My column is the Paris dispatch but I don't think since my first work for USOUNDS that I've actually written about my adopted city.

Whenever I finally return home from a trip, be it a short one or a 3 month wander, I always jump into a special night scene as my first order of business. Armed with cigarettes and some cash, I see as many women, smiles, bathrooms, bars, fights, until sunrise, when I meet some friends (mostly old, but hopefully with some from that night) at my apartment and begin to party in earnest.

When I'm out I want to hear it all, as visions blur by and sidewalks are pounded and cloth seat cabs sat in. When I'm home I need something that can help me shake off the coats of nighttime but still let me feel their warmth.. something fur soft but rock hard. A few days ago, as I reentered the city in a radioless rented Renault (the DS is in England in the shop! More on that some other time) with 2 new CDs in the boombox sitting on the passenger seat. 2 ladies in a seat built for one.

Sade and Erykah Badu released their albums in the same week in the US, and usounds was good enough to ship me a couple of advance copies. However I went off to Indonesia for a vacation and didn't get a chance to listen until now. I was annoyed at the time but now I'm glad, it was like having two mysterious spirits waiting to communicate me through the streets of Paris upon my return. I would blast Mama's Gun in the day, and Lover's Rock at night.

The filtered winter sunlight of the city didn't give much warmth but I didn't need it. Badu's album is layered and complex, but the heart is the 'analogue girl in a digital world', a voice that communicates very clearly but very strangely. Erykah's unique, soothing/probing voice is backed up by music which takes a while to get into your blood, but when it does it spreads to all parts of your body, from the head to the ass, dancing through the waves of beats with her as your guide. At first Badu's strange inflections and timing are vaguely frustrating, but quickly you grow to love the depth of her emotion and her oblique sense of humor. It is a rare album that allows you to experience real pain and pleasure but also can fit into the rotation of modern R 'n' B, most of which is totally blown away by the personality and originality of this record.

This daughter of Miss Jackson has created a female R 'n' B counterpart to her ex Andree3000's Stankonia album-- an emotional, intelligent, soulful journey of a record that speaks from one heart to all the world. At my place in the Quatier Latin, in the early hours of the day, it is all I needed to welcome me back to the city I loved.

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