According to New York critic Nitsuh Abebe, the record's main theme is the struggle for African Americans to determine their cultural identity in light of the "Civil Rights and post-Civil Rights" era.[20] In Ratliff's opinion, the album's subject matter has been explored before by Mayfield, Marvin Gaye, and Funkadelic, which "suggests that little has changed in nearly 40 years, and perhaps ... that's her point."[29] Quentin B. Huff from PopMatters believed that like Suzanne Vega's 2007 album Beauty & Crime, New Amerykah Part One also incorporated "a post-9/11 worldview, plus a few shots of community spirit, individual growth, pleas for social activism and spiritual enlightenment, and ... the realities of death."[30] He felt that like the "clash in musical styles", some songs "seem committed to having America honor" the promise of the American Dream for African-Americans, while other songs "seem to reject the promise, or at least the idea that the promise can be fulfilled without considerable effort".[30]
New Amerykah Part One was met with widespread critical acclaim. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from professional critics, the album received an average score of 83, based on 27 reviews.[69] Slant Magazine's Eric Henderson said it is a powerful listen that stands as Badu's most musically ambitious work,[31] and Ernest Hardy of the Los Angeles Times hailed it as "a collection of demanding, disquieting and beautiful urban hymns that reveal their rewards on repeated listenings".[23] Sasha Frere-Jones from The New Yorker described the album as "a brilliant resurgence of black avant-garde vocal pop" and "the work of a restless polymath ignoring the world around her and opting for an idiosyncratic, murky feeling that reflects her impulses."[11] In the Chicago Tribune, Kot wrote that "art this deeply personal" is rarely an easy listen,[28] while Alex Macpherson of The Guardian deemed it a rewarding listen that "demands to be explored."[71] Within the context of the late 2000s' resurgence in classic soul styles across American and British music, Badu's experimental and militant efforts on the album were viewed by The Observer's Steve Yates as "a giant leap forward".[73] According to Pitchfork's Nitsuh Abebe:
Erykah BaduNew Amerykah Part One 4th World War Full Album Zip
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