in. I went to YouTube to find the video (for I don't yet know how to embed streaming audio) and then listened to a bit of it to make sure the audio quality was sound. I started to watch it, and, then...

...wow! Was I ever wrong. Completely wrong on both of my assessments of the song. Utterly wrong. How I missed so obvious a metaphor, I have no idea. Sometimes, I'm such the idiot.