Erykah Badu Shares Story Behind Her First Encounter With D’Angelo’s Music

October 26, 2025

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

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Erykah Badu recounted how a Dallas coffee shop and a D’Angelo album unexpectedly launched her music career during a revealing appearance on The New York Times’ Popcast.

While speaking with hosts Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, the neo-soul singer detailed the moment she first encountered the late D’Angelo’s debut album Brown Sugar while working at Grinders, a coffee shop 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 ultimately reached D’Angelo’s manager Kedar Massenburg—setting her on the path to her music career.

“At that time, I really thought I was on the right path,” she explained. “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 at the Caravan of Dreams venue in Fort Worth. By the end of the night, she had secured a record deal with his manager, Kedar Massenburg.

The podcast episode, which was recorded before D’Angelo’s death earlier this month, offered a rare glimpse into Badu’s early years.

Badu paid tribute to D’Angelo shortly before 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.”

The Grammy-winning artist is currently preparing new material under her label Control FREAQ Records. Her long-awaited collaboration with The Alchemist, titled Abi & Alan, was postponed in August 2025 just hours before its expected release.

Badu is currently on a global tour celebrating the 25th anniversary of her 2000 album Mama’s Gun, while working on her first studio LP since 2010’s New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh.

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