Anyone who has ever followed Erykah Badu’s career knows that the artist is talented and very opinionated.
In November 2015, Erykah Badu went on Zane Lowe’s Beats show and released an amazing song list. Recently, that song list, along with “who” the artist dedicated the list to has received some attention.
Now, you may be thinking, “I bet she dedicated those songs to her loved ones, family, or friends…” Not so. Badu decided to make a statement — one we happen to agree with — and dedicated her music mix to the bees. Yes, bees — as in honey and bumble.
“+++BEATS BEES LIKE FOR B-BOYS AND B-GIRLS+++,” the title of Badu’s mix, is filled with amazing tunes from artists such as Sun Ra, DeBarge, and more. Badu published the mix with a pretty hilarious and quite poignant note: “Save the bees, else we aint gone have no where to fight and discriminate… cause they aint have’n that shit on MARS.”
Badu’s mix became even more… appropriate? needed? … this past week.
On February 26, CNN published a post that reports that “bees, birds, butterflies and beetles are among a growing list of pollinator species in jeopardy of global extinction, a United Nations study warns, a trend that could threaten the world’s food supply.”
According to the two-year study, titled “Thematic Assessment of Pollinators, Pollination and Food Production,” these creatures as well as other pollinators could face extinction thanks to “diverse pressures, many of them human-made.”
“Pollinators are important contributors to world food production and nutritional security,” Vera Lucia Imperatriz-Fonseca, Ph.D., co-chair of the assessment and Senior Professor at the University of São Paulo, says. “Their health is directly linked to our own well-being.”
You can read more about how pollinators are at risk here. And while you’re reading that sobering research, you may as well stream Badu’s killer mix on MixCloud.
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Image of Erykah Badu via Shutterstock