New York, Feb 17: Erykah Badu is looking forward to a very big year. The soul singer says she'll appear on three albums due for release in 2012: her own solo follow-up to 2010's “The New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh),” one with an electronic group called the Cannabinoids and another album with super group Rocket Juice and the Moon, with Flea, Damon Albarn of Blur and drummer Tony Allen.
“I'm at a time now where I'm really being confident and I kind of know what I can do and what I can't do—just honed into it. Good things are happening, real good things, musically. There are no color lines or barriers or genre lines. Not anymore,” Badu said.
Badu also worked with Mos Def and British producer Mark Ronson to create a jazz and New Orleans second-line-inspired song as part of a new documentary, “Re: Generation Music Project.”
Ronson produced a new album from Rufus Wainwright and has a similarly eclectic mix of song making duties ahead of him for the year, including a project for the Royal Ballet in England that features indie musicians like Andrew Wyatt from Miike Snow and Alison Mosshart of the Kills.
“I'm working on a few records. I did this song with Katy B for the Olympics, the London Olympics, which is like the Coke theme song. Coca-Cola, not the other coke. And yeah—just keep making music,” he said.
Badu interrupts to joke: “I'm the new spokesperson for the other coke. They getting ready to legalize coke. And they need a face. It's gonna be me.”
Ronson asks, “Do you need a vice president?”
More seriously, Ronson said he approved of the first posthumous album of Amy Winehouse material, “Lioness: Hidden Treasures.” He won a Grammy for producing her breakout CD “Back to Black.”
“I don't have any issues. I thought the Amy record that the family put together was good. I only did one song on it,” he said. “And there was one song that we had lying around that was an outtake of ‘Valerie.' And there was nothing on there that I don't think that she was proud of so that's really all that you can say.”
