The Cannabinoids featuring Erykah Badu
Auditorium Shores Stage, March 21To answer the question: No, the Cannabinoids featuring Erykah Badu weren’t worth seeing. As a matter of fact, the hour the packed crowd at Auditorium Shores spent waiting for Badu to show up was a complete waste of time. The Cannabinoids, Badu’s 11-man DJ collective, used eight MacBooks and a couple of keyboards to do what a single laptop could do. A DJ hollered, “Are y’all ready for Erykah Badu?” every few minutes until the crew walked offstage to some vague announcement of Badu’s tardiness and a few well-deserved boos. They came back 10 minutes later with the frontwoman and Dallas native, who was on for 10 minutes, singing “The Healer” and “Danger” and noodling on a drum machine before shouting, “South by Southwest, let’s blow up the sky!” alien-speak for “Explosions in the Sky are up next.” Then she left. One disgruntled attendee summed it up succinctly: “Erykah Ba-don’t.”
This article appears in March 27 • 2009.