Erykah Badu has emerged as an unlikely admirer of Adolf Hitler, telling a reporter from Variety that she “saw something good” in the Nazi leader.
However the Grammy-award winning singer, described as the Queen of neo-soul, denies she is also a neo-Nazi, telling Variety:
“I mean, I’m not Muslim, I’m not Christian, I’m not anything; I’m an observer who can see good things and bad things. If you say something good about someone, people think it means that you’ve chosen a side. But I don’t choose sides. I see all sides simultaneously.”
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“I don’t even know what anti-Semitic was before I was called it. I’m a humanist. I see good in everybody. I saw something good in Hitler,” she affirmed.
It was the latter comment that drew surprise both on social media and from Marchese himself, who asked in the interview, “Come again?”
“Yeah, I did. Hitler was a wonderful painter,” Badu continued, before going on to add: “Okay, he was a terrible painter. Poor thing. He had a terrible childhood.”
“That means that when I’m looking at my daughter, Mars. I could imagine her being in someone else’s home and being treated so poorly, and what that could spawn,” she explained. “I see things like that. I guess it’s just the Pisces in me.”
Elsewhere in the wide-ranging interview, Erykah Badu was asked what she thought about the #MeToo movement, after a string of allegations of sexual misconduct against prominent men in the entertainment industry, including Harvey Weinstein, Roman Polanski, Louis C.K., and Bill Cosby.
“I love what Bill Cosby has done for the world”
“Even what you just asked me, I would have to really think about it and know the facts in each of those situations before I made a judgment,” she responded.
“Because I love Bill Cosby, and I love what he’s done for the world. But if he’s sick, why would I be angry with him?”
Badu, 46, also acknowledged that she knows she doesn’t have “the most popular opinion sometimes.”
In the interview, the singer — who said she is “gathering ideas” for possible new material after an eight-year break from her last album — also addressed the change in how millennials consume music.
“You can’t roll a joint on the cover of a digital download,” she explained.
You can read the rest of Badu’s startling conversation with Vulture here.
