page_title: New Amerykah Part One (4th World War)
section_title: Lyrics and themes
hierarchical_section_title: New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) / Lyrics and themes
caption_attribution_description: Urban decay. Falsas Promesas Broken Promises, John Fekner, Charlotte Street Stencils, South Bronx, NY 1980. John Fekner
context_page_description: New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) is the fourth studio album by American R&B singer-songwriter Erykah Badu. It was released on February 26, 2008, by Universal Motown.
  After a hiatus from recording music due to writer's block, Badu received music from several hip hop producers over the Internet and recorded demos of her vocals using the GarageBand software on her laptop. Most of the album was then recorded at Electric Lady Studios in New York City.
  New Amerykah Part One is an esoteric concept album titled as a pun on Badu's first name and a reflection of the record's political leanings. It features social commentary and themes related to the plight of the African-American community, including poverty, urban violence, complacency, and cultural identity. The record's densely produced music incorporates hip hop, soul, funk, jazz, and electronica styles.
  The album debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 chart, eventually selling 359,000 copies in the United States by December 2009. Two singles were released in support of the album—"Honey" and "Soldier"—and Badu performed its music on her Vortex World Tour.
context_section_description: Lyrically, New Amerykah Part One is an esoteric concept album with sociopolitical themes and mostly downbeat subject matter. It features more impersonal topics and social commentary than on Badu's previous work. Its subject matter deals with social concerns and struggles within the African-American community, exploring topics such as institutional racism, religion, poverty, urban violence, the abuse of power, complacency, drug addiction, and nihilism. Badu said she wrote about "poor families, the undermining of the working class, the so-called minority."
  According to New York critic Nitsuh Abebe, the record's main theme is the struggle for African Americans to determine their cultural identity in light of the "Civil Rights and post-Civil Rights" era. In Ratliff's opinion, the album's subject matter has been explored before by Mayfield, Marvin Gaye, and Funkadelic, which "suggests that little has changed in nearly 40 years, and perhaps ... that's her point." Quentin B. Huff from PopMatters believed that like Suzanne Vega's 2007 album Beauty & Crime, New Amerykah Part One also incorporated "a post-9/11 worldview, plus a few shots of community spirit, individual growth, pleas for social activism and spiritual enlightenment, and ... the realities of death." He felt that like the "clash in musical styles", some songs "seem committed to having America honor" the promise of the American Dream for African-Americans, while other songs "seem to reject the promise, or at least the idea that the promise can be fulfilled without considerable effort".
  Badu's songwriting is characterized by pointillism, stream of consciousness, and scenic narrative. Her lyrics are alternately overtly political and deeply personal, interlaced with Five Percenter notions and references to the Nation of Islam. Badu expresses a motherly perspective and feelings of dismay and empathy for the subjects in the songs. Charles Aaron commented that "a sense of history and maternal compassion ... grounds even her most oblique forays." Abebe wrote similarly, "her keen writing about people" gives songs "much of their shape" and views that her candor helps communicate the album's "social concerns, which could otherwise sound like a laundry list of black-community struggles".
caption: Badu's lyrics make reference to urban decay,[35] disfranchisement,[36] and unfulfilled promises of the American Dream.[30] A South Bronx slum (pictured in 1980), an exemplar of the government's abandonment of cities in the 1970s and 1980s; the text reads "BROKEN PROMISES".
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