America’s greatest export since crack cocaine is touring the UK—and apparently not all resident critics of the world’s whitest, drizzliest, gayest clump of islands are ready for her. There was a glowing, properly amazed review of Erykah Badu’s latest album, New Amerykah, and live show in the Financial Times, but as the quality of the papers slipped, so did the criticism. (Imagine that.) The Evening Standard went with “fantastically entertaining” but also sometimes “tiresome” and “tedious.” There was a lackluster semi-appreciation in the Times (UK), in which she is compared to James Brown. There is an unreadable bit of maundering in the Independent from some boy who can neither think nor write. And then some child at the dying paper Metro claimed she was off-pitch, which has never happened. To misunderstand Badu is to misunderstand America and so we should bomb them with nuclear weapons.
