Erykah Badu Shows Off New Braids in Filter vs. No

Aug 27, 2023

The "Bag Lady" singer is known for her ultra-thin braids, which, at times, have been floor-length

Erykah Badu/Instagram

Erykah Badu is feeling her new hairstyle.

The "On & On" singer, 52, posted a selfie video on Instagram on Tuesday, showing her 6.2 million followers her freshly braided hair. In the clip, she could be seen admiring and running her fingers over the ultra-thin braids as she panned the camera around to capture different angles of herself.

Midway through the video, she gave a small smile and said, "Let's see what it look like with no filter." Her freckles disappeared and her shimmery eye makeup was less visible. "This is nothing at all," she said.

She captioned the post, "Clean. Renew. Refresh. Smile. Trust yourself. Dance in the moonlight."

Badu's fans had a lot to say about the hair video. "The sounds of your braids gave me brain tingles ✨," one person jokingly commented.

"No filter is required mama!! But they are fun," another wrote. Quite a few followers let emojis do the talking for them, commenting with lots of fire symbols and heart-eye faces.

In 2016, the musician offered a little insight into the process of creating her trademark braids. While being interviewed by The New York Times in her Manhattan hotel room, her hairstylist arrived to tend to her braids, which were nearly floor-length at the time. Badu explained that she liked to have her hair "touched up" every two to four weeks to keep up with new growth.

That night's braiding session lasted nearly six hours. “I wanted [the braids] to be as thin as the lines on your hand,” Badu said, estimating at the time that she had thousands of braids, each taking about eight to 15 minutes to do by hand.

Badu told the outlet that she'd wanted to have her hair in braids ever since she was a young girl, when she saw a drawing in a Dallas shop of two women with very long braids. "I think that’s me, I feel that energy," she recalled.

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Andrew J Cunningham/Getty

Badu likely squeezed her recent hair refresh session into a very busy schedule. The "Didn't Cha Know" singer is not only a mom to three children — son Seven, 25, and daughters Puma, 19, and Mars, 14, but she also moonlights as a practicing doula alongside her music career. She's even helped deliver famous friends' babies, including Teyana Taylor's second child.

“I became a doula by default," she previously told Pitchfork. "I had [son] Seven naturally at home, and a couple of years later I was traveling through Europe, and one of my best friends, Afya, who is the wife of stic.man from dead prez, went into labor,” Badu explained.

“I naturally knew what to do, and it was then that I figured out that this was something I can do that makes me so fulfilled,” she continued.