PEAK BADU

She's an ICONOCLAST who fills arenas, an ONLINE SCRAPPER who just wants to hide from the world, a FASHION WEEK STANDOUT who rejects the notion that clothes should DEFINE YOU. Come join a four-hour phone call with ERYKAH BADU.

- CASEY GERALD

She stood alone atop a black staircase before a megascreen that had all night projected many curious symbols-digital mitochondria, ancestral totems, a beetle-but would soon show a giant moon. Till then, it was just her. Just her and me, just thousands of Mes watching their own private Her. It was late July in Dallas, in the blunt-filled dark of the American Airlines Center, during one of the hottest summers we'll ever experience until next summer. Time had come for Erykah Badu to sing "Orange Moon.

From the keyboard trickled pools of ascending notes, and under those keys crickets chirped softly. Everything was very still, everything was the memory of your first great summer lover-then she nosedived into the first lines:

I'm an orange moon

I'm an orange moon

Reflecting the light of the sun

The drums locked in. Three background singers oohed on cue. Then Badu's voice-which some compare to Billie Holiday's, though she compares it to a clarinet-pulled us through the song, from her album Mama's Gun. It's a tale of a man who'd spent so many, many, many nights all alone because his light was too bright. Until, one day, he turned to her. He saw his reflection in her. He smiled at her. He said to her: "How good it is."

Their tale went on, and soon it was Badu realizing "how good it is," sweetly singing "how good he is," wailing "how God is." Nearby, a few entranced listeners were on their feet, just some of the thousands she played to during her 25-city Unfollow Me tour this summer. One sister held her hand high in praise, in "yes," as she swayed, and soon Badu's eyes were back up on the megascreen in double. The moon returned, bigger and oranger, and the crickets and keys brushed up against each other in pace with Badu's aching voice, musing howgoooditisss, so many different ways and wonderings, until she landed, softly, finally, on a solitary syllable, 000000000.