Let’s play trivia.
Question 1: What is Erykah Badu’s most undisputed classic?
[answer in your head]
Wrong. The correct answer is But You Cain’t Use My Phone.
I should caveat that I am an ignorant and biased host and judge of this game. I had to google “Erykah Badu discography” to come up with any other option besides Baduizm. I don’t know her music well. Throughout my life, I heard all the legends about her. In 2010, backstage at Lollapalooza, I confirmed them to be true. She walked past me like a deity, or at least the highest priest in a sect that summons the universe’s most pleasing vibrations. Onstage, she crushed it.
Then she walked back to her trailer, and went on hiatus for five years.*
Question 2: Why is But You Cain’t Use My Phone an undisputed classic?
The album has been out for longer than five years. Every song on it is great, crucial, memorable. Listening to it now takes me back to the time when I enjoyed it most, but I continue to enjoy it in the present context. Those are the criteria for the game show. Didn’t the producers prep you for this? What are we all doing here anyways? These lights are hot. I’m sweating. I’m taking off my jacket.
Look, I already admitted I’m not a Badu discography expert but Wikipedia tells me she dropped this “mixtape” instead of the third installment in the New Amerykah series, after traveling through Africa “in an attempt to record new music.” It’s a mixtape because she records her own lyrics over popular tracks. Although she and bedroom producer Zach Witness completed the whole project in 11 days, with no time for meticulous perfectionalism, every piece is in the correct place. The style changes, but the tone is consistent. Any thematic deviation feels purposeful.
When it came out, the tone and theme of But You Cain’t Use My Phone connected with me for the same unfortunate reason it still does: it’s all about cell phones. I am so addicted to my phone I hope the NSA is directly submitting my average weekly Screen Time statistics to the Guinness Book of World Records.
Question 3: Name the top 4 most impactful lines from But You Caint Use My Phone, and explain how they relate to the mixtape’s theme and lead to its official designation as an undisputed classic.
Okay, now this is sounding like a high school English test. I don’t really know why I’m doing the game show schtick, so I’m going to abruptly drop it like But You Caint Use My Phone showing up on Apple Music on November 27, 2015.
But I am going to answer the question I proposed to myself, and name the top 4 most impactful lines from But You Caint Use My Phone, and explain how they relate to the mixtape’s theme and lead to its official designation as an undisputed classic. Or, like Badu during her 2010-2015 hiatus, I’m going to “attempt to.”
“You can call me but you can’t use my phone.”
Before the 45 second intro-like “Hi,” where Badu mesmerizingly says “hello hello, hey hello, hello,” over and over again, “Caint Use My Phone (Suite)” opens the tape by introducing melodies that will reappear later throughout. The beeping of a dial tone changes pitch and arranges into one such melodic sequence. Synths swell up underneath. Then Badu sings: “You can call me but you can’t use my phone.”
It didn’t occur to me until this morning, listening to the album nearly nine years after its release, through my iPhone speakers, that this line is a sad but true reflection of many individuals’ personal relationships with their handheld devices. You can call it. But you can’t use it.
The feeling that overcomes me when my phone is not in my hand or pocket is indescribably uncomfortable. Anxiety spikes. What if I need to drive somewhere? How will I know how to get there? Am I supposed to listen to the radio? What if I see a funny vanity license plate? Is that just supposed to be a memory?
This feeling is amplified when my phone is within my sight, but in the hands of someone else. I don’t even have anything salacious in the photo app. I’m not texting anyone I shouldn’t be. My DMs are embarrassingly untouched. I still don’t want anyone else besides me using my cel-u-lar device. What if they open the Notes app, and see the unfinished version of this article about But You Cain’t Use My Phone that I’m writing while pacing around naked in front of my open window?
I’m like a toddler struggling to grasp the concept of sharing. That phone is MINE.
I don’t know if Badu had any of this in mind, but this is the interpretation that’s sticking with me this morning. It is a weird impulse to both want to use your phone so much and not want anyone else to use it.
2. “I can make you put your phone down.”
Instantly, upon release, “Phone Down” became the most romantic song in human history. If everyone else is as addicted to their phone as I am, and so unwilling to share it, what could be sexier than getting someone to put it down?
There are trends of couples putting their phones down and actually talking to each other, then getting ridiculed for sharing that they have conversations on social media. There was the whole fad of dinner guests putting their phones in a pile, and handing the check to whoever caved in first. It’s clear that much of humanity is feeling that horrendous itch whenever their device isn’t glowing at their face. We are all addicted. Whether phones are causing colony collapse of bees, as Badu suggests on “Dial’Afreaq,” or they’re undermining democracy or causing mass hysteria, it’s 100% evident that we spend way too much time staring at these things. And we can’t stop. Nothing has changed since this mixtape came out.
The beat of this song is so good. Badu saying “I can make you put your phone down” over and over is hypnotic. She says “Leave it at the crib guarantee you wouldn’t miss it,” and I almost believe her.
3. “U used to call me.”
The flashy crux of this mixtape is “Cel U Lar Device,” a hastily recorded remix of Drake’s “Hotline Bling,” then the lone inescapable airborne virus plaguing the world. I used to hate Drake on principle, so Badu’s version allowed me to enjoy the undeniable hit guilt-free. Her hook changes are effective in their minimalism. Drake says “You used to call me on my cell, phone,” with the word “cell phone” splitting across the beat unevenly. That slight jarringness likely contributed to the song’s success, but Badu flipping it back to a clean staccato take makes the remix something different. Her voice stabs in sync with the beat rather than falling over it, with a precise: “U used to call me on my cel, u, lar, de, vice, at, night.”
There’s a depressing contrast between the flirtatious “You can call me” at the tape’s opening and the blunt recognition of “U used to call me” on its biggest song.
The motif returns two songs later on “U Use to Call Me,” which features a Badu protege I knew nothing about until just now named ItsRoutine. I’m pretty sure I actually thought that was Drake rapping until I looked it up. Apparently other people also think ItsRoutine sounds a lot like Drake. That makes that song even better, somehow.
4. “U don’t have to call. It’s okay, squirrel.”
You can call. I can make you put your phone down. U used to call me. U Don’t Have to Call.
This sounds like the logical progression of most doomed relationships. We’re not doing trivia anymore but correct me if I’m wrong, judges. It starts with an openness, an allure that overpowers even the greatest addiction. Then it trails off, and there’s either regret or acceptance. Then you move on, and you don’t have to call.
I’m not trying to say that this album is about Badu’s relationship with Andre 3000, who performs an incredible duet with Badu on “Hello” like only amicable, incredibly talented musical genius co-parents could do. Except that for some reason someone told me that her nickname for him was “squirrel,” and that’s why she sings “It’s okay, squirrel.” That theory was debunked in a Reddit AMA 8 years ago. She wanted a word that rhymed with “girl” but could be about a boy, that’s it.
I’m more trying to stretch an analogy and propose that maybe our collective relationships with our phones will follow this same trajectory. They were exciting when they came out. We didn’t want to be with anyone else. Maybe some day we’ll forget about them. And they’ll try to come back, but we won’t need them. At that point, we’ll probably all have chips in our heads or goggles on our eyes and iPhones will be the equivalent of vinyl. Or maybe we’ll touch grass and return to the earth from whence we came. Nah. Our phones never get old and neither does this album slash mixtape. Listen to itttttttttttttttt.
*But You Can’t Fact Check Me