Erykah Badu remembers how discovering D’Angelo’s “Brown Sugar” and connecting along with his supervisor at SXSW jump-started her rise in music.

Erykah Badu recounted how a Dallas espresso store and a D’Angelo album unexpectedly launched her music profession throughout a revealing look on The New York Times’ Popcast.

While talking with hosts Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, themusic/erykah-badu-interview-popcast.html”> neo-soul singer detailed the second she first encountered the late D’Angelo’s debut album Brown Sugar whereas working at Grinders, a espresso store on Greenville Avenue in Dallas.

“I first met D’Angelo’s music… I was working at a coffee shop in Dallas, Texas, called Grinders,” Badu recalled. “Somebody was playing D’Angelo’s new album, Brown Sugar. It was so refreshing to me, because I was working on music and really wanted to meet him and make something with him.”

Iinspired by his sound, she handed her demo to a contact at SXSW, which in the end reached D’Angelo’s supervisor Kedar Massenburg—setting her on the trail to her music profession.

“At that time, I really thought I was on the right path,” she defined. “I didn’t have anyone to kill the dream. I just believed the things I believed and kept them to myself and they just began to happen, one thing after the other.”

She later opened for D’Angelo on the Caravan of Dreams venue in Fort Worth. By the top of the evening, she had secured a report take care of his supervisor, Kedar Massenburg.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Popcast (@popcast)

The podcast episode, which was recorded earlier than D’Angelo’s loss of life earlier this month, supplied a uncommon glimpse into Badu’s early years.

Erykah Badu Gives D’Angelo His Flowers

Badu paid tribute to D’Angelo shortly earlier than his passing, writing on Instagram “I had never heard or seen anything like this in this world. He had an old thing that had been hidden , buried for a long time , I recognized it right away.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by UNICORN – we dont buy bots – all organic (@erykahbadu)

The Grammy-winning artist is at the moment getting ready new materials underneath her label Control FREAQ Records. Her long-awaited collaboration with The Alchemist, titled Abi & Alan, was postponed in August 2025 simply hours earlier than its anticipated launch.

Badu is at the moment on a worldwide tour celebrating the twenty fifth anniversary of her 2000 album Mama’s Gun, whereas engaged on her first studio LP since 2010’s New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh.

Related