Didn’t Cha Know

Didn’t Cha Know

Erykah Badu

Erykah Badu and producer J. Dilla come together on “Didn’t Cha Know”, the second single from Mama’s Gun. The song samples Tarika Blue’s 1977 song “Dreamflower”, which was unauthorized, leading to an out of court settlement. The single reached #28 on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart and was nominated in the Best R&B Song category at the Grammy Awards in 2001. Erykah talked about how she and Dilla created this track:

I met him through Common. Common and he were good friends and I went to Detroit because I wanted him to be on my album. I didn’t know in what way, but you always hope something works out great and if not you’ll be good friends. … Dilla goes, ‘OK, I want you to look for a record.’ I’m looking through these organized, tightly packed crates, and I just pulled out one record and the artist was Tarika Blue. I liked that name. I put on the first track [“Dreamflower”] and I fell in love with the song and I kept playing it over and over again and I said, ‘I want this.’ He showed me how to loop a small part of the bassline. … Then I left the room and when I came back he had looped some drums to a small sample of the song and I started to write to it.

“Didn’t Cha Know” begins a medley that spans the record’s first side—"My Life", “… & On”, and “Cleva”.