Badu seems to find her musical inspiration while on the road. Her tour last year – titled the Frustrated Artist Tour – was designed simply to give Badu a creative outlet for her new album.

That project, the EP Worldwide Underground, is not anywhere near the traditional grab-and-go EP style. For a start, it’s an impressive 50 minutes long and maybe not technically an EP after all.

“I wanted to do something brave,” Badu told Billboard. “I just didn’t have enough songs at the time we started recording. So I grabbed five songs from my tour to put out a quick EP. But the project took longer as I began mixing, re-recording and finalizing songs.

“More ideas started coming and by then I had eight songs. But it was already negotiated as an EP, so I didn’t call it an album.”

Call it what you will, the disc is a palette of R&B, soul, jazz, hip-hop and world that has made Badu a favorite among critics and fans alike.