Erykah Badu was pregnant on stage. The singer recorded her concert album Live while carrying her son Seven, and when the record hit stores on November 18, 1997, its release lined up with his birth. She had put out her debut album, Baduizm, earlier that same year.
Two albums in one year, a baby, and a song nobody in the US could buy as a single. Live still went double platinum in the United States, and that song, “Tyrone,” became the tune many fans call her signature. The album turns 29 next Wednesday.
The hit you could not buy
“Tyrone” was written by Badu with keyboardist Norman “Keys” Hurt and recorded in concert. Universal sent it to urban radio on October 27, 1997, three weeks before the album, and never sold it as a single in the US.
That choice locked it out of the main US singles chart, whose rules at the time barred songs that were played on radio but not sold in stores. It still climbed to No. 1 on the R&B/hip hop airplay chart, Badu’s third chart-topper there, and reached No. 62 on the overall radio songs list across five weeks. In the Netherlands it peaked at No. 19 and stayed 15 weeks.
Fans did not need a chart position. Badu has used “Tyrone” as her encore for years, and the name keeps resurfacing: the 2000 comedy Next Friday nods to it when a character named Tyrone fakes a phone call, Beyoncé name-checked it in “Kitty Kat” in 2006, and the 2023 movie They Cloned Tyrone rolls its closing credits to a modified take on the song.
What is on the record
Live runs 74 minutes and 42 seconds across 14 tracks, cut at Sony’s studio in New York. It mixes Baduizm favorites with cover songs and deep cuts:
- An opening “Rimshot” intro built on Miles Davis’s jazz standard “So What”
- Covers of Chaka Khan and Rufus’s “Stay” and Roy Ayers’s “Searchin'”
- A medley of Heatwave’s “Boogie Nights,” the Mary Jane Girls’ “All Night Long” and Tom Browne’s “Funkin’ for Jamaica”
- A 12-minute “Next Lifetime,” the longest track on the disc
Her band was lean: Charles “Poogie” Bell Jr. on drums, Hubert Eaves IV on bass, Hurt on keys, and backing vocals from Karen Bernod, N’dambi and Joyce M. Strong. “Otherside of the Game” carries co-writing credits for Questlove and The Roots, the Philadelphia band whose rapper is profiled in Badiyaa’s story on how Black Thought and El Michels Affair built Glorious Game.
A year in numbers
Baduizm debuted at No. 2 on the US albums chart and went triple platinum. Live peaked at No. 4 and No. 1 on the R&B/hip hop albums chart, then went double platinum. Add the two and Badu shipped at least five million albums in the US from releases dated inside a single calendar year.
The live set was nominated for Best R&B Album at the 1999 Grammys, while “Tyrone” was up for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance. Her next studio album, Mama’s Gun, would not arrive until 2000. For more anniversaries from the era, browse Badiyaa’s entertainment section, including the 30th birthday of Lil’ Kim’s Hard Core.
Live’s 29th anniversary falls on Wednesday, November 18.
Further reading
Image: Cameron Woods, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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