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Legal
Badu fined for strip
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 18 August 2010
Erykah Badu has been given six months probation and a $500 fine after being arrested for disorderly conduct for stripping in public while shooting the video for her single, ‘Window Seat’, in March this year.
As previously reported, the video, inspired by a similar striptease pop promo made by New York indie pop outfit Matt & Kim in their home city last year, was recorded in Dallas back on 13 Mar. In Badu’s video the sequence finishes with the naked singer pretending to be shot dead at the spot where JFK was killed in 1963. Blue blood pours from her head to spell the word “groupthink” while a voiceover says: “People are quick to assassinate what they do not understand … this is what we have become … afraid to respect the individual”.
Although the Badu video, seemingly filmed without a permit and with no extras in the crowd around her (Matt & Kim had both), caused some media coverage and shouts of abuse when filmed, it was after the event that a formal complaint was made to the police. Actually, lots of complaints were made to police once the video appeared on the net, but one came from someone who was actually there, and it is that complaint that was used as the basis for the disorderly conduct charge in April.
Badu later defended the video, telling ‘The Wanda Sykes Show’: “My point was grossly misunderstood all over America. JFK is one of my heroes, one of the nation’s heroes. John F Kennedy was a revolutionary; he was not afraid to butt heads with America, and I was not afraid to show America my butt-naked truth”.
A Dallas city official yesterday said in a statement that Badu had paid her fine last week and would remain on probation until 11 Feb next year.
Watch the offending video here: youtu.be/9hVp47f5YZg
