I've decided that Erykah Badu must be a Moebius fan. And if she isn't... she f***ing should be!

It's no secret that I love Erykah Badu long time, right? So today I was just listening to a bunch of Erykah Badu joints on youTube while drawing, and the autoplay playlist thingie rolled into this video for Didn't Cha Know. I bought  Mama's Gun, the 2000 album this song comes from, when it was new, but I had never seen this video before. Having heard the song at least a thousand times and being an obviously visual thinker did not prepare me for this:
I immediately thought of the artwork of the late, great french visionary comic book illustrator Jean Giraud, who is perhaps better known to comics fans as Moebius. I'm not sure if Erykah knows Giraud by name, but judging from her album and promo art with frequent collaborator EMEK and this video, I'd say she has seen and enjoyed some Moebius at some point. Besides his comics, Giraud's concept and storyboard work includes iconic films like Alien, The Abyss, and The Fifth Element. Even if Erykah somehow managed to miss seeing his work first hand, Moebius's body of material has had such an impact on movies, comics, graffiti, and other popular art media that it's impossible that she escaped its influence altogether.
Badu's music has always exuded a transcendent quality that is embodied in much of Giraud's catalog, so I'm surprised I never connected them before.

Anyways, if you're reading this Erykah, click here to check out more Moebius, and keep up the great work!

Peace,
-samax
Samax Amen draws people, places and things for fun and profit. He is the artist of many great comics you never heard of like Herman Heed, Champion of Children, The Brother and The World As You Know It. He even writes and draws his own comics, like Dare: The Adventures of Darius Davidson, Spontaneous, and Manchild when he gets around to it. Because making comics is hard and stuff, he started GhettoManga as a blog in 2006 and as a print magazine in 2008. 
GhettoManga.com 
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1 comment:

  1. FOund this postwhile looking to see if Eryka was a Moebius fan. Have you seen this?

    https://www.instagram.com/p/BQzSlmBlGnA/

    ReplyDelete