Dallas: Erykah Badu ‘Window Seat’ at Dealey Plaza

The most honest thing Erykah Badu ever said about Dallas, she said without words. On March 13, 2010, she walked down Elm Street in Dealey Plaza. Layer by layer, she shed her coat, her shirt, her underwear. At the spot where Kennedy fell, she fell too. Blue blood spilled from her head and formed one word: groupthink.

“Window Seat” started as a dare she gave herself. It was the lead single from New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh. She had also watched indie duo Matt & Kim strip naked in Times Square for their video “Lessons Learned.” She called it “the bravest, most liberating thing I’ve ever seen two people do.” Still, she wanted a Dallas version in a monumental place. Dealey Plaza was her monument — the grassy knoll, the hometown wound.

She shot it guerrilla-style. No crew, one take, no closed set, no city permit, no warning. On Twitter she wrote it plainly: “was shot guerrilla style, no crew, 1 take, no closed set, no warning, 2 min., Downtown Dallas, then ran like hell.”

What the Word Meant

Then her voiceover arrives. “They play it safe,” she says, “are quick to assassinate what they do not understand. They move in packs ingesting more and more fear with every act of hate on one another. They are us.” After all, the assassination in the video wasn’t about JFK. It was about character assassination — what happens when you show yourself completely.

Sure enough, Dallas reacted exactly how the video predicted. Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway said “None of this would have occurred had she stayed clothed.” The city charged her with disorderly conduct — a Class C misdemeanor — after a witness with two small children came forward. On August 13, 2010, Badu paid the $500 fine.

On The Wanda Sykes Show, she made her case. “JFK is one of my heroes,” she said. “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.”

The video premiered at 3:33 a.m. on March 27. By March 30, it was the ninth most-searched term on Google. But for Dallas, the reckoning runs deeper. Badu stayed in East Dallas after fame found her. She chose the most loaded acre in her city to ask why people are afraid to be themselves. That’s the same question she first learned to ask at Booker T. Washington HSPVA. Dealey Plaza just gave her the loudest possible answer.