Erykah Badu + The Roots

Erykah Badu broke in the first wave of the neo-soul movement along with Lauryn Hill, Angie Stone and Macy Gray, but the singer quickly revealed herself too quirky to be so easily categorized. Rather than align herself with vintage revivalists, Badu buddied up with hip-hop acts Common, Outkast (her marriage to Andre 3000 must have made for one colorful closet) and her current tour opener, the Roots. In place of slick commercial quiet-storm ballads, Badu embraced Afrocentrism and Black American psychedelia.

Ten years have passed since her last proper album, Mama’s Gun (though the 2003 EP Worldwide Underground runs nearly an hour), and the new one, New Amerykah Part One (4th World War), like D’Angelo’s “Voodoo,” is a murky descendent of Sly Stone’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On. The record pulls from such unlikely sources as Yamasuki (a French-Japanese samurai-led funk choir) and Sidney Lumet’s Network, and brings to mind Funkadelic and Radiohead. Badu’s willful, growing eccentricities and left-of-centerness don’t lessen her continually stellar performances: On stage her sense of humor shines as brightly as her musical instincts.

The Roots support their latest, Rising Down. ?uestlove roughed up his precise drumming, which in the past edged toward robotics, and the group sounds funkier than ever. If the Philadelphia legends wear a chink in their armor, it’s that the percussionist remains far more interesting than the MC. In concert, however, the group sits atop the hip-hop mountain.