“Anybody who is a Dilla fan has hundreds of Dilla tracks. Because he did a lot of beat tapes and passed them out. On the first New Amerykah I had a Dilla dedication track called “The Healer” which was done by Madlib. For the Return of The Ankh album I recorded a Dilla track called “Love,” which was from 1998. I’ve always loved it. Because for New Amerykah Part Two, it fit emotionally and melodically. It was a return of the feeling…the emotion of Baduizm. That emotion that I felt during Baduizm is what I felt when I was recording New Amerykah One & Two. I thought it was very fair to attribute the second album to the Ankh—the return to life. It has a very feminine energy. Return of the Ankh is also very much a hint to society that it is time for the woman to return to her seat next to the man.
The reaction to the “Window Seat” video didn’t teach me anything. It confirmed exactly what I said would happen in the video. Once you walk a path and you shed all the things and labels that people put on you—the things they teach you in school and church—you are venerable and naked to an assassination. Whether it’s your character or worst. Once you don’t believe what the group believes they usually group up out of fear to kill your ideas and your thoughts because they don’t understand. How can she not be like us? How dare she have her own identity and ideas? How dare she not wear the latest fashions? How can she mock us like that? That’s what happened in the video and after the video [laughs]. This is what you call group think. Individuals are afraid to go outside the group’s thinking fearing that they will be assassinated.
That’s the biggest crime on humanity. By doing this you are cheating us all out of greatness. Was I happy with the reception of [New Amerykah Two]? I don’t know. I don’t think a lot of people heard it [laughs]. I didn’t know I was going to be in the 6 o’ clock news for the “Window Seat” video. I was just in the mode of a performance artist…in the tradition of Josephine Baker, Nina Simone, Yoko Ono…nudity is often used in performance art to bring attention to an important issue. The whole point of performance art is used to create dialogue. And the dialogue does not have to be something that the people agree or disagree with. It’s about making people think, talk and feel. That’s what art is all about. It’s a very sacred thing to me. I feel music in me, right now. So I’m going to go somewhere and get it out. I’ve had another child and I am having a love affair with a very beautiful man (respected lyricist Jay Electronica). I have something to say; there’s something in me that needs to come out. And that’s what music is for me…its therapy. I don’t know if I’m a role model or any of those things that people want me to be. But I have to be who I am. And I do that best of all.”
