Ever wanted to hang with Erykah Badu? Here's your chance.
This Sunday, Nov. 29, BET airs the Soul Train Awards, which was hosted by none other than Dallas' resident diva Badu. And she's hosting a free watching party at the Black Academy of Arts and Letters to celebrate.
The show doesn't start until 7 p.m. CST, but you'll want to get there earlier. Tickets, which are complimentary, can only be picked up in person at the TBAAL box office at its downtown location beginning at 4 p.m. There's a limit four tickets per person. Doors to the Naomi Bruton Main Stage theater, which seats 1,750, open at 5 p.m.
Badu previously hosted the Soul Train Awards in 1998, according to the Associated Press. This time around, the awards show made her associate producer.
"I thought that, 'Hey, this is a great opportunity to expose myself to this naked place. This place that I had not been welcomed before,'" Badu told AP.
"I'm known for the singing, and stuff like that. No one knows that I direct all my videos and write all of the treatments. No one knows that I do all of my own artwork. No one knows that, you know, this is me. I pick my clothes out. No one knows any of those things. So I think that it's a good time to start exposing my art to the air."
Badu's appearance comes on the heels of a new mixtape, But You Can't Use My Phone, which drops Friday. Badu alluded to special guests in her interview with AP, but declined to comment on which would be featured. It all started with her Internet-shattering remix of Drake's "Hotline Bling."
"And I just stayed in that studio, in the bedroom, and I just kept writing songs, making songs, writing songs. And about 10 days later, I had this mixtape," she said.
But You Can't Use My Phone will be the topper to an epic year in Badu World. The singer initiated the newish-oldish, either way big deal venue Bomb Factory, performed a one-woman show that included nudity, and won the Ella Fitzgerald Award from Montreal Jazz Fest to name a few of the milestones.
The forecast for Sunday is chilly with a good chance of rain, but bet your bottom dollar inside TBAAL it will groovy with a side of soul music.
