Erykah Badu accepted Soul Train’s highest honor last month. One thing missing from her tribute was performances from admiring artists — until now. Nao hopped behind a mic to cover Badu’s “Bad Lady” for beautiful in-studio performance.
Backed by a soft electric guitar and minimal hand claps, Nao keeps the melody of the baggage heavy track intact while adding her own “wonky funk” flare.
In October, Nao released her sophomore work, Saturn. She will launch a 19-date U.S. tour in support of the record in January.
“[Saturn] takes you on a journey through my own personal experiences with that: the breakup, the loss of home, feeling ungrounded, losing my sense of self, going to a dark place—like on ‘Make It Out Alive,’ wondering how I’d get out of this feeling—but as you go through the album it begins to get a bit more hopeful,” she explained to Keryce Chelsi Henry of Forbes. “So, the album is based on my growing up and loads of self-discovery that all exploded from this one moment from separating from this person I had been with for a long time.”
Watch her soul cover below.
