speech

compare and contrast with:

Erykah Badu's Twinkle

"...this honey-voiced Earth Mother goes down to the well and comes back pissed-off, knives-out, long-winded, half-stoned-- it's a sign of the times. But if you can't hear past the protest funk, ankh worship, cosmology, 1970s-rooted Afrocentrism, dusty grooves, and other superficial signs that this is a retro album, consider the coda to "Twinkle", where a robotic voice recites Howard Beale's televised breakdown from the 1976 film Network and only needs to change "TV" to "flat-screen" and "toaster" to "microwave oven" to modernize it for our terrified hearts and minds. In March, Erykah Badu told Blender that "time is for white people." I think she was making a joke, but whatever helps her take the longview is fine by me. --Mike Powell