Id: So over the past few days I’ve been spending a lot of time with Erykah Badu’s New Amerykah, Pt. 1: 4th World War (2008).

Ego: Yeah? God, what a pretentious title. How awful is it? I imagine it’s a train wreck as knotty as that fake Pam Grier ‘fro she’s often seen sporting. Come on, let’s don our First Impression Haiku hats and unleash some hating!

Id: Well, it’s… uh. (sigh) See, here’s the thing. It’s really good.

Ego: …

Id: …

Ego: You’re joking, right?

Id: (sheepishly) Afraid not.

Ego: We are talking about the same Erykah Badu, right? The “neo-Soul” queen who baby-dolled herself onto the chorus of every hip hop record for a solid five years around the turn of the millennium, exhausting herself creatively with the utterly wasteful Worldwide Underground (2003) before almost disappearing completely? The Badu notoriously responsible for destroying rappers’ careers and the inspiration behind OhWord.com’s most hilarious feature to date?

Id: The same.

Ego: Who fed you this nonsense? Have you been trolling around the Okayplayer message board again? Jesus, we talked about this.

Id: No, it was Dart Adams. I actually went out and purchased New Amerykah based on his recommendation. So, you know. Blogs stay winning.

Ego: Wait, let me guess: it’s got some killer guest spots, right? I mean, that’s the only thing that would make it redeemable.

Id: No, and that’s part of the reason why it’s so refreshing. Other than the producer credits – 9th Wonder, Madlib, the dudes from Sa-Ra, ?uestlove – and an appearance from Georgia Anne Muldrow, the spotlight is strictly on Erykah.

Ego: Yeah, but see, that’s exactly what would turn me off about it. Badu croaking over the same run-of-the-mill, Fender Rhodes-laced Roots backing tracks? No, thanks.

Id: But wait – the music is the best part! It’s got a weird, edgy, funky thing that veers from a lost Roy Ayers soundtrack to wildly experimental and, dare I say, almost avant-garde. And Badu doesn’t try to compete with it, or do that over-enunciating syllables thing that was mad annoying on Mama’s Gun (2000) and Worldwide Underground. Take a listen to “Me” and tell me you can’t nod your head uncontrollably to that shit.

Ego: It’s two chords. For nearly five minutes.

Id: But listen to what’s happening inside those two chords. First of all, there’s this subtle, wow-and-flutter pitch discrepancy going on that I love and wish more artists would do. Why does everything always have to be in perfect 440-hertz Western tuning? And that disjointed bassline – it sounds like Shafiq Husayn (the Sa-Ra member) chopped it up into microfragments on his MPC and deliberately reassembled the digital snippets haphazardly. The beat not only knocks, but it’s also got that latent Dilla shuffle where the hi-hats aren’t synched correctly with the tempo. Plus, those trumpets are gorgeous. Seriously, I probably listened to this track five times before I even realized that Badu was singing on it.

“Me” – Erykah Badu 5:36 (New Amerykah Pt. 1: 4th World War, Motown 2008)

Ego: I could see how you’d be all over this. But what about the rest of the album?

Id: Well, let’s dissect a bit. “Twinkle” is built upon this stuttering, collapsing rhythm with Morse-code keyboards and punctuating sheets of white noise. “My People” updates Eddie Kendricks‘ “My People… Hold On” as interpreted by Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi collective. “Telephone” is the Dilla tribute and ?uestlove collaboration with a lush, spaced-out atmosphere that borders on transcendence. Then there’s “The Cell,” which I can’t even wrap my head around: an overcompressed Afrobeat groove, a distorted guitar, and a spidery, nervous bassline that sounds like Jaco Pastorius on crack. I’ve never heard anything like it.

“The Cell” – Erykah Badu 4:20 (New Amerykah Pt. 1: 4th World War, Motown 2008)

Ego: Funny, you just happened to gush all over the record without even mentioning Badu’s own contributions.

Id: Lyrically, she’s treading the same ground of social commentary peppered with a track or two about relationships and the (yawn) power of contemporary Black music. I’m not saying the record is impeccable; there are some between-song interludes with no replay value at all and some vain musical overindulgences on Badu’s part.

Ego: Does she still refer to herself as the “analog girl in a digital world”?

Id: No.

Ego: You may be swimming against a tidal wave here. I’ve read quite a few scathing reviews of this album, most of them from longtime fans.

Id: That’s because people want another Baduizm (1997). They want those same predictable, silky late-night grooves with swinging basslines and plenty of rim shots that don’t completely change course mid-song, blatantly flirt with abstraction, or end abruptly. Honestly, that’s what I was expecting, and I’m glad she did the opposite and experimented with her sound. In a way, it makes the listening experience more intimate and personal. She took a pretty big risk here, and at the very least you’ve got to give her credit for that, even if it doesn’t always pay off.

Ego: Speaking of risks, you’re gambling pretty big with this lame critic-arguing-with-himself format here. I didn’t know Pitchfork was looking for new writers.

Id: Why don’t you go somewhere and obsess about Enslaved or something?