Badu Digs Into Hearts and Minds

Underplaying her cosmic persona, hip-hop star Erykah Badu was casual and down-to-earth during a late-night Friday performance at the Knitting Factory Hollywood. Rather than becoming ordinary, however, the presentation emphasized the grit and urgency in her messages of social justice, love and self-respect.

The show’s purpose was to shoot video footage for the singer-songwriter’s Web site, but it also provided fans in the packed house a rare chance to hear her in an intimate setting. Badu, 28, appeared in her signature tall turban, this one white, with a burning incense stick parked playfully behind one ear. Her nine-piece band concocted a soulful flow blending R&B;, jazz and hip-hop for selections from her new album, “Mama’s Gun,” along with a handful from her 1997 debut, “Baduizm.”

Although she definitely has style, Badu’s songs don’t dwell on surface concerns, but dig deep into the minds and hearts of her subjects, which she further illuminates with expressive, jazz-like vocals. The tune “Cleva” emphasized this idea with its discourse on someone having potential that may be unrecognized but is not unused.

Throughout the 50-minute set, Badu changed the mood at will. A funky vibrancy gave way to more somber musings, including “A.D. 2000,” a song for police shooting victim Amadou Diallo, and a pyrotechnic take on the emotionally ambivalent “Sometimes . . . .” The experience was low-key yet cathartic, a celebration of human possibilities and foibles that could have gone all night, except for that pesky 2 a.m. curfew.