I have seen Bowie atop a giant glass spider and U2 stuck inside a lemon, but I cannot recall an entrance like Erykah Badu's. Her trademark headwrap has been exaggerated to preposterous proportions. Her bronze- encrusted bag may have once been owned by Boudicca, and her lower body is swathed in what appears to be a sheep. A cross between Eartha Kitt, Ziggy Stardust and Tutankhamen, it's hard to believe that she is a single mother, country girl, and former teacher once called Erica Wright.
Badu is truly the mistress of paradox. She's an ice-cool superstar who confesses, "This is what I look like without make-up, with no bra my ninnies sag down low." She inspired Macy Gray and Lauryn Hill but sings of Billie Holliday. She mentions unity but didn't protest much when a record company plucked her from the hip-hop band she had formed with her cousin. Her public image is that of a sassy mystic, but she has the showbiz mastery of a Gloria Swanson. She pulls every trick in the book - from removing her headgear backed by a drum-roll and telling of a dream in which the world is saved (she tells this every night), to playing guitar on her lap, which conveniently allows her to display an acre of leg. It's incredibly calculated and frequently incredible. And, with her voice sounding like a flock of birds freed from cages and her band in fearsome, funky form, resistance is futile.
After a tiny mid-set lull, the mask begins to drop. Surprisingly, she laughs when an audience cough ruins her scat showcase. But the line "They're trying to fool the black population", sung in darkness, sounds like a hand grenade, and during songs reflecting her break-up from OutKast's Dre, the father of her son, she becomes increasingly abandoned and emotional.
Or does she? Badu blurs the lines between art and artifice, plastic soul and raw feeling. After two hours, you leave exhausted but exhilarated, and, if anything, the nagging suspicion of sleight of hand adds to her mystique. All in a night's work for the tantalising Ms Badu.
Erykah Badu plays Brixton Academy, London SW9 (020-7771 2000), tonight.
