Badu Bares All for "Window Seat"

Erykah Badu bares her booty in the name of art? What have we here?

At the stroke of 3:33 on Saturday, ErykahBadu.com débuted “Window Seat,” a clip for the midtempo first single to New Amerykah Pt.2: Return of the Ankh, out this week. Acknowledging its inspiration from “Matt and Kim” (more on them later) in its opening frame, director Kareem Johnson then begins “Window Seat” with Badu parking her Lincoln Continental on St. Patrick’s Day, somewhere near Dealey Plaza in Dallas: the infamous “grassy knoll” where JFK was assassinated.

We hear the famous KBOX live radio announcement from November 22, 1963, moments before President Kennedy was killed: “The president’s car is now turning onto Elm Street, and it will be only a matter of minutes before he arrives at the TradeMart. I was on Stemmons Freeway earlier, and even the freeway was jam-packed with spectators waiting their chance to see the president as he made his way toward the TradeMart.”

Badu pays her meter as the song begins, walking slowly but assuredly down the street. Then she starts to undress. First her shades, then her jacket, shoes, purple hoodie. Then she crosses the street and strips her shirt, revealing a black bra and an EVOLVING tattoo across her back. Then the pants go, Badu strolling in bra and panties. She’s thick, but she told you that. (See “Booty.”) Then the bra goes. Then, the panties. And Badu takes a few more strides completely naked, bystanders relatively tame about the whole thing. Then, a bang.

Badu falls to the ground, blue blood spilling out of her head spelling GROUPTHINK. For those of us a little slower on the uptake, we get this voiceover:

“They play it safe. Are quick to assassinate what they do not understand. They move in packs, ingesting more and more fear with every act of hate on one another. They feel most comfortable in groups, less guilt to swallow. They are us. This is what we have become. Afraid to respect the individual. A single person within a circumstance can move one to change, to love our Self, to evolve.”

Beat that, Lady Gaga! Twitter immediately blew up, followed by Facebook once “Window Seat” got uploaded to YouTube. Using Twitter herself—she’s @fatbellybella—Erykah vowed to follow the first 100 Twitter users with dope definitions of groupthink (first defined by journalist William H. Whyte in a 1952 Fortune magazine).

Less than an hour ago, Erykah started explaining herself a little. She told her kids what she was about to do before the shoot; discussed it with her moms; checked her panties before stripping off her sweats because she “didn’t remember what kind of undies i wore that day.”

But what does it all mean?

You tell me, I wanna hear from you.

To me, it’s not that heavy. I mean, what could it mean? We generally make these things deeper than they have to be. On my first viewing, I saw it as the death of selling ass as a way to sell units. (Lady Gaga gets a lil naked too in her (yes, fabulous) new video, “Telephone.”) Along with that, a healthy dose of food for thought about groupthink. Which is mob mentality. Which most of us know all about already, but might school the young’uns a little, once (if?) they get beyond the shock of Badu’s ass.

See for your