Here’s the cover and tracklisting for Erykah Badu’s latest album, New AmErykah, Pt. One: 4th World War. It’s a double disc with 18 songs that will be spread over two separately sold discs. The release date for Part 1 is scheduled for February 26, 2008.

01. American Promise
02. The Healer
03. Me
04. My People
05. Speech
06. Soldier 7
07. The Cell
08. Twinkle
09. Love Me
10. Honey (Produced by 9th Wonder)
11. Emotions
12. Don’t Be Long
13. YPOM
14. Hot Slow Jam
15. Jump Up in the Air
16. Loretta Brown
17. Dirty Dirty
18. The Healer Outro

Also the video for the single, Honey, was released on last week.

I saw Erykah Badu’s video for Other Side of the Game on VH1 Soul this morning. Every time I watch this video, I’m reminded of how this was my life at one time. From my senior year of high school until my sophomore year of college, I dated a drug dealer. And at the time, it wasn’t a big deal to me…………until fate stepped in.

My boyfriend, Rod (not his real name), was a very bright young man. He was valedictorian of his class with a scholarship to an Ivy League school, but chose to follow me to an HBCU instead. We had it all planned out, how we were going to get married, have children and become entrepreneurs. But his idea of entrepreneurialship differed from mine.

His cousin introduced him to the game. Rod had a taste for fast money and used his smarts to branch out on his own and deal. He had his own condo and a Benz at age 19. We would travel to various places and always stayed in expensive hotels. I can’t front, I liked the way he pampered me, but I wanted him to use his smarts to live a more honest life. Why go to college if you’re dealing? I couldn’t grasp that concept. The irony of it.

During the winter break of my sophomore year of college, that part of my life with Rod changed. While at home during the holidays, I got ill. Turns out that I had a cyst the size of a grapefruit attached to my left ovary and left fallopian tube. So surgery was in my immediate future.

The night before my surgery, Rod was supposed to pick me up for a date, but my mother thought that I should stay home and rest for the impending surgery that was to occur the next day. Out of all of the years that my mom had known Rod, she had no idea that he sold drugs. And I’d never told her.

Anyway, upon my mother’s wishes, I stayed home that night. Rod never showed, which was unlike him. I kept calling him all night, but no answer. The next day, my mother and brother accompanied me to the hospital for surgery. Still no Rod.

When I got out of recovery, still no Rod. When I woke up in my hospital room, I asked my mother if Rod had shown up and she replied, “No, sweetie. He hasn’t been here.” So I’m now lying in my hospital bed, in pain from surgery, and my mom is reading the newspaper. She sees a blurb in the paper about a young man shot in his car in an apparent drug deal gone bad. Rod was that young man.

I was devastated by the news and my mother was in a state of shock, because again, she’d never known about that part of his life. And had it not been for my mother making me stay home that night before surgery, I probably would have been in that car with Rod. As I stated earlier, fate stepped in.

After Rod’s death, I didn’t talk about him much with family or friends. But whenever I hear the song and/or see the video for Other Side of the Game, I think about Rod and I also think about how when God shows up, He shows out. It was not my time.

Last year I created a digital short for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. This year, I was asked by a regular visitor to Infinite Ink to create another digital short for the 2008 remembrance. This was the end result.

On last week when I gave Bailey his first bath, he enjoyed it.  But because he got caught out in the rain on yesterday and got a little dirty, I decided that he needed another bath.  So I filled his bath bin this morning with warm water, lathered him up with his doggie shampoo…………and he acted as if I was killing him.

Again, last week he loved bathing, but this week he hates it.  And as I toweled him off, he gave me a look like, “Don’t think one minute that I’m gonna forget about this, heffa!”

Click pic to enlarge. 

WARNING: If you take offense to the word broads, then this ain’t the post for you. Just surf on outta here.

I’ve compiled a list of my Top 5 Gutsy Broads. These are the women in film and/or television whom I consider to have spunk and they seem to always play strong minded, courageous women on screen.

1. Susan Sarandon - Love her to death! If a woman were to have balls, then Susan has them! Weak woman is not in her vocabulary. My favorite character of hers is the protective attorney, Regina “Reggie” Love, from the movie, The Client. And not only is she an actress, but she’s a political activist as well.

2. Angela Bassett - Rarely has she acted in a film that wasn’t a box office success. Her most famous role was that of the legendary singer, Tina Tuner, in What’s Love Got To Do With It. But it was her role of Reva Devereaux in Boyz N The Hood, that made me take notice. It took a lot for her character as a single mother to allow her son to live with his father to show him how to be a man. And although single mothers are raising sons on a daily basis without a father around, that scene stood out to me because Reva knew that she could raise her son alone, but realized that she doesn’t have to.

3. Sigourney Weaver - One word………Ripley. Was this a kick ass character or what? She was the blueprint for the Angelina Jolies of today. Never would there been a Laura Croft if it weren’t for Sigourney’s portrayal of Ripley in the Alien films. Sigourney is a graduate of Stanford and studied law and drama at Yale. So for as tough as she may be, she’s smart as well.

4. Alfre Woodard - Remember when she played Dr. Roxanne Turner on St. Elsewhere? That was my first time seeing a sista as a doctor who was a regular on a prime time television show. Seems like a lifetime ago. My favorite character that Alfre played was Carolyn Carmichael in the film, Crooklyn. Throughout the ups and downs, she strived to keep her family sane and together. And even as her character lay dying in a hospital bed from cancer, she held on long enough to give her daughter some words of wisdom before her passing.

5. Mariska Hargitay - As Olivia Benson on NBC’s Law and Order: SVU, she’s the epitome of gutsy. She plays the lead female detective of the Special Victims Unit that investigates major sex crimes. Sometimes she becomes a bit attached to the case and/or welfare of the victims, especially if the victim is a child, but it’s her caring spirit that draws you to her. There’s no way that you can work in that field and not have some compassion towards the victims. It’s that vulnerability that makes Mariska stand out on screen.